Refugee Hiring and Organizational Performance

Santangelo, GD ORCID: 0000-0002-1053-4212, Rocha, V ORCID: 0000-0003-0227-7129 and Sofka, W ORCID: 0000-0003-1598-6127 (2025) Refugee Hiring and Organizational Performance Organization Science, 36 (3). pp. 1131-1153. ISSN 1047-7039, 1526-5455

Text Santangelo GD, Rocha V, Sofka W. 2024. Refugee Hiring and Organizational Performance. Accepted Version.pdf - Author Accepted Manuscript Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (775kB) | Preview

Abstract

Prior research on the performance effects of hiring immigrants has mainly considered people who choose to move to other countries. We shift attention to forced migrants (i.e., refugees) and study the relationship between their employment and firm performance. We focus on the specific labor market conditions that refugees face and theorize that performance improves among firms that hire refugees. We explain this relationship using two interconnected mechanisms that revolve around refugees’ limited outside options. First, as refugees have strong incentives to remain employed, they put extensive effort into their jobs, work long hours, and, thereby, reduce the employer’s labor costs related to worker turnover (effort mechanism). Second, as refugees are generally willing to accept low pay, hiring them reduces the employer’s labor costs related to salaries (remuneration mechanism). Moreover, we theorize that greater job insecurity at the hiring firm strengthens both mechanisms because it increases refugees’ perceived risk of being fired and their fear of being unemployed. We find support for our theoretical predictions in a matched sample of 27,782 firms in Denmark covering the period from 2001 to 2016.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	refugees, labor market, firm performance
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences > School of Management
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	18 Mar 2024 16:41
Last Modified:	28 Feb 2026 17:00
DOI:	10.1287/orsc.2021.15980
Related Websites:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3179673
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