Refugee Hiring and Organizational Performance

Santangelo, Grazia D ORCID: 0000-0002-1053-4212, Rocha, Vera ORCID: 0000-0003-0227-7129 and Sofka, Wolfgang ORCID: 0000-0003-1598-6127 (2024) Refugee Hiring and Organizational Performance. Organization Science.

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

<jats:p> 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. </jats:p><jats:p> History: This paper has been accepted for the Organization Science Special Issue on Migration and Organization. </jats:p><jats:p> Funding: V. Rocha received financial support from the Carlsberg Foundation [Grant CF21-0156]. </jats:p><jats:p> Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15980 . </jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Management
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	18 Mar 2024 16:41
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2024 16:41
DOI:	10.1287/orsc.2021.15980
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3179673