My work contributes to organization theory and strategy by illuminating the unexpected ways that status recognition influences motivation, mobility, and productivity. This research is particularly relevant for the strategic management of top-talent, as the settings I study cover professionals employed in a highly competitive multinational pharmaceutical company and professional athletes. More broadly, this research has implications for organization and strategy research on status and the management of performance reward systems.
My dissertation work specifically examines the consequences of 'status recognition mismatch,' focusing on what occurs when there is a discrepancy between a professional's status and their performance. In 2019, I was honored to be a finalist for the INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition, where I presented three studies from my dissertation on overrecognition, underrecognition, and status recognition mismatch, which can be found here.
In addition to my papers on professional status recognition, I also study how talent recruitment and performance management systems shape careers and impact both worker and firm long-term performance.
Below is a summary of my current research papers and works in progress.
PUBLICATIONS (* indicates student coauthor)
Bond, Brittany M. 2025. “Cut to the Curve: Underrecognition and Talent Loss from Forced Ranking in a Multinational Firm” Management Science.
> Featured in Cornell Chronicle
> Featured in Peter Cappelli’s Wharton Business Radio Show “In the Workplace” November 8, 2018: https://shows.pippa.io/wbr-guest/brittany-bond
Bond, Brittany M. and Ethan J. Poskanzer*. 2024. “Striking Out Swinging: Specialist Success Following Forced Task Inferiority” Organization Science.
> Featured in Harvard Business Review Idea Watch Nov-Dec 2023
Bond, Brittany M., Tatiana Labuzova*, and Roberto M. Fernandez. 2018. “At the Expense of Quality” Sociological Science 3: 10-32.
Bond, Brittany M. and Roberto M. Fernandez. 2020. “Networks for the Unemployed?” in "Social Networks at Work" a volume edited by Daniel J. Brass and Stephen P. Borgatti
Duhaime, Erik P., Brittany M. Bond, Qi Yang, P. de Boer, and T.W. Malone. 2020. “Recruiting Hay to Find Needles: Recursive Incentives and Innovation in Social Networks.” Available at SSRN 3545311.
SELECT WORKS IN PROGRESS AND MANUSCRIPTS UNDER REVIEW (* indicates student coauthor)
Bond, Brittany M. and Joonyoung Kim*. Paper on Overrecognition: Employee Performance Evaluation Inflation. (Under Review).
> Featured in US Census Bureau Research Matters Blog: “Fresh Uses for the Management and Organizational Practices Survey Instrument” Feb 22, 2019
Brittany M. Bond and Mabel Abraham. 2024. [Paper on Platform Changes and Differences in Evaluative Behavior ] (Manuscript Preparation).
Brittany M. Bond, Duanyi Yang, and Sunita Sah. [Paper on Burnout Intervention] (conducting intervention study)
This study will investigate two major interventions for lowering burnout among U.S. based Veterinarians and improving reputations and performance of the vet clinics, with a particular focus on leadership quality and team communication for organizational-directed interventions and job crafting for a combined organizational and individual intervention.
Kim, Joonyoung*, Brittany M. Bond. and Becca Kehoe. [Paper on Trickle Effects of HR Implementation]
Bond, Brittany M. and Joonyoung Kim*. Paper on Forced Ranking Recognition Variation and Organizational Attachment. (Analysis).
SELECTED ABSTRACTS
Bond, Brittany M. 2025. "Cut to the Curve: Underrecognition and Talent Loss from Forced Ranking in a Multinational Firm." Management Science. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01204
This paper examines unintended consequences of enforcing a curve on performance rankings. I examine a multinational company where some employees are downgraded from the top levels of rankings due to a strict recognition cutoff. I show that downgraded employees are at least 34% more likely to voluntarily exit, and that attempts by the organization to manage employee concerns, particularly regarding concerns of fairness, envy, and self-image, do not have the intended retention effect. Underrecognized employees leave even though the organization avoids calibration bias, offers reassurance about their career prospects, and compensates them with larger bonuses than their top-ranked peers. In robustness checks, I show that under these conditions even high-performing employees not nominated to the top ranks are more likely to voluntarily depart despite receiving the largest bonuses. These findings suggest that where underrecognition occurs due to the restriction of top rankings, the mechanisms producing demotivation are more powerful than the management strategies meant to combat them.
Bond, Brittany M. and Ethan Poskanzer. 2024.“Striking Out Swinging: Specialist Success Following Forced Task Inferiority” Organization Science. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.2023.1680
Organizing work around specialized professionals leverages their deep expertise and mastery of particular skills. However, as work becomes more flexible, organizations often require specialists to perform some work outside their specialization. These tasks, which distance specialists from the area of their greatest contribution, could diminish their performance by being distracting, tiring or creating negative comparisons with others who are more proficient in that work. Contrary to these perspectives, we find robust evidence that specialists’ performance can be enhanced, rather than diminished, after work outside their specialization. Using archival data from 22 years of Major League Baseball (MLB) games and interviews with former MLB players and coaches, we find that specialized players perform better in their specialty after obligatory tasks outside of their specialization. We argue that this occurs through a process we call forced task inferiority, in which underperformance in tasks outside their specialty frustrates specialists, generating heightened arousal and drive that they can channel into better performance in their specialty work. The results are robust to alternative mechanisms, such as tasks outside a specialist’s area of specialization leading to learning, breaking monotony or threatening the specialist’s professional identity. This research advances knowledge about managing specialists and flexible work arrangements by showing that when tasks are particularly sequenced, specialists’ performance can be enhanced, rather than diminished, by doing work outside their specialty.
Bond, Brittany M. and Roberto M. Fernandez. 2020. “Networks for the Unemployed?” in "Social Networks at Work" a volume edited by Daniel J. Brass and Stephen P. Borgatti
Past research has argued that hiring personnel use current employment as a signal of worker quality. If firms tend to keep high ability workers, then those who are not employed will tend to be “lemons,” labor market leftovers who are of uncertain quality. To the extent that employers rely on employment as a signal, then well-qualified, but out-of-work job seekers will be stigmatized simply by being out of work. “Networking” is a common prescription both for job seekers to overcome the negative signals of being out of work and as a means for knowing what skills to keep current. The importance of both these purposes of networking only increase the longer a job seeker has been out of work. For networking to work, however, someone must be willing to provide a connection for the unemployed person. This begs two important questions: 1) will potential referrers also view unemployment as a negative signal? and, 2) does the willingness to help depend on the strength of the network tie? We design a survey vignette experiment to study how potential referrers react to the signal of unemployment, and how their decisions to refer job candidates depend on whether the potential referral is a friend vs. stranger. We find that referrers generally do react negatively to unemployed job seekers. However, despite the risk to their reputation, friends are more likely to refer the unemployed, and do so without distancing themselves from the unemployed candidate. This suggests that networking can indeed solve the lemons problem confronting unemployed job seekers.
Bond, Brittany M., Tatiana Labuzova, and Roberto M. Fernandez. 2018. "At the Expense of Quality" Sociological Science.
https://sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-5/june/SocSci_v5_380to401.pdf
Many organizations use employee referral programs to incentivize employees to refer potential applicants from their social networks. Employers frequently offer a monetary bonus to employees who refer an applicant, and this is often contingent on whether the person is then hired and retained for a given length of time. In deciding whether to refer someone, referrers face a potential role conflict, as they need to balance their motivations for helping connections find job opportunities with concerns regarding their reputations with their employers. To the extent that monetary incentives shift an employee’s considerations away from finding the best matches for the employer, referral bonuses may increase the chances that lower-quality candidates are referred. Using a survey vignette experiment, we find that even a small referral bonus increases the likelihood that referrers will refer lower-quality candidates, and they are more likely to refer people they do not know well. We further discuss theoretical and practical implications regarding the efficiency of incentivized referral programs in producing quality applicant pools for employers.