I was recently contacted by Boris Groysberg, assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School. Groysberg teaches the Managing Human Capital course and oversees various executive education programs at Harvard, where he also received his DBA.

Hmmm… I’m familiar with dba—“doing business as,” but what’s a DBA? After a bit of Google sleuthing, I discovered that DBA signifies “Doctor of Business Administration.” One business school site in Switzerland maintains that a Doctor of Business Administration addresses the challenges of global operations and is “the ultimate business degree that empowers the graduates and puts them far above the crowd.”

Hyperbole or not, in this increasingly accelerating global market place, a different set of tools is clearly needed to grasp the manifold imperatives of global business as nation-states fade away and coping with an ever-changing international business framework becomes more challenging.

Professor Groysberg must have stumbled across the article that I wrote in July 2008, on Daniel Pink and his concept of “free agents.” Pink’s first book, Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself, promulgated the notion that as the labor market shifts toward information- and knowledge-based employment, organizations are increasingly concerned with the quality of their workers in order to maintain a competitive advantage. Highly skilled “free agents” are positioned not only to survive this transition, but also to thrive within this competitive landscape as they move from one firm to the next.

For the last 10 years, Groysberg and his colleagues at the Harvard Business School have been looking at the issue of “skills portability”—that is, the extent to which knowledge workers can carry their skills with them from one job and apply them to another with equal success. The heart of successful recruiting, on some level, requires this kind of portability in employee prospects.  But is it actually happening?  The research conducted by Groysberg and his colleagues suggests that context is key: In a nutshell, changing jobs and changing companies works well for some individuals but not for others. Groysberg is specifically interested in discovering what the HR practices are that encourage job and skills portability, both “from” and “to” firms.

Groysberg kindly forwarded a survey to me, conducted as part of his research, so that my store of knowledge would be useful to executive search professionals, companies that specialize in hiring and recruiting, and, of course, potential employees. Although I was flattered, the survey is really meant to be used by hiring recruiters, not necessarily by career counselors.

Even so, it raised a question in my mind: Just what are those strategic factors that contribute to successful skills portability? According to Groysberg, in knowledge-intensive industries such as finance, law, accounting, and technology, companies and workers tend to believe that the top performers or “stars” (Groysberg’s term) are highly portable—that is, a talented individual is able to transport his expertise successfully from one firm to another. Additionally, these stars tend also to take with them the loyalty of their clients, which could lead to furious bidding wars over hiring star performers. These individuals are equivalent to Pink’s “free agents” and transfer the same way super athletes do, moving successfully from one team to the next.

However, Groysberg has in fact found that “overall, stars do poorly at their new firms.”  An article in Management Science, “Can They Take it with Them? The Portability of Star Knowledge Worker’s Performance” (2008, Groysberg, Lee & Nanda), presents a series of interesting conclusions:

1. Stars suffer a performance decline when they move to new firms.
2. Stars suffer a performance decline when they move to firms with equivalent capabilities.
3. Stars who move with a team of colleagues suffer less severe performance decline than those who move solo.
4. Hiring a star destroys value for the hiring firm.

It turns out that the organizational socialization, or “learning the ropes,” requires successful integration within each organization, and transitions, even by stars, can be highly disruptive.

In another article, “Risky Business of Hiring Stars,” in Harvard Business Review (Groysberg, Boris, Ashish Nanda, and Nitin Nohria; May 1, 2004), this explanation is offered:

When the star leaves the old company for the new, he also leaves behind many of the resources that contributed to his achievements. As a result, the star is unable to repeat the performance in another company—at least not until he learns to work the new system, which could take years. The authors conclude that companies should focus on cultivating talent from within and do everything possible to retain the stars they create.

But it also turns out that there are significant gender differences in how well stars do after they jump ship. Star women who move to another firm exhibit no decline in performance. The rationale that Groysberg proffers is that women are often more successful in generating external relationships, and their focus on external cultivation of companies and contacts makes them more “portable.”  Women also tend to more easily and quickly develop strong internal relationships and networks than men do, and these, along with political capital, are critical to the success of an organization.

So, Daniel Pink, are you listening?

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