The Ethics of Lateral Hiring

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Lateral hiring is the intentional action of one employer to identify, solicit, and hire an individual or group of employees currently employed by another firm, a practice often pejoratively labeled “poaching.” We use the method of critical genealogy to demonstrate that the norms that discourage lateral hiring are constructions used by powerful employers to control the turnover of their employees, making them subjects of their employer’s power rather than free and autonomous people in their own right. We suggest instead that ethical responsibility for entertaining or rejecting lateral hiring offers rests with the focal employee(s). We conclude that the form and symmetry of loyalty between employees and their current employers are the determinants of the appropriateness of an employee’s decision to entertain and accept outside offers. These conclusions imply responsibilities for employers to forge (and employees to honor) symmetrical relational loyalty in the workplace, but not for alternate employers to refrain from making lateral hiring offers.

Impact of employer brand-equity promotion for effective talent recruitment of fresh graduates in Pakistan

“…First, there is a long history of the study of organizational attraction and secondly, there is tremendous growth in cross flow of research merge branding concepts from the consumer psychology (Turban et al, 2009) literature of organizational attraction and applicant job search behaviour (Gardner et al, 2010). This merging of employment brand with product and service brands is proficient, simply by recognizing employment as a monetary exchange between workers and employers and also resulting into improved brand equity promotion along with improved recruitment *Corresponding author.…”

A question of top talent? The effects of lateral hiring in two emerging economies

“…It entails the receipt of an unsolicited offer, acceptance and job change. Historically, scholars have used key terms such as poaching, cherry-picking, tapping up, free-riding, lift out and talent raiding to refer to LH (Gardner et al, 2010). The concept is, however, broader than has often been implied.…”

“…A central premise of the literature is that the consequences are not confined to the recipient/destination firm, but also the originating firm (Muehlemann & Wolter, 2011). This includes the three parties to LH: target employee, current firm and outside firms (see Gardner et al, 2010). For analytical clarity, outside firm is the firm seeking to fill gap in their organisation by poaching other firms' employees, whereas, the current firm is the employer of the target employee (Amankwah-Amoah, 2015, 2013.…”

“…poaching and talent raiding (e.g., Gardner et al, 2010;Amankwah-Amoah, 2015). The luring of an individual employee is referred to as poaching, which differs from the luring of multiple employees referred to as talent raiding or lift out (Debrah et al, 2000;Groysberg et al, 2010).…”

“…First, we integrate the literature on LH (Guasch & Sobel, 1983) and general turnover (Lam et al, 2012) to develop a phase model of the mechanisms through which the effects unfold to affect current firm and its employees. Second, we further depart from the existing literature by integrating insights on three parties of LH: target employee, current firm and outside firms (Gardner et al, 2010) to elucidate the mechanism through which the effects unfold.…”