This event is co-organized by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies of the Faculty of Law, and the HKU Centre for AI, Management and Organization, The University of Hong Kong
Date: January 26, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 12pm – 1pm
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Daniel Muzio (Professor of Management, University of York)
Knowledge-intensive professional organizations, such as global law firms, rely on the human and social capital of their workers for competitive advantage. Consequently, they have an incentive to recruit star professionals with the expectation of harnessing those workers’ expertise and relationships and improve group and organizational outcomes. However, existing research is divided on the merits of this strategy. This study contributes to this literature by investigating how intra- and inter-group dynamics moderate the relationship between recruiting a star professional into a group and that group’s subsequent performance (in terms of the perceived quality of its services). Using a longitudinal panel dataset of the largest UK corporate law firms between 2001 and 2017, we show that while recruiting a star professional into a group is associated with a lower quality rating of services experienced by clients relative to groups that did not hire a high caliber professional, this negative effect is weaker when the average quality of the incumbent professionals in the group is higher and when the hiring group is one of the stronger ones in the broader organization.
Daniel Muzio is a Professor of Management. He joined York in 2018 from the University of Newcastle, having previously worked at the Universities of: Manchester, Leeds and Lancaster. He has held visiting positions at the University of Oxford, Cass Business School and Luiss Guido Carli in Rome. He is a former General Editor of the Journal of Management Studies and a founding editor for the Journal of Professions and Organisation.
Moderator: Sida Liu, Professor, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law
To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=103555.
For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at / 3917 4727.