Insider Econometrics Meets People Analytics and Strategic Human Resource Management

The International Journal of Human Resource
Management
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Insider econometrics meets people analytics and

strategic human resource management
Anne-Sophie Larsson & Martin R. Edwards
To cite this article: Anne-Sophie Larsson & Martin R. Edwards (2022) Insider econometrics meets
people analytics and strategic human resource management, The International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 33:12, 2373-2419, DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2020.1847166
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2020.1847166
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
2022, VOL. 33, NO. 12, 2373–2419
https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2020.1847166
Insider econometrics meets people analytics

and strategic human resource management
Anne-Sophie Larssona and Martin R. Edwardsb
a
King’s Business School, King’s College London, London, UK; bUQ Business School, University
of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, Australia
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Researchers in the field of HRM and Strategic HRM have for Human resource
several decades engaged in research endeavours to identify management; strategic
the link between HR investments and firm performance. human resource
management; insider
Despite this, the field still has some way to go to definitively econometrics; personnel
demonstrate this causal relationship; partly due to the cross- economics; people analytics;
sectional nature of much of this research. In the current HR analytics; intrafirm
paper, we give a brief overview of the SHRM field and the analysis; longitudinal
benefits that the new subfield of People Analytics (PA) might methods
bring to the area. We also conduct a brief survey of research
in Insider Econometrics, an approach used in Personnel
Economics to produce empirical estimates of the value of HR
practices, to highlight longitudinal intra-firm research in eco-
nomics that could provide insights to research exploring the
HR investment-performance link (important in both SHRM
and PA fields). We discuss the value of combining the busi-
ness impact perspective of People Analytics that has a unique
‘inside’ (intra-firm) position, with the longitudinal intra-firm
analysis approaches utilized in Insider Econometrics. We sug-
gest that People Analytics researchers, who are able to draw
on the theoretical developments in HRM field, would benefit
from exploring existing research insights and methodological
techniques used within the field of Insider Econometrics.
Introduction
For around four decades, a body of work has been building seeking to
both theoretically explain and empirically measure and analyze the link
between HRM and performance (Devanna et al., 1981; Guest, 1987;
Huselid, 1995; Lepak & Snell, 1999; Peccei & Van De Voorde, 2019b;
Wright et al., 2005; Guest, 2011). Central to this quest is the notion that
certain HR practices or combinations of HR practices (often referred to
as HR bundles or HR systems) can affect both employee and firm per-
formance (Boselie et al., 2005; Paauwe, 2009). Within this literature, a
CONTACT Anne-Sophie Larsson anne-sophie.larsson@kcl.ac.uk King’s Business School, King’s College

London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
ß 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2374 A.-S. LARSSON AND M. R. EDWARDS
sub-strand exists that focuses on Strategic Human Resource Management

(SHRM) which has an emphasis on the degree to which HRM practices
and systems (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004) help improve organizational per-
formance and the ability for an organization to achieve its strategic aims
(Wright & McMahan, 1992). Despite the considerable research effort
that has been devoted to exploring the link between HRM and perform-
ance there is still some way to go to decisively demonstrate robust evi-
dence of a direct (causal) link between HR practices/systems and
performance (Guest, 2011). Many studies have shown that there is a cor-
relation between certain practices (or bundles of practices) and perform-
ance, but due to the lack of longitudinal research there is still a need for
more research supporting the proposed links between HRM and per-
formance (see e.g. Fleetwood & Hesketh, 2006; Guest, 2011; Jiang et al.,
2012; Paauwe et al., 2013; Wright et al., 2005).
In this paper we suggest that the (S)HRM literature in its quest for
empirically establishing causal links between HRM and performance
could benefit greatly from a) the growing interest of People Analytics as
a subdiscipline of HRM, and, b) from drawing on a research approach in
economics called Insider Econometrics (IE). These two strands of litera-
ture, if combined with the theoretical developments in (S)HRM, could
generate many new valuable insights on the value of HR practices (and
on under what circumstances some practices might be more effective
than others). People Analytics (PA) as a business practice involves using
data-driven analyses to enable evidence-based decision making, and at its
core, focuses on empirical (data) analyses that aim to measure and evalu-
ate employee performance and the value (or Return on Investment, ROI)
of investments into HR practices and link these to business outcomes.
Recent reviews (Kremer, 2018; Marler & Boudreau, 2017; Tursunbayeva
et al., 2018) within the HR literature reflecting on the state of the emerg-
ing field of People Analytics have nonetheless struggled to identify exam-
ples of applied analytics projects. Despite this, People Analytics (PA), as
a relatively new development in the field of HRM (Edwards & Edwards,
2016) offers new opportunities to help explore the link between HR
practices and organizational performance. In a recent discussion focusing
on the new people-focused data analytic challenges faced by HR,
Angrave et al. (2016) argue that methodologies and analytic techniques
utilized in the field of economics (e.g. longitudinal econometric model-
ling and quasi-experiments) could also increasingly be used to help busi-
nesses and HR functions identify how human capital investments can
affect organizational performance. Here, we begin to help shed some
light on how this can be done (and add some flesh to Angrave and col-
league’s arguments) by drawing on an approach in economics called
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 2375
Insider Econometrics; this approach has a long tradition of longitudinal

intrafirm analyses using people-related data. We believe that the body of
literature that uses an IE approach could be of great value to scholars in
(S)HRM in general, and more recently (as an emerging field) to
researchers in PA in particular, as it provides an opportunity to acquire
insights from research conducted by economists (specifically focusing on
‘Personnel Economics’) using longitudinal techniques in their quest to
demonstrate the economic value of investments made into particular
human resource practices.
We further suggest that People Analytics could develop from its cur-
rent state as (in the main) a business practice to an academic field that
could bring many new insights on not only data-driven decision-making,
but also offer the field of HRM insights on the context specific contin-
gencies and processes that may affect the value HRM. Building on argu-
ments made by Angrave et al. (2016) calling for more of an integration
between fields along with the utilization of methods and techniques used
in economics and HR, we suggest that PA would benefit from drawing
upon knowledge created in both the economics and HRM/SHRM litera-
tures as it develops into a more mature academic (sub)field; in particular,
People Analytics researchers could explore some of the methods used in
Insider Econometrics whilst (naturally) incorporating valuable theoretical
developments in the management literature.
A key objective for writing this paper is similar to those of Kaufman
and Miller (2011) and Zehnder et al. (2017) who try to build bridges
between management scholars and economists by ‘injecting’ economics
into strategic HRM and leadership research. Although we are conscious
that there are large distinct disciplinary traditions and theoretical gaps
between economics and management, we believe that quantitative
(S)HRM research and those exploring research with a People Analytics
focus could benefit from drawing on Personnel Economics; in particular,
on the analytical approach of Insider Econometrics, with its long trad-
ition of conducting longitudinal analyses using HR-/people-related data.
The first section of this paper first offers a brief description of the
HRM-performance link literature and the frameworks and methods that
have dominated the field of SHRM over the past 30 years, to then move
on to exploring the relatively new phenomenon in (S)HRM of People
Analytics; which, it is argued, focuses on how HR related data-driven anal-
yses can have an impact on decision making and firm performance. The
second section offers a brief survey of recent applied work in Insider
Econometrics in order to explore how (S)HRM in general, and quantita-
tive heavy subfields such as People Analytics in particular, might benefit
from drawing on empirical work in economics. The third section discusses
some of the differences and similarities between the perspectives of eco-

nomics and the HR management literatures on the value of HRM and the
potential benefits and challenges of greater integration of these literatures.
We also discuss how and why we think that People Analytics is perhaps
uniquely positioned to add value to academia and business alike, and at
the end of the section we point to some potential future research direc-
tions that could provide new insights on the HRM-performance link. In
the fourth and final section we summarize our findings.
In sum, the intention of this paper is to offer some insights into
Insider Econometrics and how management scholars could draw on this
literature to contribute to our understanding of the links between HRM
and employee and firm performance through studying the value of HR
practices. We especially see a great potential for researchers focusing on
People Analytics to make use of the methods in IE to develop and
deliver more powerful analyses that can not only be used to further the
academic knowledge of the HRM-performance link, but also aid busi-
nesses make more informed people-related decisions.
HRM and performance

The idea that human resource management practices and systems have
an effect on employee and firm performance is the central idea in
Human Resource Management (Guest, 1997). The goal of HRM can thus
broadly be seen as a way to ensure organizational success through people
(Armstrong, 2011). There have traditionally been two levels of analysis
in the literature: the individual level (micro) and the organizational level
(macro), Wright and Boswell (2002). The level of analysis is also largely
what separates traditional or ‘functional’ HRM research from ‘strategic’
HRM (Darwish, 2013; Delery & Doty, 1996; Wright et al., 2003).
However, when reviewing the literature these lines between Strategic
HRM and HRM research start to blur. Nevertheless, the SHRM literature
has a much more pronounced quest for exploring the HRM-performance
link as it tends to focus on why and how particular HRM practices or
systems help achieve organizational strategic objectives and thus ultim-
ately affect the performance of the organization as a whole; we therefore
primarily focus on this strand of the HRM literature as context to the
recent emergence of People Analytics as a related but specific subfield.
Strategic human resource management

There are many different perspectives within the field of SHRM
(Darwish, 2013) which at least partially can be attributed to the
simultaneous growth of different strands of theory instead of a more lin-

ear evolution of the field (Guest, 2011). There has nevertheless been a
common thread in the literature, namely, trying to establish a link
between HRM and firm performance (Boon et al., 2018). Within the
SHRM field, there are many different models and frameworks that indi-
cate either a universal set of practices or that different contextual, config-
urational, contingency and implementational considerations should
explain how HR practices and processes can lead to organizational per-
formance; these are discussed further below.
Key theoretical frameworks in the SHRM—performance literature

SHRM theories and frameworks are often organized into two broad cate-
gories; one involving a universalistic perspective, where a collection of
particular practices are considered to help achieve organizational per-
formance in various contexts (Huselid & Becker, 1997; Pfeffer, 1998),
and another that includes a number of different theoretical models (con-
tingency, configurational and contextual models) falling under a loose
umbrella of ‘fit’ frameworks (Lepak & Snell, 1999; Miles & Snow, 1984).
In short, the basis of contingency models (e.g. Miles & Snow, 1984)
revolve around the idea that the degree to which particular HR practices
will lead to high organizational performance will depend upon the
organizational strategic emphasis (often on the dimension linked to
innovation; e.g. does the organizational strategic context necessitate a
prospector, analyser or defender innovation strategy?). Configurational
frameworks focus on the idea that in different circumstances, particular
bundles of HR practices or different employment relationship modes are
more likely to help the organization achieve organizational performance
(Lepak & Snell, 1999). Fit frameworks also focus on the importance of
HR systems that take into account the external context (e.g. institutional
regulatory frameworks) present, along with the importance of internal fit
between the organizational values and HR system and of internal consist-
ency within the HR system (across HR practices), Boselie (2014). Broadly
speaking the universalistic perspective represents ‘best practices,’ that are
assumed to have a direct relationship with firm performance, whilst the
contingency perspective represents the ‘best strategic fit,’ and the config-
urational perspective can, through its focus on the interplay between dif-
ferent HR practices and policies, be viewed as the ‘best system fit.’ In
practice the lines between these three perspectives are however not
always that clear. Finally, authors such as Nishii and Wright (2008) and
Bowen and Ostroff (2004) discuss the importance of implementation and
process considerations to ensure that planned HR practices are imple-
mented and make up a strong HRM system; thus helping lead to organ-
izational performance.
Within the SHRM literature elements of a number of foundational

theoretical models can identified (Boon et al., 2018; Lepak & Snell,
1999). A key foundational frame is the Resource-Based View (RBV) of
the firm, which stems from Barney’s (1991; 1995) extensions of Penrose’s
seminal 1959 work on firm growth. This perspective is more closely
linked to economic thinking and human capital (HC) theory (see Boon
et al., 2018), rather than more psychologically oriented theories often
found in the HRM literature, and it sees human capital as a crucial input
for a firm in creating a competitive advantage. In this view the unique
abilities of a firm’s workforce are key to leading to organizational success
(Barney & Wright, 1998; Wright et al., 2001). RBV is one of the most
extensively used theories in both the HRM and HC literatures, and
though criticized for its inability to explain the value of HR practices
and help decision-making (Kaufman, 2015) it has been suggested to have
the potential to generate truly informative knowledge that can narrow
the micro–macro divide (Delery & Roumpi, 2017). In addition to RBV
frames, SHRM theories also draw on other economics-based theories
such as Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), see Lepak and Snell (1999).
In essence TCE as applied to SHRM revolves around the idea that organ-
izations should weigh up the costs of an investment in HR practices
against the likely return before embarking on such an investment.
An additional theoretical framework found in the SHRM literature
often presented in tandem with models of high performance work practi-
ces (HPWP) and high performance work systems (HPWS) is the Ability-
Motivation-Opportunity framework (AMO). HPWPs are considered as
universalistic in the sense that researchers have tried to find HR practices
that can be seen as superior e.g. Pfeffer’s (1998) list of seven strategic
practices (employment security, selective hiring, self-managed teams or
team-working, high pay contingent on performance, extensive training,
reduction of status differences and information sharing). HPWP and
HPWS are often linked to the AMO framework as the introduction of
these practices can help a firm harness and increase employees’ Ability
(A), foster Motivation (M) and give them ample Opportunity (O) to par-
ticipate in firm activities, resulting in higher employee performance,
which in the longer run can lead to higher firm performance
(Appelbaum et al., 2000; Appelbaum & Batt, 1994).
Research linking (S)HRM and performance

Much of the early research on the HRM-performance link proposed an
essentially universalistic view of HR, where specific HR practices are sug-
gested to have the capacity to enhance organizational performance. The
idea that some practices are better than others has been called by many
different names, such as: best practices (e.g. Pfeffer, 1994), high perform-
ance work system (HPWS), (e.g. Becker et al., 1998), high-involvement
practices (e.g. Lawler, 1986), and high commitment practices (e.g.
Arthur, 1994). Many of the influential quantitative papers from the 90s
applied this largely universalistic view, but they also relied on subjective
cross-sectional survey data, often from single informants in senior posi-
tions (e.g. Arthur, 1994; Delery & Doty, 1996; Huselid, 1995; MacDuffie,
1995). One problem with both the early empirical work and the follow-
ing theoretical developments was that it did not offer enough specificity
in what HR practices (or bundles) that affect performance, nor did it
offer much reasoning for the process through which these practices
could affect performance. This led to both calls for increased theorizing
(Becker & Gerhart, 1996) and to suggestions that more effort was needed
to explore the ‘black-box’ of likely mediating factors between HRM prac-
tices and firm performance (Boxall & Purcell, 2008; Katou & Budhwar,
2006; Purcell et al., 2003; Wright et al., 2003).
During the past two decades, contingency theory, RBV and AMO have
come to dominate the literature, but there has been considerable blend-
ing between these different frameworks. The AMO tends to focus on
individual-level outcomes whilst contingency theory and RBV are more
focused on business outcomes, they can nonetheless be seen as comple-
mentarities rather than substitutes. Indeed, and as suggested by Boselie
et al. (2005), the blending of these three might produce the overall most
accurate framework for HRM. That is, that a firm’s organizational suc-
cess is dependent on the (unique) capabilities of its employees (RBV)
and how it motivates and offers its employees the opportunity to partici-
pate (AMO) and that the effectiveness of both the human capital and the
HR practices employed to entice individual performance is dependent
upon the organizational context (contingency theory). Such blending of
macro-oriented frameworks (contingency and RBV) and micro-oriented
frameworks (AMO) also helps break down the micro-macro divide in
the HRM literature that the emergence of the SHRM literature brought
about (Boselie, 2014; Wright & Boswell, 2002).
Unresolved issues in the HRM-performance research

With research exploring SHRM, a major shift in focus occurred that
involved more of an emphasis on measuring outcomes at a higher level,
where business outcomes such as firm performance rather than individ-
ual outcomes such as employee productivity take centre stage.
Methodologically, when outcomes are measured at the business level, a
greater focus can be applied to considering the impact of variety in
SHRM bundles or systems as the appropriate focus of research into
exploring the HRM-performance link (Darwish, 2013; Delaney &

Huselid, 1996).
The idea that bundles might be a superior way of measuring the
impact of HRM was introduced by MacDuffie (1995) but it also
appeared simultaneously in a slightly different form in Barney’s (1995)
extension of the resource-based view, where HR practices are seen as
additive and that they should therefore not be viewed in isolation, but
rather in combination or interplay with one another. Scholars now often
refer to the notion that HRM is made up of bundles of practices and sys-
tems; what these bundles ought to, or in reality do, consist of is nonethe-
less less clear-cut. Early work tried to identify various practices that
could be considered to be strategic (e.g. Delery & Doty, 1996; Pfeffer,
1994; 1998). About a decade later a literature review by Boselie et al.
(2005) accounted for no less than 26 practices having been suggested by
the literature, with training and development, pay and reward schemes,
performance management, and recruitment and selection being the most
common. In effect, since almost all empirical studies have used different
sets of HR practices to test the HRM-performance link the management
literature has never reached some form of consensus on which combina-
tions of practices that are best suited for increasing organizational per-
formance (Guest, 2011; Paauwe, 2009). Furthermore, there has also been
a great disparity in how to measure performance, where some studies
have utilized ‘objective’ measures (e.g. sales revenue) whilst others have
used ‘subjective’ measures (e.g. perception of sales revenue compared to
other firms) to measure organizational outcomes (see e.g. Singh
et al., 2016).
More recent (S)HRM theorizing is emphasizing links between HR
practices and performance within a multilevel framework where: ‘HR
practices at the organizational level affect the attitudes and behaviour of
employees at the individual level which, in turn, affect key aggregated
level behavioural or HR outcomes such as labour productivity and turn-
over which, subsequently, might impact organizational or firm-level out-
comes’ (Paauwe, 2009, p. 134). Untangling such complex relationships
within and between both higher- and lower-order inputs and outputs is
however not an easy task (see Peccei & van de Voorde, 2019b), especially
considering the many potential mediating mechanisms that might be at
play. That said, there is a basic requirement that needs to be fulfilled for
us to even begin to unravel such assumed causal relationships, namely
longitudinal data and the use of methods that are appropriate for analyz-
ing such data. Also, the notion that HRM, even if measured as bundles,
would have a measurable direct impact on firm performance has been
criticized (e.g. Katou & Budhwar, 2006). Perhaps instead of (or in
addition to) trying to map the effects of higher level decisions to lower
level outcomes and then onto rather distant higher order financial out-
comes such as profits (that are affected by so many other forces that are
outside the control of both the HR function and the firm, e.g. product
or service demand, market competition, taxation, exchange rates etcet-
era), HR researchers could use more ‘proximal’ outcomes such as prod-
uctivity (Boselie et al., 2005; Guest, 1997) and draw upon research
approaches used as a norm in other disciplines. Specifically approaches
that focus more attention on establishing ways of measuring the value of
HRM through a better understanding of how, when and under what cir-
cumstances HR practices have an effect on lower level outcomes (e.g.
individual or team productivity or voluntary turnover) and then analyze
the costs and benefits of such practices at both the lower and higher lev-
els (where available and appropriate). The most straightforward way of
doing this is to, instead of focusing on the often distal relationship
between HRM and organizational performance, focus on the (intra-firm)
marginal effects that changes in HR practices have on proximal out-
comes (e.g. the change in sales per person or team).
Even though the field of (S)HRM has undergone considerable theoret-
ical refinement over the past decades (for extended descriptions of this
evolution see e.g. Armstrong, 2011; Darwish, 2013; Delery & Roumpi,
2017), where —as suggested by Guest (2011) — what started out as a
question of ‘What impact does HRM have on performance?’ has evolved
into ‘Under what circumstances does HRM have an impact on perform-
ance?’ and ‘What is the process whereby HRM can have an impact on
performance?’ (p. 7). To answer such questions it seems inevitable to
move away from searching for universalistic ‘best practices’ to focus on
the effects of HRM in different contexts (Gerhart, 2005; Harter et al.,
2002). These theoretical refinements also require a push with the empir-
ical research towards longitudinal intrafirm studies that can help identify
both contextual and causal links rather than cross-sectional analyses that
measure correlations between HRM investments and performance across
firms. The suggestion of a need for an increase of focus on longitudinal
research is made in the context of People Analytics by Angrave et al.
(2016). These authors argue that to get the most out of traditional rela-
tional HR data (and new forms of ’big data’ emerging in the HR sphere),
longitudinal econometric techniques need to be utilized. The quantitative
HRM literature does not seem to have embraced this path as there have
been numerous recent calls for increasing the number of longitudinal
studies in the field (Boon et al., 2018; Jiang et al., 2012; Guest, 2011;
Paauwe et al. 2013). In fact, a recent review of the longitudinal work on
the HRM-performance link uncovered only 8 studies (published between
1995-2014) and none of them had taken an intrafirm perspective

(Saridakis et al., 2017).
As the field stands at the moment, we do not seem to have a much
clearer picture of the potentially causal link between HRM and perform-
ance today than we had 30 years ago (Darwish, 2013; Guest, 2011). An
alternative route to gaining more knowledge of the impact of HRM
might be to use a multistep process that first focuses on the effects of
HRM on lower level outcomes such as employee or team productivity or
voluntary turnover, utilizing intrafirm longitudinal methods to under-
stand the marginal value of human capital investments and HR practices;
this could then potentially be linked to organizational performance (lon-
gitudinally). From a functional point of view these analyses can help us
to better understand what practices have an effect on employee out-
comes, and how these outcomes might be mediated and moderated by
e.g. employee sentiments and work contexts; importantly this requires
longitudinal methods. From a strategic point of view these types of lon-
gitudinal analyses offer a more straightforward route to uncovering the
value of alternative HR practices, and help us measure the ROI on HRM
investments. When such analyses are conducted within a firm, consider-
able insights can be gained that can have a direct impact on organiza-
tional performance through enabling less subjective people-related
decision-making. This focus on intrafirm data-driven decision-making is
one of the latest developments in the field of (S)HRM.
People analytics (PA)

The late 90s also marked the beginning of a large wave of management
literature focusing on how and why HR should become a strategic part-
ner (e.g. Barney & Wright, 1998; Lawler & Mohrman, 2000; Ulrich,
1998) and that HR practices ought to become more closely linked to
business outcomes (e.g. Becker et al., 2001). Furthermore, it was argued
that HR needed to evolve into a ‘decision science’ (Boudreau & Ramstad,
2005). Many of these arguments are still relevant and echoed in the
recent surge of publications that discuss how People/HR analytics could
(and will?) reshape the HR profession (Angrave et al., 2016; Rasmussen
& Ulrich, 2015), often calling for better linkages between HR and busi-
ness outcomes (e.g. Ulrich & Dulebohn, 2015; van den Heuvel &
Bondarouk, 2017).
There are however, much like the plethora of frameworks and theories
in the HRM-performance link literature, many definitions of what PA
entails. Some define PA in relation to the process of managing talent
(e.g. Huselid, 2018); others use a broader brush calling it the
development of practical business solutions through the application of

scientific knowledge (van der Togt & Rasmussen, 2017). Some refer to
PA as the systematic identification and quantification of the people driv-
ers of business outcomes (van den Heuvel & Bondarouk, 2017); others
refer to it as an HR practice enabled by information technology that ena-
bles data-driven decision-making (Marler & Boudreau, 2017). Some
researchers take it one step further by classifying it as an organizational
capability that not only encompasses managing and analyzing data but
also the strategic ability to act on the results of such analyses
(Minbaeva, 2018).
The application of statistical modelling to HR related data to enable
data-driven decision-making has also been given many names, although
‘HR Analytics’ (HRA) and ‘People Analytics’ (PA) have recently become
the most common terms used in the management literature and in inter-
net searches (Edwards & Edwards, 2019; Tursunbayeva et al., 2018).
HRA and PA can be used interchangeably; they are often seen as the
umbrella terms for the act of analyzing People/HR related data, whilst
other similar concepts such as Talent, and Human Capital Analytics
(HCA) tend to narrow its analytical lens in on certain aspects of people
related human capital elements (e.g. the knowledge, skills, abilities, and
other characteristics (KSAOs) of employees, see Boon et al., 2018 discus-
sion of Human Capital and SHRM).
In spite of the many different labels and definitions of people-related
analytics they are all ultimately concerned with using data to enable bet-
ter decision-making, and to some extent identifying, validating or testing
the value of human capital, human resource practices and HR professio-
nals. Achieving such aims arguably calls for going beyond descriptive
metrics to making use of inferential statistics and predictive modelling as
it ‘requires advances [sic] statistical and econometric skills that exceed
the correlation analysis of dependent and independent variables’
(Kremer, 2018, p. 66). In essence the core of PA can thus be seen as ‘the
application of social science research methods to the workforce compo-
nents of specific business problems’ (Huselid, 2018, p. 680). A more
hands-on definition is Evans’ (2015) definition of Analytics as ‘the use of
data, information technology, statistical analysis, quantitative methods,
and mathematical or computer-based models to help managers gain
improved insight about their business operations and make better, fact-
based decisions’ (p. 6). Adapting the practice of analytics to the field of
HRM to try to predict performance has been called Predictive HR
Analytics, which entails ‘the systematic application of predictive model-
ling using inferential statistics to existing HR people-related data in order
to inform judgements about possible causal factors driving key HR-
related performance indicators’ (Edwards & Edwards, 2016, p. 2). In

essence, People Analytics can be seen as an explicit intrafirm applied ver-
sion of activities that have been carried out in the field of HRM research
for some decades (as discussed above); specifically the endeavour of
investigating whether HR practices and HR investments or activities can
be shown to link to employee and business outcomes (e.g. productivity
and performance).
From an academic perspective the concept of HR/People Analytics can
be said to date back to Lawler et al. (2004) and a discussion of how
‘[s]tatistical techniques and experimental approaches’ could be used to
increase HR’s impact and influence (p. 29). From a business perspective
it has only recently become a topic of interest with the rise of big data
and the increased use of analytics in other business areas; recent surveys
reveal that it has become a global trend and a topic that is high up on
the agenda at many firms (Deloitte, 2016; 2018). As a result People
Analytics has become somewhat of a buzzword, but since the skillset
required for performing analytics is often outside the realm of the skills
of many HR professionals it has often been depicted as either the future
or the demise of the HR profession (Angrave et al., 2016; Ulrich &
Dulebohn, 2015; van den Heuvel & Bondarouk, 2017).
A search on the Internet reveals vast amounts of articles, conferences,
seminars and courses about PA, more often than not written and arranged
by consultants offering analytics services. In recent years numerous practi-
tioner-oriented guides of how to get started with people-related analyses
have also been published (e.g. Edwards & Edwards, 2016; Guenole et al.,
2017; Sundmark, 2017). In academia however, People Analytics (PA) is
still an emerging subfield in Human Resource Management, and the
recent surge of academic literature that discusses PA can be considered to
be largely a result of its growing popularity in the practitioner world.
Most of the extant literature nonetheless still focuses on what PA is and
its potential as a game changer in people-related decision-making, often
emphasizing what could and should be done rather than on how it is
done and what the results are (Angrave et al., 2016; Marler & Boudreau,
2017; Tursunbayeva et al., 2018). Some papers for instance try to explain
why firms are struggling to go from reporting to analytics (Boudreau &
Cascio, 2017) and what the barriers to, and success factors of, effective
People Analytics are (Kremer, 2018; Levenson & Fink, 2017); while others
try to build new conceptual frameworks for how HRA could affect
employee performance (Sharma & Sharma, 2017).
The PA literature often advocates a multistep process that starts with a
business problem, which ideally ends with successful implementation of
data-driven decisions (Marler & Boudreau, 2017). Between the beginning
and the end there are several steps such as creating and collecting HR
metrics, analyzing the data, and ‘selling’ the results (or ‘telling the story’)
to decision-makers (Boudreau & Cascio, 2017; Marler & Boudreau, 2017;
van den Heuvel & Bondarouk, 2017). The central analytical tasks could
furthermore be broken down into two categories of quantitative analyses
that can be used to enable data-driven decision-making: 1) Evaluating
employee performance and other lower level outcomes, and 2)
Evaluating the effect, or value, of HR practices. We believe that both of
these types of analyses should have a place in the PA literature as the
first can aid managers in making employee-related decisions, and the
second because it can aid management in making strategic people-related
decisions. Importantly (as with SHRM research that explores the link
between HR practices and performance), both of these types of analyses
(1 and 2) would benefit from longitudinal data, but the accuracy of the
latter is completely contingent upon the use of such data. Recent reviews
(Kremer, 2018; Marler & Boudreau, 2017; Tursunbayeva et al., 2018)
have nonetheless struggled to identify both cross-sectional and longitu-
dinal empirical papers, particularly in the form of quantitative intrafirm
studies that could help build empirical knowledge and guide future
applied work within PA and (S)HRM.
Due to the dearth of longitudinal studies in (S)HRM in general, and
that longitudinal quantitative intrafirm research is absent in the PA aca-
demic domain at this point, we draw on an approach within the field of
economics called Insider Econometrics that has a long tradition of longi-
tudinal intrafirm analyses using people-related data. The body of litera-
ture that uses an IE approach can be of great value to scholars in
(S)HRM in general, and to researchers in PA in particular, as it provides
an opportunity to gain insights on how economists work when studying
the value of human resource practices in the field of Personnel
Economics. As Angrave et al. (2016) argued, various techniques found in
economics can potentially also help organizations and HR functions fully
utilize the potential for data insights from various kinds of ’smart’ data
(i.e. fine-grained longitudinal data) often stored in human resource infor-
mation systems (HRIS). Because of its relevance to the PA and SHRM
sphere, we specifically focus on the subfield of Insider Econometrics with
the aim of drawing on particular research traditions that could help add
new analytical dimensions to the area of PA and SHRM.
Insider econometrics (IE)

Here, we draw on a selection of Insider Econometrics research papers
that have an intrafirm focus and explore the value of making particular
investments in certain HR practices to show how this subfield of eco-

nomics can help provide insights into PA and SHRM. Insider
Econometrics is an approach used in several subfields in economics and
was originally introduced by Ichniowski and Shaw in 2003 as a way of
studying productivity at the micro-level through a combination of exten-
sive field work, firm-level data and rigorous econometric hypothesis test-
ing of the effects of firm-specific determinants of productivity (Bartel
et al., 2004). The approach predominantly grew out of a subfield within
Labour Economics – Personnel Economics – pioneered by Edward
Lazear, otherwise perhaps best known for his contributions to tourna-
ment theory. Although applied in many other subfields in economics,
e.g. Organizational Economics; Behavioral Economics; and Experimental
Economics, we have chosen to predominantly draw on examples of
Insider Econometrics from Personnel Economics due to it being the
most obvious economics-based cousin of Human Resource Management.
Since both the PA and IE literatures predominantly deal with people-
related analyses in a business setting we have reserved the term
‘intrafirm’ in our brief review to only apply to studies conducted on
private and public for-profit corporations. We have thus excluded studies
that use data from e.g. public services (education, healthcare, law
enforcement etc.) as there might be very different institutional logics in
the private, public and non-profit sectors (Alford & Friedland, 1985;
Thornton & Ocasio, 2008; Weber, 1947). We do however touch upon
some relevant papers that use quantitative approaches to analyze non-
corporate people-related data.
Background and definition

Personnel Economics (PE) emerged as a distinct research field in the
1980s and entails ‘the application of economic and mathematical
approaches to traditional topics in the study of human resource manage-
ment’ (Lazear & Oyer, 2007, p.1). This development in economics essen-
tially involved moving away from the traditional study of labour at the
macro-level (e.g. national or regional level) to studying labour at the
individual and firm level (i.e. the micro-level to an economist), which up
until then had predominantly been seen as the domain of industrial psy-
chologists. Broadly speaking PE is ‘the economist’s view of human
resources’ (Lazear & Shaw, 2007), and it has its own JEL-code, M5, in
the Journal of Economic Literature classification system.1 Empirical
papers in this category can broadly be classified into three categories:
First, those that explore large datasets that cover many firms (often by
using matched employer-employee data). Second, those that report
behavioural experiments in controlled or semi-controlled environments.

Third, those that look at specificities within one or a few firms (often by
combining personnel records, financial data and insights from employees
within firms). The latter approach has become dubbed ‘Insider
Econometrics’ (IE) where econometrics and ‘insider’ insights are com-
bined to reveal when and why management practices matter (Ichniowski
& Shaw, 2012). The approach was originally described by Ichniowski and
Shaw (2003) as:
‘insider econometrics’ [ … ] is aimed at producing empirical estimates of the value
of alternative human resource management practices. This ‘insider’ approach goes
deep inside businesses to understand how human resource management practices
affect specific production processes. Using this insider approach, the analyst is
guided by several basic principles: identify a narrow production process that can
be modeled empirically; visit a significant sample of work sites that have that
production process; conduct field research to understand the process thoroughly;
interview a range of people to develop alternative views of the process and the
human resource management practices; and finally gather accurate panel data on
production, technology and organizational practices from the broadest possible
sample of worksites using this process (pp. 155-6).
The definition above makes it very clear that Insider Econometrics is a

specified approach, and this is the primary reason why it is applied by
researchers in so many different subfields of economics. It is also clear
that this approach has very strong links with the recent focus on People
Analytics within the HR field, and that it as a method or analytic
approach would be a very useful addition to the ‘toolkit’ of people ana-
lytics teams or researchers.
Personnel Economics is rooted in agency theory and rational choice
and therefore many of the single-firm studies that have been conducted
tend to emphasize the importance of incentives, and when economists
discuss incentives they are typically referring to what psychologists would
call extrinsic rewards (or extrinsic motivators), in the form of e.g. per-
formance pay or promotions. The strong focus on incentives, runs all
the way from the early studies of the effects of piece-rate pay on per-
formance (e.g. Freeman & Kleiner, 2005; Lazear, 2000; Paarsch &
Shearer, 1999, 2000; Shearer, 2004) to the recent 2017-2018 studies that
we review. There are however also many studies that explore employee
performance related dimensions that one might expect to be found
within relatively mainstream HRM literature. For example, workforce
characteristics such as employee tenure (Shaw & Lazear, 2008) and peer
effects (Mas & Moretti, 2009); as well as the impact of introducing new
HR practices such as balanced scorecards (Griffith & Neely, 2009), tests-
based hiring processes (Autor & Scarborough, 2008) and team based
incentives and rewards (Bandiera et al., 2013; Hamilton et al., 2003). For
further exploration of relevant empirical research we point to existing lit-

erature reviews (e.g. Bandiera et al., 2011; Bloom & van Reenen, 2010;
Ichniowski & Shaw, 2012; List & Rasul, 2010) as our brief review only
demonstrates the current research front.
Exploring the PE/IE single-firm research front

In this brief PE/IE review we aim to set out a range of recent empirical
endeavours to demonstrate the existence of HRM relevant papers; and to
reveal the type of approaches used in these studies that can help guide
applied PA endeavours. Knowledge that has been developed from multi-
or interfirm studies can of course also be of relevance, but since PA pre-
dominantly involves studying people within firms we have chosen to
limit our survey to only include intrafirm (single firm) papers.
Furthermore, since we have chosen to primarily focus on papers that fall
within the Personnel Economics domain we have predominantly drawn
our sample from the M5 category in the JEL classification system. We
have nonetheless also included some relevant key examples of Insider
Econometrics that fall under other JEL classifications.
Approach
The approach taken in selecting papers from the IE area to present as
examples of work relevant to the PA domain involved three steps. First,
we surveyed all abstracts in the M5 category from 2017 and 2018 in the
RePEc database available via IDEAS.2, 3 After filtering out papers not
published in English and removing duplicates (e.g. different working
paper versions and papers entered into several M5 subdivisions) we were
left with 399 papers. Based on the content conveyed in the abstracts we
then narrowed down our pool of papers to 114 empirical papers consid-
ered to be potentially relevant for our review. Second, even though
RePEc has a very large coverage it does not index all economics papers.
We therefore performed keyword searches on Google Scholar using all
possible combinations of: [personnel economics, insider econometrics,
and field experiment] and [within-firm, single-firm, and intra-firm]. We
then applied the same abstract-based approach to screen papers as in the
first step and added papers that we had not already identified via RePEc.
Third, we considered all seemingly relevant papers that had been cited in
the papers found in steps 1 and 2 to find additional papers that might
have evaded us through our previous two approaches. The second and
third steps resulted in a total of 57 additional papers.
We then carefully read all of the identified 171 papers, irrespective of
empirical strategy (multi-firm, experiment, interfirm or intrafirm) in an
attempt to limit the possibility of missing papers that at first glance did
not seem to fit our single-firm criterion, and then we finally limited our
sample to only include those that we felt could be labeled applied intra-
firm analyses.
Exclusions
Given the large number of papers that our searches revealed we have
chosen to only include empirical intrafirm papers where the authors
themselves have classified the paper as belonging to the M5 category.
When such a classification has been unavailable/missing, i.e. in the
papers found either via Google Scholar or citations, we have only
included papers that either explicitly claim to have used an insider
econometrics approach, or heavily draw on the PE/IE literatures. Due to
these limitations our survey has excluded some papers that could still be
highly relevant for people analysts. We point interested readers to appen-
dix 1 for examples of excluded papers.
Results
After the exclusions our review of Insider Economics papers resulted in
a sample of 25 papers that have been published either in peer-reviewed
journals or as working papers during 2017 and 2018.4 The rationale
behind including the working papers is that these, or some version of
these, are likely to become published in the next few years. As such we
use the inclusion of working papers as method of tapping into the
research front. Due to our approach with collecting and excluding papers
we can by no means claim that this is an exhaustive list of relevant
papers; however, we believe that we have surveyed enough papers to
illustrate the existence of a substantial body of relevant applied work in
economics that should be of interest to researchers in the HRM field,
and for People Analytics researchers in particular.
In reviewing the studies from the area of IE/PE, we briefly summarize
the findings below. Not surprisingly given the ‘economist’ orientation of
the research, there is an overall strong focus (though not exclusively) on
incentives, in particular performance pay, which is studied both at the
worker, manager and team levels. However, there are also quite a few
papers that study the effects of social comparisons, relative pay differen-
ces, and biases such as gender inequality and discrimination. Moreover,
there are some examples of how supervision, manager attention and shift
work affect performance, as well as the effectiveness of training contracts
and employee referral systems. All of the papers in our sample utilize a
longitudinal research design. The collection of papers includes research
projects drawn from at least 9 different countries and represents a broad

international scope.
Even though the results of the studies are reported in Table 1, discus-
sing results is not our primary interest here. We aim to: a) shed some
light on the types of data and methods used in the field of IE/PE to help
show how relevant some of these studies are to the field of PA and
HRM are, and; b) explore to what extent modern applied economics
relate to psychological or quite mainstream ‘soft’ HR factors (e.g.
employee engagement, wellbeing, job/life satisfaction, organizational
commitment and communication) that have received considerable atten-
tion in the OB/HR/management literature. Finally, we very briefly touch
upon the potential ‘impact’ that the analyses have had on intrafirm deci-
sion-making linked to investment in HR practices.
Data and methods utilized by IE researchers. The vast majority (80%) of

the studies identified use some form of performance/productivity meas-
ure (e.g. sales/sales growth, billable hours, assembly speed, and miles
driven) for their main analyses, but many also account for people/HR
outcomes such as turnover, absenteeism, and promotions. There are
however 5 studies that exclusively study people/HR outcomes. The most
frequent settings are retail stores/chains (11), and banks/banking outlets
(4), whilst the other 10 examples originate from settings ranging from
agriculture, trucking, food processing and manufacturing through to law
firms and high-tech companies. However, of note, almost all of the stud-
ies represented in Table 1 have been conducted with workers who work
in fairly standardized jobs, e.g. driving, harvesting, selling retail banking
products or consumer goods (apparel, electronics, groceries etc.). There
are nonetheless a few exceptions where white collar workers are the
main focus of the studies (e.g. Bartel et al., 2017; Gibbs et al., 2017;
Hoffman & Tadelis, 2018; and Sato et al., 2019). The white-collar studies
however, more frequently focus on people outcomes such as turnover
and promotions rather than productivity and performance. As men-
tioned, the collection of research papers includes data collected across
many different countries (the location of the companies are not always
disclosed, however, the studies are based on firms in at least nine differ-
ent countries spanning across four different continents; thus a truly
international HRM scope).
As is the norm with research found in the field of IE, all of the studies
use longitudinal datasets, but they vary greatly in temporal period from
two months (Obloj & Zenger, 2017) to over a decade (Sato et al., 2017),
with most studies utilizing datasets that cover approximately two to three
years. Most of the studies rely on a combination of financial data and
Table 1. Insider econometrics papers.
Method(s)/
Firm industry Treatment/HR Dependent Econometric
Author(s)1 and location Area of study Sample/Data intervention variable(s) Soft HRM approach2 Findings
Bartel et al. An international Incentives Monthly personnel Shifting team leader incentive Primary analysis: billable No FE The change in team leader incentives
(2017) law firm records and financial scheme from commissions based and non-billable hours decreased average billable hours and
“outside (The effects of a data for 431 lawyers on billable hours to a bonus that (þWeibull model increased non-billable hours for leaders.
the USA” compensation who are part of 168 is more centered on Secondary: Turnover, for turnover) Associates’ billable hours increased, and
plan change) different team leadership. employee compensation their non-billable hours were unchanged.
teams (2005–2010). and salary, The change had no significant effect on
personal profits3 turnover or leadership compensation, but
it had a positive (11%) effect on the
associates’ compensation. Personal profits
were unchanged for leaders but increased
for associates.
Bogaard and A foreign-owned Incentives Quarterly branch-level Introducing a new organizational Productivity (the change No IV (GMM), (where The introduction of new positions with
Svejnar (2018) bank in Central- balance sheets, profit structure with new titles and in footing/FTE)4 the IV ¼ average bonuses more tightly linked to sales
East Europe (The effect of incentive and loss statements, and responsibilities, coupled with a branch rather than branch profits increased
pay on profits and staff data for 180 bank new incentive system that moved þ A series of characteristics of average productivity but did not increase
productivity) branches (2003–2007). away from linking bonuses to profitability, quality and other branches) profits or quality. The effect was larger in
branch profits to instead make product mix measures larger branches.
bonuses linked to branch and GPS
individual sales targets.
Cullen and A large Relative pay and social Daily and monthly Employees guessed how much Most central DVs: Yes, pay and job IV model (which Social comparisons are present for
Perez- commercial comparisons administrative data, and their peers and managers earn. satisfaction (as builds on a horizontal comparisons but not for
Truglia [(2018)] bank in Asia survey data for a Some employees then received Hours worked, dependent variables) Bayesian vertical comparisons.
(How beliefs about peer subsample of 2,060 information regarding average Emails (the average learning model).
and manager salaries employees during salaries and were subsequently number sent per day), Perceptions about the salaries of peers
affect 6 months (2017). given the chance to change their and managers have significant effects on
employees’ behavior) answers. The sample was split into Sales employee effort, performance, and
four groups depending on the retention. The pattern is the same for all
salary information received. Turnover central DVs.
Increasing the perceived peer salary

decreases the hours worked, emails sent,
sales and increases the probability to quit.
Increasing the perceived manager salary
reverses the pattern.
Delfgaauw et al. A retail chain Team incentives Weekly store A six-week long sales tournament Performance (sales Yes, job satisfaction. FE Insignificant (but negative sign) effects on
(2020) (lingerie and performance data from where stores competed in sales in relative to sales target) performance.
swimwear) in (How monetary 108 stores (Feb 2013 to groups of three. Employees in
the Netherlands incentives affect Jan 2014). Surveys winning stores received a bonus Task allocation The introduction of team incentives seem to
performance, task before and that amounted to approximately have had some negative effects the
assignment and job after treatment. 2.5% of the employees’ pay for Job satisfaction allocation of tasks and job satisfaction at the
satisfaction) the same period. store-level, but the results were mostly non-
significant. The response rate was however
quite low (34.5% for the first, and 18.5% for
(continued)
2391
Table 1. Continued.
2392
Method(s)/
the second survey).
Dube et al. A large retail Pay and social Personnel records The firm implemented a non- Job separations No multi- The overall effect of wages on separations
(2019) chain in comparisons spanning 30 months standard set of pay raises in dimensional RD is driven mostly by peer comparisons and
the USA (Feb 1996 - July 1998). response to increases in the relative pay differences among employees
(How relative wage Roughly 6,500 records, federal minimum wage. The raises at the store-level as opposed to
differences affect job which covers approx. where based on wage thresholds employees’ own wage and the
separations) 90% of the workforce. that resulted in unequal raises. market pay.
Englmaier et al. An agricultural Communication of Daily compensation and Treatment consisted of increased Pieces Harvested No DD The treatment significantly increased the
(2017) firm incentives productivity data from communication (reminders) of the (Only one-sided output by about 3.3–3.8% and had a
(predominantly one harvest season: performance pay which varies Quality Points (via post- communication in the negative (but non-
producing (The effect of incentives (May 25 - Nov 6, 2008). from day to day. harvest inspections) form of reminders.) significant) effect on quality by about
lettuce) in on performance) 2.4–5.4%. Moreover, the intervention
Europe Manager Daily significantly increased manager daily
Compensation compensation by about 4.0–4.4%.
A.-S. LARSSON AND M. R. EDWARDS
Task Assignment Managers in treated teams also started to

(fraction of cutters) assign a larger fraction of their workers to
cutting the lettuce as opposed to packing
and processing.
Frick et al. (2018) A large Shift work and Monthly absenteeism The company switched form a Monthly absenteeism No (but employee GLM Absenteeism is slightly higher in larger
automobile absenteeism data from 409 backward (night-day-morning) to wellbeing is proxied by units. The new forward rotating system
company organizational units over forward (morning-day-night) absenteeism). decreased absenteeism by more than 10%
in Germany (The effects of a shift 36 months (Jan rotating shift schedule. (worth about e 300,000 per month).
schedule change on 2009–Dec 2011). Complaints about the short weekend
absenteeism) between night and morning shifts made
the company shift back to a modified
version of the earlier backward
rotating schedule.
Friebel et al. A retail chain Communication and Personnel records and Three treatment groups: Turnover rate Yes, communication/ ANCOVA Communication and managerial attention
[(2018b)] located in turnover financial data for 238 1: managers were asked to "do managerial attention is seem to have a strong short-term effect
Eastern Europe stores (Feb 2014 to Dec whatever you can" to reduce Sales partially accounted for on turnover rates, however, the effect
(The effect of store 2016). Repeated surveys turnover. based on grouping and wanes off after approx. 9 months. This
managers on turnover to store managers, 2: in-store posters and letters to Profits surveys to mangers might have to do with a lack of
rates in a retail chain regional managers and workers and managers with and cashiers. incentives for managers (no reward was
with high levels cashiers, as well as exit information on career and Shrinkage given for lowering turnover). The second
of attrition) interviews. development opportunities. treatment, 12 months later, had the same
3: both of the above. type of effect on turnover.
1st treatment: 60 stores per group No effects were found on performance

2nd treatment: 30 stores from or sales.
treatment groups 1 and 3 received
reminders that reducing turnover
was still a priority.
(continued)
Table 1. Continued.
Method(s)/
Friebel et al. A retail chain Employee referrals Personnel and Five groups: Employee attrition No (but employee LPM Higher referral bonuses increase referrals,
[(2018a)] located in accounting data for 238 1: Control (no ERP) wellbeing is proxied by but the magnitude is small. The attrition
Eastern Europe (The effect of monetary stores (Feb 2014-May 2: Information (encouraged Number of sick days absenteeism). Negative amongst referrals is however much lower
(same as above) incentives on employee 2017). referrals but did not include Binomial (40%) than among observably similar non-
referral programs) bonuses) (þprofits from ERP) referrals, but retention falls as bonuses
Approx. 10,000 out of 3-5 monetary incentives that Mediation increase.
18,000 employees amounted to bonuses of 50, 90, analysis
participated in a 13- and 120 euros (¼approx. 40% of Having an ERP in a store leads to a 15%
month randomized the average monthly salary after reduction in worker attrition and reduces
control trial. taxes) if the referrer and referral labour costs by up to 2.7%. However,
stayed for at least 5 months. these results do not seem to be driven by
the referrals as about 95% of the gains
come from increased retention of non-
referred workers.5
Friebel et al. (2017) A bakery chain Team incentives Sales and personnel data A team bonus of up to e300 per Sales Yes: Org. ANCOVA (þDD The team bonus increased sales by
in Germany covering approx. 1,300 month, conditioned on pre- Commitment þ job and and FD) around 3% and wages by around 2.2% in
(The effect of team employees in 193 shops existing sales targets. life satisfaction (Surveys: the treated shops. Sales increased by
bonuses on sales in a (Jan 2012 to Jun 2014). one pre-treat and one $3.80 (and the operational profit by
teamwork environment) 97 stores in treatment during treat). $2.10) for each bonus dollar paid out to
for three months (Apr- employees.
Jun). Surveys in March
and May of 2014. The team bonus worked better with
younger workers and in teams that had
been underperforming in the pre-
treatment period.
Based on survey answers there seemed to

be no adverse effects on neither job/life
satisfaction nor
organizational commitment.
Gibbs et al. (2017) HCL Technologies. Incentivizing ideation Ideation data (number The company had a formalized Number of Ideas No Number of ideas: Teams that were offered monetary
An MNC with and quality of ideas) forprocess for submitting and OLS and zero- rewards for process and product
HQ in India. (How rewards more than 11,000 reviewing new ideas. The Quality of ideas: shared inflated negative improvements generated fewer but better
affect creativity) employees. treatment consisted of adding a ideas (with client), binomial model ideas than teams that were not offered
reward for high quality ideas implemented ideas, and such rewards, and treatment persisted to
39 months of pre- (ideas that are deemed good estimated value of ideas Quality of ideas: have a positive effect on ideation after
treatment, treatment enough to become implemented) OLS and the rewards were discontinued.
and post-treatment data, plus an additional, much higher, Logit (AME).
13 months each (2009- reward if it received high client
2012). ratings. Reward-points could then

be traded in for consumer goods.
Gjedrem and A large retail Employee autonomy Weekly sales data (2009- Non-randomized treatment. Weekly sales, No DDD (þplacebo Sales increased by 5.6% and transactions
Rege (2017) chain (consumer 2012) and weekly tests) by 4.7% in treated stores.
2393
electronics) (The relationship number of transactions Treatment consisted of the Number of weekly
in Norway between autonomy and (2010-2012) for 88 company making it mandatory for transactions The results suggest that figuring out a
performance) stores. Treatment at sales staff to approach every best practice, and enforcing employee
(continued)
Table 1. Continued.
2394
Method(s)/
different times over a single customer that enteered the compliance, may increase both
14-week period in 2011. store. The new rule was coupled performance and motivation (as
with a system for monitoring employees received bonuses based on
compliance. both store and individual sales).
Glover et al. (2017) A grocery store Discrimination and Six weeks of daily No treatment (they compare the Work absence, Partially, but only FE Minority employees perform considerably
chain in France productivity administrative data for difference in performance between Articles scanned per included in worse when working with biased
204 cashiers hired on a minority and non-minority workers minute, secondary analyses.7 managers.
(How manager biases six-month government when working under more and Minutes worked in
can affect minority subsidized contract in 34 less biased managers) excess of schedule, Minority and majority workers on average
worker outcomes) stores (between Jul 2011 Time between customers demonstrate similar productivity, but
and Aug 2012). Worker (Minority ¼ North African and Sub- minority workers outperform majority
survey and manager Saharan African, based on names). (þseveral workers when they are working for
IAT test6. other variables) unbiased managers.
Managerial attention/communication
seems to affect performance. The results

are driven by stores with relatively fewer
minority workers.
Hassink and A food processing Organizational Absenteeism (self A relocation of a firm in 1992, Monthly absenteeism (as Yes, morale/ org. FE LPM There is on average a negative effect on
Fernandez (2018) firm in the USA commitment reported) and postal 10.5 miles (16.9 km) from the old a proxy for employee commitment (surveyed work effort for those whose commute
codes for a sample of plant. effort) before and after increased due to the plant relocation.
(How worker loyalty/ 252 employees. Pre- and the move) However, the effect is driven by
morale affect job effort) post-treatment survey The commute was decreased for (þemployee turnover employees who had declared to have a
data for 178 employees approx.15%, and increased for and employee morale) low ’work morale’ before the move.
(1991 and 1994). approx. 85% of the employees.
Hoffman & A large trucking Training Data on miles driven, To decrease turnover the company Turnover No Cox DD (þstructural The training contracts significantly
Burks [(2017a)] company earnings, and introduced a training contract with model, and reduced post-training quitting and
in the USA (How training contracts demographics of a flat fine for quitting in their first Productivity (miles event analysis) increased the profitability of general
affect turnover and “thousands” of new 12 months. The contract was later driven per week) training.
firm profits) drivers (2002-2009). replaced by an 18-month (pro-
rated) contract. More productive drivers are slightly less
likely to leave, which has led to an
increase in average productivity.
Both the 12- and 18-month contracts

reduce worker welfare (as opposed to
no contract).8
Hoffman and A large high-tech Management skills Personnel records No intervention. The main idea Turnover, performance No, satisfaction is IV (the manager There is a strong negative relationship
Tadelis [(2018)] firm. Location not (performance ratings, was to test the relationship scores, salary however indirectly/ score in one between people management skills and
disclosed (70% (How people salary etc.) during between the DVs and the increases, promotions partially measured via period is employee attrition.
are employed management skills 29 months “some time “Manager’s overall rating” (MOR), questions about instrumented
in the USA). matter and to what during 2011-2015.” Two which is based on annual the manager. with the score No consistent relationship between
extent managers are annual employee ratings. from the people management skills and subjective
rewarded for such skills) employee surveys. other period). employee performance, salary growth, or
probability of promotion. Managers with
(continued)
Table 1. Continued.
Method(s)/
high people skills are however more likely
to be promoted.
Kesavan and Retail store Income volatility Personnel records, No treatment/ intervention. Employee turnover No Univariate [þProbit Both income levels and volatility affect
Kuhnen [(2017)] (apparel) in performance (hourly OLS, IV (2SLS)] turnover. The probability of employee
the USA (How worker income scanning data) and store Most employees work part-time (þnumber of employees turnover increases with lower wages and
precariousness impact data (customer volume) and are paid by the number of per store, income level higher income volatility. The results are
firm performance) covering 8,479 hours worked. Temporary tertile, income volatility driven by, and only hold for, part-time
employees who were customer fluctuations cause the tertile, sales) employees.
employed by the demand for labour to also
company at any point fluctuate (which makes earnings Lower income seems to also reduce
from July 2012 to volatile) and it is the effects of worker productivity, and employee
June 2013. these fluctuations that is turnover is related to worker productivity
being measured. in a non-linear fashion as both those with
the highest and lowest levels of
productivity are more likely to leave.
Kesavan et al. A department Manager Monthly performance A change in the bonus scheme for Sales growth, No FD Emphasizing corporate goals in the
[(2017)] store retailer incentives data for 75 stores (Feb store managers. managers’ incentives had a negative
in the USA 2014 - Dec 2014). APE actual labour9 effect on store performance.
(How incentives impact Bonuses that had previously only
operational decisions (1,816 month- been linked to store performance The year-over-year sales growth rate was
and store outcomes) observations with the became contingent upon the 2-2.5% smaller under the new incentive
old scheme and 1,432 company meeting its goals (no scheme, which resulted in a reduction of
observations with the bonuses were to be paid out if the growth by more than 50%.
new scheme). the company did not reach
its goals). The new scheme also resulted in a
substantial increase in labour
scheduling errors.
Khashabi et al. A bakery chain Incentives and market Data on shop Introduction of a performance pay Sales No DD (þstochastic The effect of the performance scheme on
[(2017)] in Germany competition characteristics and system for shop assistants (only frontier sales is the highest (up to 9%, and 5% on
performance, as well as managers and supervisors had Number of customer regression) average) when stores are located in big
(How market the number of some sort of performance-based visits towns, where the local competition is
competition affects the competitors within incentives prior to this). moderate. Sales teams located in low-
effectiveness of walking distance for 193 Sales per customer visit and high-competition areas respond much
performance pay) stores (Jan 2013 - 97 of the shops were randomly less to incentives.
Jun 2014). selected (by the researchers) to
partake in a pilot from April 1st to
June 30th 2014.
Manthei and A bank Performance measures Monthly branch data Introduction of more objective Customer net revenue No FE Introducing objective performance
Sliwka (2019) in Germany from more than 270 performance measures by asking measures significantly increased
(How objective branches (Jan-Dec 2003). managers to base bonuses on Self-initiated sales performance.
performance measures reaching individual customer net appointments
can affect performance revenue targets. Profit increases were driven by larger
in a multitasking branches through higher sales of products
environment) All branches used subjective that had previously only accounted for a
2395
performance measures during small share of sales. Division of labour is

6 months and then 23 branches
(continued)
Table 1. Continued.
2396
Method(s)/
used more objective measures argued to be the reason for the differing
during 6 months. treatment effects.
Manthei et al. A large retail Manager incentives Financial data and Introduction of performance pay Sales per customer at Yes, job/life DD The main effects for both trials are
[(2018)] chain (discount personnel records from for district and store managers. the district and satisfaction.11 insignificant.
supermarket) (How experience affects 284 stores in one region store levels
in Germany the effectiveness of (the chain has more Two randomized trials Performance pay (bonus) seems to only
performance pay) than 2,000 stores). 1st trial Nov 2015-Jan 2016 with have an effect on those stores with
Surveys and district managers (1 treatment relatively lower levels of experience (when
phone interviews. group and 1 control group) there is still room for improvement).
2nd trial Nov 2016-Jan 2017 with There is some evidence that performance
store managers (2 treatment pay may have negative effects on stores
groups and 1 control group).10 with more experience.12
Obloj and An independent Social comparisons Daily sales records of A two-month sales tournament Productivity (number of No Negative binomial The tournament on average increased
Zenger (2017) retail bank. 164 banking outlets, and (primary personal loans). loans sold per branch regressions with productivity, but stores with higher than
Location not (How proximity can manager survey data per day) region, time, average proximity to advantaged stores
disclosed. affect employee (used to measure social Four outlet groups (41 in each) group and (stores competing for more prizes)
comparisons and proximity). 8,553 outlet- based on prior performance. The individual decreased their productivity. The results
productivity) day observations. top outlets competed for 4 prices, FE (þOLS) are very similar for all types of measured
the second-best group for 3 prizes proximity (geographical, social, and
and so on.13 structural).
Sandvik et al. An inbound- Pay reductions Commissions and weekly Commission reductions for two of Performance/ effort Yes, perception of firm FE for effort The commission reductions resulted in a
[(2018)] sales call-center. activity data for 2,033 the firm’s six sales divisions. measures: Revenue-per- fairness (pre- decrease in sales as it had a large effect
Location not (How compensation sales agents across Treatment happened at call, treatment survey15) LPM for turnover on turnover for productive employees, but
disclosed. reductions can affect 61 weeks, (April 2016- different times. Conversions rate, (separate only a negligible effect on average
work effort June 201714). Surveys of Commission, and regressions employees.
and turnover) general sentiment. Adherence to schedule for treat 1
and 2) The propensity to quit is higher when the
Turnover take-home pay roughly matches the
market pay (employees making more than
the market pay are more likely to stay).
Perceptions of fairness do not seem to

have affected employee effort or turnover.
Sato et al. A large multinational Gender pay and Personnel records of No treatment/ intervention. Wage No OLS (wage) There are substantial gender wage and
(2019) manufacturing promotion gaps college-graduate white- Ordered logit promotion gaps as well as large gender
firm in Japan16 collar workers without Promotions (promotions) differences in career tracks.
(To what extent career previous work
differences are experience. Broader work experience through job
associated with gender transfers (job rotations) across
gaps in pay Promotions are studied establishments are associated with a
and promotion) from 2002 to 2014 and higher promotion probability for both
(continued)
Table 1. Continued.
Method(s)/
wages from 2004 men and women and leads to higher
to 2014. wages for men but not for women, which
suggests that women more frequently
accept promotions without pay raises
than men do.17
Schmidt Bruning Manager supervision 80 workers on the The treatment group only had 1 Performance (speed) No DD The estimated effects of increased
Junior et al. Tecnometal. assembly line of supervisor from Nov 2010 to Oct supervisions on productivity are
(2017) A large industrial (To what extent there is aluminum fuel tanks for 2011, and two supervisors from Machine availability (the substantial. In the short run (1 month)
manufacturing a trade-off between trucks. Two teams with Nov 2011 to Oct 2012. The control time machines are productivity increases by 21.9% 26.8%,
firm in supervision and wage) 40 employees in each group had two supervisors available for production) and in the longer run (1 year) the
Brazil were used as control throughout the entire period. estimated effect is approx. 13.5%
and treatment groups. Efficiency (the ratio 16.8%.
between machine usage
and machine Based on the authors’ calculations, using
availability). supervisor and worker wages, it is more
cost efficient to hire another manager
than to pay efficiency wages to
the workers.
1
Years within square brackets denote working papers. Years followed by an asterisk denote working papers that have been published or accepted for publication after the sample
was collected.
2
We account for the methods used in main analyses as well as (some of the) methods used for secondary analyses (marked by a plus sign). We do not however list methods that have
been used solely as robustness checks unless the authors have emphasized these in the text.
3
Personal profits is defined as revenue generated minus compensation, which is not the same as firm profits because it excludes e.g. costs of employee benefits and overhead.
4
Footing ¼ sum of deposits and loans; FTE ¼ Full-Time Equivalent employees
5
The survey data suggest that these effects occur from workers feeling respected at being asked to be involved in hiring and/or valuing having a say in who they work with.
6
The IAT (Implicit Association Test) was used to measure unconscious bias and was on average taken 17 months after the administrative data was recorded to make sure that the test
would not bias managers’ treatment of minorities.
7
A post-experiment survey that contains questions about if and how the employees remember their manager(s).
8
Worker welfare is calculated by adding up earnings in trucking, taste for trucking, idiosyncratic shocks, and realizations of the fixed outside option (p.19).
9
APE stands for absolute percentage error, and APE actual labour is the absolute percentage deviation between the labour used and the labour that should have been used based on
factors such as actual sales in that period, size of the store, and labor productivity. APE actual labour is thus a measure of over-/understaffing.
10
Normalized bonuses were used in the first trial, and in the second one treatment group received a normalized bonus and the other a simple bonus. Nation-wide shocks and previous
performance increases were eliminated in the normalized bonuses. See footnotes 9 and 18 in Manthei et al (2018) for further information.
11
Satisfaction is measured, but no difference is found between the groups (based on post-experiment surveys/interviews with approx. 43% of managers).
12
Experience is proxied by mean percentile of store age, manager age, and manager tenure.
13
The prize constituted a holiday at an exotic resort worth approx. 150% of the average monthly salary. All employees at an outlet received the prize to eliminate competition
within branches.
14
The time frame used for the main analysis. Data from 2015 was added in the turnover analysis to identify seasonal patterns.
2397
15
A survey also went out to the first treatment group during the treatment, but all estimates that are related to sentiments (perceived fairness, propensity to refer friends to the job, or
expectations of near-term promotion) are based on answers from the pre-treatment survey.
16
The majority of the firm’s employees work outside of Japan, but approx. 6,000 are employed in Japan and the analysis is limited to a subsample of these workers.
17
However, when they run an LPM with fixed effects for promotions job transfers become non-significant for both genders. Inclusion of fixed effects in the wage model however still
shows that transfers have a positive effect on male but not female wages.
personnel records or some form of administrative records, and approxi-

mately half of the studies supplement this data with surveys to either
managers or workers, or both. One paper (Hassink & Fernandez, 2018)
however relies exclusively on worker survey data and workers’ postal
codes (to measure commuting distance). Importantly, such data and ana-
lytic techniques are all available to HR teams (and analysts within these)
when undertaking people analytics projects. In total 21 of 25 either set
up an experiment or utilize some form of prior HR intervention, which
has facilitated many before-and-after analyses. The most common meth-
ods used are different kinds of fixed effects (FE) models, especially two-
way fixed effects or difference-in-difference (DD), but many studies also
only use one-way fixed effects/first difference (FD) or three-way fixed
effects. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and instrumental variable
(IV) approaches are also quite common for performance measures, and
negative binomial and linear probability models are some of the most
commonly used methods for analyzing people/HR outcomes such as
absenteeism and employee turnover. Importantly, most of the statistical
techniques used in these studies should be within the competency toolkit
of any well-developed People Analytics team in most large organizations.
‘Soft’ HRM in personnel economics. Economists tend to largely adopt what

Storey (1987; 1992) and Guest (1999) referred to as a ‘hard’ view of
HRM; which tends to have a focus that is mainly oriented toward the
consideration of ‘hard’ financial or economic outcomes of workplace
investments. With such an approach, parameters such as employee
engagement, wellbeing, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and
communication rarely enter into the equation. Although HRM has
largely moved away from the soft vs. hard dichotomy (see Truss et al.,
1997) we refer to this (dichotomous) typology as it grants us a straight-
forward way of singling out papers that discuss topics that are often
researched within HRM and industrial psychology.
Depending on how narrowly we define the measurement of softer fac-
tors, i.e. if they have used direct (e.g. engagement surveys) or indirect
measures (e.g. absenteeism) there are 7 to 11 studies that attempt to
measure softer factors. Out of the seven that attempt to measure such
factors directly three treat them as dependent variables in secondary
analyses, two of these (Cullen & Perez-Truglia, 2018; Delfgaauw et al.,
2020) include analyses of job satisfaction, and one (Hassink &
Fernandez, 2018) include an analysis of morale/organizational commit-
ment. A fourth study (Friebel et al., 2018a) use managerial attention, or
at least a proxy of managerial attention (managers are told to ‘do what-
ever they can’ to decrease employee turnover), as one of the treatment
grouping variables. Among the last three studies that include a direct
measure of ‘softer’ factors, only Friebel et al. (2017) have repeated meas-
ures for both treated and non-treated employees, and find that the treat-
ment had no effect on organizational commitment and job/life
satisfaction. The remaining two only had pre-treatment measures for
perceptions of fairness (Sandvik et al., 2018), and post-treatment meas-
ures of work/life satisfaction (Manthei et al., 2018) for both the treated
and non-treated, and neither of the studies found any significant effects/
differences between treated and non-treated groups. Lastly, there are 4
studies that partially/indirectly measure job satisfaction/wellbeing by
using worker absenteeism (Frick et al., 2018; Friebel et al., 2018b) and
workers’ perceptions of their managers (Glover et al., 2017; Hoffman &
Tadelis, 2018) as proxies. The latter two studies are the only ones (out of
these 11 studies) to not make use of some sort of treatment or HR inter-
vention, and also the only ones in the entire sample to attempt to model
the effects of ‘soft’ factors on performance and turnover (i.e. using the
’soft’ factors as independent variables), as opposed to measuring a treat-
ment effect on the ‘soft’ factor (i.e. using the ’soft’ factor as the depend-
ent variable).
When reviewing the 25 papers in our sample it appears that most of
these tend to overlook, or choose to disregard, the potential effects of
‘softer’ (more psychologically oriented) factors that have been a core
focus of HRM studies for many decades. That these types of measures
do not enter into the equations may be linked to reasons other than the
researchers choosing not to focus on them. For example, it may be that
there is no data available, that researchers only have relevant data from
one point in time, or that researchers consider these factors to be time-
invariant and thus superfluous in the type of fixed effects models that
are frequently used. However, given that more than half of the studies in
our sample do not mention these types of ‘softer’ factors, it is possible
that some IE authors are unaware of the developments and insights in
mainstream fields of management and psychology given the separation
of the disciplines. It is also possible that some simply choose to disregard
such insights as they do not consider them important to their economics
focused research questions.
‘Impact’ on decision-making in IE research. Most studies do not discuss the

impact that their analyses have had on the decision-making at the firm.
Some studies however point out that the experiments/interventions/treat-
ments were subsequently rolled out to the wider population, and this can
be seen as an ‘impact’ of data-driven analyses. In some cases (e.g.
Khashabi et al., 2017) the intervention seemed to be planned to be rolled
out to all employees all along, but the researchers were allowed to tem-
porarily stall the intervention for some groups/individuals in order to
evaluate the intervention effects more rigorously; such an approach
would be an ideal People Analytics project. In other instances (e.g.
Friebel et al., 2017, 2018b; Gibbs et al., 2017; Manthei & Sliwka, 2019)
one may infer from the narratives in the papers that the results of the
‘experiments’ and analyses made the firms decide to roll the interven-
tions out to a wider group. In the latter cases one could thus argue that
these analyses had an impact on the decision-making at these firms.
Discussion
Our short survey of IE research has revealed that there seems to exist a
substantial number of relevant studies in economics that use people-
related data that could serve as helpful inspiration for future applied
endeavors in the field of HRM, either SHRM or the new subfield of
People Analytics. In this section we will discuss some of our key find-
ings, including the benefits and limitations of turning to the IE literature
for guidance, the potential value-added of People Analytics research, and
a few prospective avenues for future HRM research.
An interesting first reflection on the two literatures is that, unlike IE
which has been clearly defined as an approach (Ichniowski & Shaw,
2003), the PA literature is still undergoing development as a field. When
going beyond fairly narrow definitions, much of the PA literature choo-
ses to stress what we would call prerequisites for, and moderators of,
successful people analytics projects rather than discussing the analytical
approaches that are at the core of People Analytics; this may simply
reflect the level of maturity of this subfield at this juncture. The extant
literature gives many good explanations for why PA might fail, and what
needs to be done for it to succeed. However, in spite of the many argu-
ments that PA calls for the use of statistical methods that go beyond
describing the data (e.g. Gelbard et al., 2018; Huselid, 2018; Kremer,
2018) the literature very seldom gives applied examples, or even dis-
cusses, the specificities of the data-driven approaches that have been, or
could be, used (there are however a few examples that describe relevant
methods without applying them to specific business cases or firm data,
e.g. Edwards & Edwards, 2016; van der Laken et al., 2018a; Vasudevan
et al., 2017; Wang & Cotton, 2018; Wei, 2017). With recent journal calls
for special issues in the academic sphere however (e.g. HRM, HRMJ and
Personnel Psychology), this may change.
It has been highlighted that a potential problem with PA is that it ‘is
not a crisp discipline with a sharp focus on a limited number of issues [,
and that it] has come to include anything numerical about talent and
HR work’ (Levenson & Fink, 2017, p.146). We do not see a problem
with allowing PA to be thematically and methodologically broad, we do
however find it troubling is that there is very little guidance to relevant
methods and empirical results at this stage. The latter problem can how-
ever, at least partially, be alleviated by increased interdisciplinarity and
the IE field of economics could be explored for some rich pickings or
‘low hanging fruit’ in this regard.
The ‘value’ of HR practices (in IE and PA)

In reviewing the PA literature, arguments are presented that People
Analytics can be seen as a tool for measuring the ‘value’ of human cap-
ital and HR practices to facilitate execution of, and alignment with, stra-
tegic goals (Angrave et al., 2016; Garrido et al., 2018; Huselid, 2018;
Levenson, 2018). At the same time PA is itself an HR practice that still
needs to prove its own value (Minbaeva, 2018; Rasmussen & Ulrich,
2015; van den Heuvel & Bondarouk, 2017) and start delivering on the
promise of ‘connecting HR processes and decisions with organizational
performance’ (Marler & Boudreau, 2017, p. 15).
Even though it can be argued that PA largely has its roots in the stra-
tegic management literature, this new subfield does seem to be a blend
between traditional or functional HRM and strategic HRM due to its
dual focus on both micro- and (potentially) macro-level analyses.
However, when examining the notion of value, there are more pro-
nounced links with the SHRM literature with its emphasis on discussing
the ROI of HR investments. There does appear to be a shift in the aspi-
rations of PA that seem to be pushing PA closer to the notion of ‘value’
of HR practices utilized in the IE field than what could be considered
‘value’ in much of the traditional analyses in the HRM field. In the field
of HRM, a legitimate main focus of research is often oriented around
less financially oriented people outcomes such as commitment, job satis-
faction and well-being; in the HRM field these well-being and psycho-
logical outcomes are considered to have intrinsic ‘value’ as legitimate
employee outcomes (Peccei & Van de Voorde, 2019a). Thus in the field
of HRM researchers may (and potentially should) focus on these out-
comes without necessarily trying to justify these from an economic or
financial perspective. However, with PA, there seems to be a shift toward
having a similar emphasis as research in the IE field; specifically on
‘producing empirical estimates of value of alternative human resource
management practices’ (Ichniowski & Shaw, 2003, p.155).
In reflecting upon the differences and similarities between PA in the

HRM field and IE work in the economics field, the potential differences
between the two perspectives/approaches become apparent; as do the
similarities. This recent shift in the PA literature in ensuring that (eco-
nomic) ‘value’ is demonstrated from PA as an HR activity itself further
reinforces the subtle emphasis of narrative in the PA field of showing
the economic ‘value’ of organizational/HR activities. This may be a
stronger emphasis than can be found in the wider field of HRM, even
though it has been present in much of the SHRM literature. In this
regard, one can reflect on some of the differences/similarities in assump-
tions that form the foundation of the two fields.
The value (and challenge) of turning to IE

Whilst there is an obvious benefit of turning to IE for inspiration and
guidance with its tradition of conducting longitudinal intrafirm analyses
using people-related data. It is worth considering certain differences
between the fields of IE and HRM that may act as a barrier to integra-
tion. Even though there seems to be a similar take on the value of HR
practices in IE and PA, much of the theoretical foundation is different.
While the SHRM literature has, at least since the turn of the century,
theorized about how the HRM-performance link could be mediated by
human behaviors rooted in psychology, such as wellbeing and job satis-
faction (clearly present in the ‘HR Value Chain’, Paauwe & Richardson,
1997), the economics literature instead tends to disregard such mecha-
nisms. In line with agency, and rational choice theory, individuals have
clearly defined preferences, and the preferences of principals (e.g. man-
agement) and agents (employees) might not always align, giving rise to
the so-called principal-agent dilemma. The typical solution to such
dilemma in employment contexts often lies in the principal either
increasing the level monitoring or the incentivizing the agent to behave
in a desired way (e.g. with bonuses, performance-pay or promotions). In
the much more psychology-rooted field of HRM, both intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation are considered. However, intrinsic motivation (e.g.
that employees may gain satisfaction and motivation from the intrinsic
aspects of a job, thus making job design considerations important) is
often regarded as more important for employee outcomes than extrinsic
motivation (e.g. paying financial incentives to motivate employees to do
a good job).
Given these types of theoretical differences one might conject that it could
be better to lean on other (non-discipline related) fields to help ensure that
the best insights are obtained with PA and the SHRM area; fields that are
free from the types of assumptions and theoretical justifications present in

much of the economics literature, such as statistics or research methods.
However, we view it as highly beneficial that PE and IE have conducted
research with similar data on similar topics. This allows PA and SHRM
researchers to draw on previously used measures, methods and results whilst
also granting a much clearer path to uncovering areas and questions that are
perhaps in need of both empirical evidence and theoretical refinement.
People analysts, and other HRM researchers, might find the PE and IE
literatures to lack many of the nuances and perspectives of human
behaviour present in the HRM literature (and in the workplace), however
PA/HRM researchers would benefit by utilizing the methods used with
PE/IE; and then adapt the models to be able to demonstrate why, when
and how psychological aspects might need to enter into the equations.
This would require researchers to potentially measure and/or collect
existing longitudinal sentiment data (along with other longitudinal peo-
ple-related data such as personnel records and longitudinal financial
data) and people analysts are uniquely positioned to acquire such data.
The use of such data could, in some instances, reveal that economists
need to start taking psychological (e.g. attitudinal, dispositional or per-
ceptual) dimensions into consideration to a greater degree; however, this
might also reveal that there are other instances where such psychological
aspects can be abstracted (via proxies) or ignored in favour of more
‘simplistic’ modelling. As such, we see clear benefits for the field of
HRM and the subfield of PA for drawing on PE/IE, but we also think
that this type of integration could help further our understanding of psy-
chological perspectives of human behaviour in the workplace that could
be highly relevant to economics and management alike.
The value of people analytics focus on having a ‘business impact’

Much of the PA literature discussions thus far have focused on how ana-
lytics can have an impact on decision making. This discussion seems, for
the most part, not be had in IE. At the same time we would argue that
researchers in PA perhaps ought to spend more time on demonstrating
and discussing the analyses that have led (or could lead) to decision
making. In its quest for trying to demonstrate its potential worth for
decision making the academic PA literature seems to have skipped the
step of rigorously demonstrating the analyses that have been conducted
in applied settings. This is an area where we feel that PA, and the field
of (S)HRM could benefit from drawing on the rich quantitative research
tradition in PE and IE. The extent to which PA will deliver on its prom-
ise of demonstrating a business impact still largely remains to be seen,
but it seems clear that it hinges on (at least) the combination of effective
analyses and on decision-makers making use of the results. However, if

PA is simply about taking the methods developed and used in academia –
whether it be from computer science, economics, management, psychology
or statistics – and applying these methods to people-related data then we
might have to ask ourselves ‘To what extent does PA create value added
in academic fields?’ (whether IE, PE, SHRM, HRM or otherwise).
We believe that PA could add many valuable insights to our under-
standing of the value of HRM. These added benefits stem largely from
three possible contributions. First, extending the types of analyses con-
ducted in IE/PE to include analyses of moderators and mediators of the
link between HR practices and employee performance, and in doing so
we can gain a better understanding of the processes through which
HRM might have an effect on performance. Second, creating a better
understanding of contextual factors in HRM and IE research. Intrafirm
analyses are by definition heavily affected by their context. People
Analytics could however, in the shorter run, offer insights on how HR
practices might have varying effects in different work contexts within a
firm, and in the longer run, when enough intrafirm analyses have
accrued, offer comparisons of how organizational contexts can affect the
effectiveness of different HR practices across firms. Third, compared to
traditional analyses in both IE/PE and (S)HRM, PA could also bring
largely unique perspectives to the literatures that are concerned with
measuring and explaining the impact of HRM on employee and firm
performance. Importantly, PA places greater emphasis on the effects of
data-driven analyses on decision-making than both the IE/PE and
(S)HRM literatures do, effectively adding another interesting layer to
these literatures as it does not stop at attempting to analyze the value of
HRM, or the link between HRM and performance, but also extends the
thinking to how such analyses themselves might have an impact on busi-
nesses. In addition, most (S)HRM and PE research use the traditional
research approach that does research on, rather than in, action. Even
though IE provides a contrast to much of the empirical economics litera-
ture by not only relying on quantitative (often secondary) data, but also
adding insights from insiders, it still applies an essentially traditional
research approach. People Analytics on the other hand tends to not only
make use of insiders, but the researchers are often insiders, either
because they are hired by the companies as analysts, or due to close
industry-academic collaborations. Applied PA thus represents Mode 2
research (Guerci et al., 2019) and an inside-in perspective where analyses
are conducted with the organization, whilst IE, like most economics and
management research, represents Mode 1 research and an outside-in per-
spective where analyses are conducted on the organization. Finally, quan-
titative research is typically backward-looking, but many of the analyses
that people analysts at firms are tasked with will emphasize trying to pre-
dict future outcomes. This, at least partially, pushes the level of inquiry
from causality to prediction. Whilst the management literature has
struggled with determining the causal relationship between HRM and
performance, the economics literature has been more successful in deter-
mining causal links between HR practices and employee productivity
and performance in specific production processes. However, both litera-
tures have largely avoided to try to predict future outcomes, something
that we think will necessarily have to become one of the focal points of
PA research if it aims to stay relevant not only to academia but also to
practitioners.
The road ahead: future human resource/people analytics research

Traditional analyses of performance and turnover in HRM have often
relied heavily on cross-sectional survey data, and examples of longitu-
dinal empirical studies in this area are less prevalent than one might
expect (Guest, 2011; Jiang et al., 2012; Saridakis et al., 2017). Although
there are examples of longitudinal research in the HRM field, there is
not a longstanding tradition of longitudinal research designs for quanti-
tative analyses; the vast majority of HRM research has been cross-sec-
tional in nature. The lack of quantitative longitudinal intrafirm studies in
HRM may to some degree be due to (potentially) the difficulty in obtain-
ing or gaining access to ‘good’ longitudinal firm data, but it may also
partly be due to both path dependency and a lack of interdisciplinarity
(since economists, as demonstrated by our survey, seem to have been
able to gain access to longitudinal firm data for quite some time now).
To illustrate the latter point we use an example from the literature
review by Boselie et al. (2005). The authors conduct a rigorous review of
the major HR journals. They however also choose to include some
‘often-cited’ papers from journals such as American Behavioral Scientist
and American Economic Review (AER),5 and then go on to state: ‘We did
not, however, look through every edition of these latter journals or other
not obviously relevant journals’ (p.69) making a clear distinction of rele-
vance based on traditional academic boundaries.
The review by Boselie et al. (2005) is however far from the only paper
that reflects the divide between management scholars and economists.
Kaufman and Miller (2011), who also try to create bridges between econ-
omists and management scholars studying HRM, point out that only 2%
(2 out of 81) of the citations in Lazear and Shaw (2007) review of
Personnel Economics were to management journals, and that only 3% (2
out of 72) of the citations in Lepak and Shaw (2008) review of Strategic
Human Resource Management were to economics journals.
We believe that future reviews of the literature that aim to be of rele-

vance for PA would benefit greatly by moving away from the narrow
search protocols used in recent reviews. For instance, the perhaps most
extensive review to date of the PA literature, Marler and Boudreau’s
(2017) review, struggled to reveal papers that could be deemed as exam-
ples of applied PA. Since then a few papers have been published that
could be considered to be applied PA papers, however only one, Sim on
6
and Ferreiro (2018) shows up when replicating Marler & Boudreau’s
search protocols for the subsequent years. Due to the newness of PA as a
concept in the literature we therefore suggest that researchers interested
in finding applied work relevant to PA should not limit themselves to
search terms such as ‘People Analytics’ or ‘Human Capital Analytics,’
but also include thematic keywords such as ‘turnover’ or ‘productivity.’
For instance, by using the keywords s ‘turnover’ and ‘attrition,’ many
relevant studies of voluntary turnover could be found, some of which are
in fact framed in HR Analytics (e.g. de Oliveira et al., 2019; Frederiksen,
2017; Rombaut & Guerry, 2018) and others that use methods which
could easily be classified as applied PA but where the authors never
mention such a term (e.g. Madariaga et al., 2018; Sunder et al., 2017; van
der Laken et al., 2018b7). We therefore encourage researchers, for the
sake of the development of People Analytics, to attempt to both increase
the level of interdisciplinarity and widen their search protocols. 8
A takeaway from our integrative review is that taking a more interdis-
ciplinary approach to exploring research relevant to PA reveals that the
application of statistical modelling to HR-related data is not as under-
researched as the recent stream of PA literature suggests. There is a sub-
stantial amount of quantitative analyses and academic knowledge from
other fields that PA could draw upon as it develops into a more mature
academic field. That said, there are a few areas where PA could clearly
add considerable value. Firstly, the strand of literature within PE/IE that
takes a single-firm approach almost exclusively deals with skilled or
unskilled blue-collar workers (or white-collar workers with fairly standar-
dized jobs) especially when focusing on productivity and performance.
As such there is still quite a large research gap when it comes to study-
ing more knowledge intensive white-collar workers and those based in
professional work contexts. Second, economists, on average, are quantita-
tively savvy and many of them excel in using inferential statistics to test
hypotheses and estimate parameters to find ‘good’ predictors of e.g.
worker productivity and voluntary turnover. As our review shows econo-
mists often make use of longitudinal data that allows them to go beyond
‘what correlates with what’ to offer answers of ‘what causes what’.
Machine learning on the other hand primarily serves a purpose of
predicting outcomes rather than explaining relationships. Prediction by

machine learning is compared to inferential statistics largely a ‘black box’
and this is something that economists, who often pride themselves for
their theoretical and mathematical rigour, seem to be somewhat reluctant
(or at least slow) to embrace. Lastly, and by no means least, economists
tend to adopt a largely ‘hard’ view of HRM where parameters such as
employee engagement, wellbeing, job satisfaction, organizational commit-
ment and communication rarely enter into the equation. Given the vast
amount of knowledge that has been developed in management and
psychology with regards to these types of ‘softer’ factors, PA could make
a crucial contribution to the IE field by including such factors as poten-
tial predictors of productivity and performance; or at least accounting
for the possibility that they might moderate or mediate the effects of
other predictors. Based on our findings and discussions in this paper we
would like to suggest five concrete future research directions, summar-
ized in table 2.
Summary and conclusion

Based on our short survey of Insider Econometrics we can conclude that
there are both similarities and differences between PA and IE. As the
two approaches originate from different disciplinary traditions, there are
clear substantive differences in both underlying research assumptions
made and methodological approaches generally utilized. However, both
include the analyses of intra-firm people data with (often) the aim of
identifying the value of HR investments. Given this, both fields can help
provide insights to researchers exploring similar aims in the SHRM field.
Recent reviews of both the (S)HRM and PA literatures have struggled to
find examples of both longitudinal and of quantitative intrafirm analyses
in scholarly journals. Here, we demonstrate that there is a rich longitu-
dinal intrafirm tradition of using the IE approach in the Personnel
Economics literature and suggest that this can be utilized as a backdrop
for developing new analyses in HRM in general, and in PA in particular.
That said, and as Kaufman and Miller (2011) have pointed out, psych-
ology and organizational behaviour seems to be terra incognita to most
economists and our review shows that the importance of psychological
variables are still being abstracted or ignored in PE. This is one of three
identified areas were we think PA could make a considerable contribu-
tion to knowledge development. The most obvious other areas are har-
nessing the predictive powers of machine learning and drawing more
attention to employees with non-routine types of work.
Table 2. Directions for future research.

Examples of empirical Expected benefits of
Research direction considerations research direction
Future research on the value of Engage in literature searches Considerable increases in the
HRM should aim to increase the in databases that do not limit number of relevant research
level of interdisciplinarity to the results to field-specific articles, which could lead to
broaden the scope of existing journals and/or search several improved toolboxes and a
research that it can draw on databases/journals that cover greater degree of adoption,
(this is especially crucial for relevant neighboring fields. adaptation and refinement of
future reviews) Widen the search protocols to empirical strategies used in
include thematic keywords neighbouring fields
(e.g. turnover or productivity)
instead of solely relying on
subfield labels (e.g.
people analytics)
Future empirical research on the Design and collect With greater use of longitudinal
value of HRM should increasingly longitudinal ‘soft’ measures analyses the (S)HRM literature
be longitudinal and especially (e.g. wellbeing) will help provide stronger
aim to create new insights on Adapt longitudinal approaches evidence for the proposed causal
relationships that are not well used in economics to include links between HR initiatives,
researched in the economics and ‘soft’ measures in tandem employee wellbeing, and
management literatures with ‘hard’ measures (e.g. productivty and performance; by
sales) as opposed to studying focusing on areas where there
these types of variables seem to be gaps in the
in isolation economics research it could also
Shift some of the empirical make rich transdisciplinary
focus to workers with non- knowledge contributions
standardized jobs
Researchers looking to further Focus not only on correlation Increased industry relevance and
explore the value of HRM should and causation but also on improved understanding of the
increasingly try to engage in prediction (e.g. by utilizing processes and contexts that
more knowledge creation in a machine learning and might affect the HR-
context of application, i.e. mode econometric methods used for performance link
2 research (research in rather forecasting)
than on firms) Engage with organisations in-
partnership; helping with
knowledge transfer of
expertise to assess and
evaluate HR investments
Future PA publications in academic Move beyond brief Increased guidance for future PA
journals based on applied PA descriptions of methods and projects and a decreased risk of
should aim to demonstrate the results by providing more results being viewed as
methods and results detailed data, methods and anecdotal by academic readers
more rigorously results sections in the same (more traditional reporting of
fashion that empirical research methods and results could e.g.
is traditionally reported feed into future meta-analyses)
Future PA research that aims to Move beyond descriptions of More rigorous analyses of the steps
demonstrate the link between decisions made and focus involved in the
data-driven analyses and more explicitly on how analytics–decision process could
decision-making should become analytics can be used in the not only add insights to
more empirically grounded decision-making process, e.g. discussions of data-driven
by defining and empirically decision-making and evidence-
demonstrating the analytics based management, but would
and decision-making processes also help us answer the
in a stepwise fashion, e.g.: question: ‘What is the value of
1. ‘What is the People Analytics?’ by e.g.
business problem?’ contrasting the results (i.e. the
2. ‘How could we effects of the decisions made) in
empirically analyze step 5 with the resources spent
the problem?’ on steps 1-3.
3. ‘What were the results
of the analyses?’
4. ‘What (if any) decisions
were made based on
the analyses?’
5. ‘What were the results
of the decisions made?’
People Analytics, as an emerging empirical approach within the

broader field of HRM, arguably stands to gain much by drawing on the
rich quantitative research tradition in economics; conversely, Insider
Econometrics would be enriched by exploring more of the people-related
dimensions that have been extensively researched within management
and psychology. We therefore encourage theoretical, methodological and
applied research that can help fill the voids that narrow search protocols,
path dependency and a lack of interdisciplinarity in both economics and
management have created.
We believe that applied PA could add many valuable insights to our
understanding of the value of HRM. Thanks to its intrafirm focus it is in a
good position to add important knowledge about the impact of contextual
factors, as well as the processes through which HRM might have an effect
on performance. Beyond extending the analyses in IE/PE and (S)HRM, PA
also adds another valuable dimension to the HRM-performance literature
through its emphasis on the effects of data-driven analyses on decision-
making. In addition, applied PA is different from most of the research in
both economics and management in that researchers in this new subfield
of HRM tend to be more deeply immersed in the organizations, granting
them the opportunity to conduct analyses with or in – rather than on –
businesses. This inside perspective could not only add knowledge of the
contexts in which, and the processes through which, HRM and data-driven
decision-making could have an effect on both employee and firm perform-
ance, but applied PA could also have a much more direct impact on busi-
nesses than much of the traditional research endeavours tend to have.
Altogether People Analytics, through its largely unique lens of studying
the business impact of decisions made based on data-driven analyses using
people-related data, can add considerable value to our understanding of the
value of HRM and its link to performance. That said, before decisions can
be made quantitative analyses inevitably need to be conducted, and we
believe that drawing on analyses in the field of Personnel Economics using
an Insider Econometrics approach, could be very advantageous for the con-
tinued development of quantitative analyses in the field of HRM and its
subfield People Analytics. Especially, when attempting to develop methods
and analyses that aim to both help businesses make more informed people-
related decisions, and further our knowledge of the relationships between
investments in human capital, HR practices and business outcomes.
Notes
1. JEL-codes are widely used for classifying and categorizing economic research. M5 is
the JEL-code for Personnel Economics and it has seven subdivisions: M50: General;
M51: Firm Employment Decisions, Promotions; M52: Compensation and
Compensation Methods and Their Effects; M53: Training; M54: Labor Management;
M55: Labor Contracting Devices; and M59: Other.
2. IDEAS is one of the largest bibliographic databases in the world dedicated to
Economics. It is based on RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) and indexes over
2,800,000 items of research (https://ideas.repec.org/). There are many databases that
use the information stored in RePEc, one of these, EconPapers (https://econpapers.
repec.org/), has approximately the same coverage as IDEAS, however we chose to use
IDEAS as it is the only service that provides access to all research items in RePEc.
3. Although not presented in this paper we also extended Marler and Boudreau’s
(2017) review to cover 2017 and 2018, and even though we, in line with
Tursunbayeva et al. (2018), extended Marler and Boudreau’s keyword searches to
include Employee Analytics and Human Capital Analytics, we only managed to find
one paper that could be considered to be an applied paper.
4. The papers were downloaded from February to April, 2019. At that time 13 had
been published or accepted for publication and 12 were available online as working
papers. As of October 2020, 15 of the articles have been published or accepted for
publication. Several of the papers have been published in management or
interdisciplinary journals, but Frick et al. (2018) is the only one that has been
published in an HRM-designated journal.
5. The American Economic Review is one of the most prestigious journals in
economics, and some of the most influential papers in Personnel Economics and
Insider Econometrics have been published there.
6. The article by Sim on & Ferreiro (2018) is not presented as an empirical research
paper but rather as a ‘case study of scholar–practitioner collaboration’ and the authors
frame their analyses of store productivity in a series of discussions of the benefits and
challenges of such collaborations. It is nevertheless the only search result that could
be considered to constitute a longitudinal quantitative intrafirm study, when applying
Marler & Boudreau’s search protocol for the years 2017–2018.
7. van der Laken et al. (2018a) appears as a chapter in a PhD thesis with the title
Data-driven Human Resource Management: The rise of people analytics and its
application to expatriate management. However, the chapter itself makes no
reference to HR/People Analytics and would as such not appear in a narrow
keyword search had it been published as an independent paper.
8. There are for instance also recent examples from both economics and management
of quantitative ‘people analytics type’ studies that explore the effects of employee
wellness programs on health and productivity in both public and private services
(e.g. Gubler et al., 2018; Jones et al., 2019). In economics these types of studies
typically fall under the I category in the JEL classification system (I1 ¼ Health, I2 ¼
Education and Research Institutions, I3 ¼ Welfare, Well-being, and Poverty).
Disclosure statement
We have no conflicts of interest to report.
Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in
this study.
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Appendix 1: Examples of excluded papers

As stated in the text we only include papers where the authors themselves have classified
their paper as belonging to the M5 category. There are however many papers that lack
such a classification, but that are still relevant for People Analytics, for example studies
that explore worker safety, such as: Camuffo et al. (2017) who study the effects of lean
operations, high involvement work practices, and manager behaviour on occupational
safety in tyre manufacturing; and Zohar and Polachek (2017) who study safety through
a lens of leader behavior and follower perceptions in heavy manufacturing.
We have furthermore chosen to only include intrafirm papers in our survey, there
are however other strands of empirical papers in the M5 category, chiefly those using
large multi-firm datasets to e.g. study certain regions or industries; and those who set
up experiments to analyze employee behaviour in controlled or semi-controlled environ-
ments. Some of the experiments e.g. Breza et al. (2018) who explore the effects of rela-
tive-pay differences on performance by starting a firm and setting up a one-month long
experiment with manufacturing workers in India could however be seen as borderline
cases, studies like these are quite far removed from short experiments conducted in
more traditional (non-start-up) organizational settings. It is furthermore worth noting
that many economists use the term ‘field experiments’ for the type of studies included
in our review that measure the effects of some type of HR intervention (i.e.
‘experiment’) and as such papers cannot be deemed irrelevant simply because they fall
under a label of e.g. experimental economics.
By comparison, distinguishing multi- from single-firm studies is a much easier task.
However, many of the excluded multi-firm studies could be of both empirical and meth-
odological interest to management scholars, such as studies that apply an insider econo-
metrics approach to more than one firm, e.g. Hoffman and Burks (2017b) who explore
behaviours and perceptions of truckers’ own productivity by comparing the trucking
company featured in table 1 with another trucking company; and studies that apply
machine learning to e.g. explore the link between CEO behavior and firm performance
(Bandiera et al., 2017) and to study the selection of directors (Erel et al., 2018).
References to appendix 1
Bandiera, H. O., Hansen, S., Prat, A., & Sadun, R. (2017). CEO behavior and firm per-
formance. NBER Working Paper No. 23248 (September 2017).
Breza, E., Kaur, S., & Shamdasani, Y. (2018). The morale effects of pay inequality. The
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(2), 611–663. doi:10.1093/qje/qjx041
Camuffo, A., De Stefano, F., & Paolino, C. (2017). Safety reloaded: Lean operations and
high involvement work practices for sustainable workplaces. Journal of Business
Ethics, 143(2), 245–259. doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2590-8
Erel, I., Stern, L. H., Tan, C., & Weisbach, M. S. (2018). Selecting directors using machine
learning. NBER Working Paper No. 24435 (March 2018).
Hoffman, M., & Burks, S. V. (2017b). Worker overconfidence: Field evidence and implica-
tions for employee turnover and returns from training. NBER Working Paper 23240
(March 2017). Forthcoming in Quantitative Economics.
Zohar, D., & Polachek, T. (2017). Using event-level data to test the effect of verbal
leader behavior on follower leadership perceptions and job performance: A random-
ized field experiment. Group & Organization Management, 42(3), 419–449. doi:10.
1177/1059601115619079

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Insider econometrics meets people analytics and

Anne-Sophie Larsson & Martin R. Edwards

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Insider econometrics meets people analytics

CONTACT Anne-Sophie Larsson anne-sophie.larsson@kcl.ac.uk King’s Business School, King’s College

sub-strand exists that focuses on Strategic Human Resource Management

Insider Econometrics; this approach has a long tradition of longitudinal

some of the differences and similarities between the perspectives of eco-

HRM and performance

Strategic human resource management

simultaneous growth of different strands of theory instead of a more lin-

Key theoretical frameworks in the SHRM—performance literature

Within the SHRM literature elements of a number of foundational

Research linking (S)HRM and performance

Unresolved issues in the HRM-performance research

exploring the HRM-performance link (Darwish, 2013; Delaney &

1995-2014) and none of them had taken an intrafirm perspective

People analytics (PA)

development of practical business solutions through the application of

related performance indicators’ (Edwards & Edwards, 2016, p. 2). In

Insider econometrics (IE)

investments in certain HR practices to show how this subfield of eco-

Background and definition

behavioural experiments in controlled or semi-controlled environments.

The definition above makes it very clear that Insider Econometrics is a

further exploration of relevant empirical research we point to existing lit-

Exploring the PE/IE single-firm research front

projects drawn from at least 9 different countries and represents a broad

Data and methods utilized by IE researchers. The vast majority (80%) of

Increasing the perceived peer salary

Task Assignment Managers in treated teams also started to

1st treatment: 60 stores per group No effects were found on performance

Based on survey answers there seemed to

2012). ratings. Reward-points could then

seems to affect performance. The results

Both the 12- and 18-month contracts

performance measures during small share of sales. Division of labour is

Perceptions of fairness do not seem to

personnel records or some form of administrative records, and approxi-

‘Soft’ HRM in personnel economics. Economists tend to largely adopt what

‘Impact’ on decision-making in IE research. Most studies do not discuss the

The ‘value’ of HR practices (in IE and PA)

In reflecting upon the differences and similarities between PA in the

The value (and challenge) of turning to IE

free from the types of assumptions and theoretical justifications present in

The value of people analytics focus on having a ‘business impact’

analyses and on decision-makers making use of the results. However, if

The road ahead: future human resource/people analytics research

We believe that future reviews of the literature that aim to be of rele-

predicting outcomes rather than explaining relationships. Prediction by

Summary and conclusion

Table 2. Directions for future research.

People Analytics, as an emerging empirical approach within the