The Human Resource Executive Effect in Initial Public Offering Firms

There is much discussion about firms putting human resource management (HRM) to strategic use, in part by hiring senior HRM executives. This study explored whether that recommendation can help entrepreneurial, growth-oriented companies. By applying organizational inertia concepts, the authors investigated whether having a senior HRM executive reporting to a firm's CEO affected firm performance in a sample of firms making their initial public offerings (IPOs). Results indicate that smaller, fast-growing IPOs experience the most gain from having senior human resource executives.