Institutional hiring strategies and research performance: alumni versus non-alumni faculty in business schools

Faculty recruitment strategies, particularly the debate over hiring alumni versus non-alumni candidates, represent a longstanding concern in higher education management. This study investigates whether alumni or non-alumni faculty achieve superior research performance, drawing on human capital and social capital theories to explain potential performance differentials. Utilizing a unique dataset of 1,063 faculty members from business schools at China’s elite ‘985’ universities, we find that non-alumni faculty generally demonstrate superior research performance compared to alumni faculty. These performance advantages vary significantly across individual and institutional contexts. Specifically, non-alumni faculty working in broad-network disciplines show substantially higher research performance relative to those in other research disciplines. Moreover, the benefits of non-alumni recruitment are most pronounced in institutionally diverse business schools and universities located in first-tier cities. Finally, we provide exploratory evidence that non-alumni faculty exhibit broader research scope and more diverse collaboration patterns, consistent with human capital and social capital theoretical expectations. Our findings provide evidence-based guidance for business schools seeking to optimize faculty recruitment strategies and enhance institutional research capacity globally.