Oliver Hahl
Associate Professor Carnegie Mellon University
- Pittsburgh PA
Oliver Hahl's research interests revolve around how audience perceptions of organizations and individuals influence behavior in markets.
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Media Appearances
How to close the overqualified gap
Chief Learning Officer online
2022-09-26
Article authors Elizabeth L. Campbell and Oliver Hahl discovered through their independent research that “people are more comfortable hiring women for jobs they’re overqualified for than men.” Their interviews revealed that overqualified women are 26 percent more likely to be hired compared to men with equivalent exceptional qualifications.
Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women
Harvard Business Review online
2022-07-22
Progress toward gender equality has stalled. Women are doing what conventional wisdom says is necessary for success: They’re earning advanced degrees, entering high-paying industries, and acquiring impressive qualifications at rates equal to or higher than men. But it still takes women longer to get promoted, and few make it to the top of the corporate ladder. Many women feel like they must be twice as good to get half as far.
Being overqualified for a job impacts women and men differently
Quartz online
2022-02-07
Elizabeth Lauren Campbell from the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management and Oliver Hahl from Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business created a set of CVs with stereotypical male and female names, but otherwise identical qualifications. One set of male and female CVs were given qualifications which made them highly suitable for a specific job description, while the other set were designed to look “overqualified” for the role.
Why people vote for politicians they know are liars
Phys.org online
2019-12-19
Research led by Oliver Hahl of Carnegie Mellon University has identified the specific circumstances in which people accept politicians who lie. It is only when people feel disenfranchised and excluded from a political system that they accept lies from a politician who claims to be a champion of the "people" against the "establishment" or "elite". Under those specific circumstances, flagrant violations of behaviour that is championed by this elite—such as honesty or fairness—can become a signal that a politician is an authentic champion of the "people" against the "establishment".
Why conservatives don’t care that Brett Kavanaugh is a liar
Vox online
2018-10-02
I couldn’t get a good handle on this until I read a paper by three scholars — Carnegie Mellon’s Oliver Hahl, Northwestern’s Minjae Kim, and MIT’s Ezra Zuckerman-Sivan — on how voters could recognize that a politician is lying but consider them authentic and appealing.
Media
Social
Industry Expertise
Accomplishments
Outstanding Recent Contribution in Social Psychology
2019
American Sociological Association Social Psychology Section
Frank A. and Helen E. Risch Faculty Development Professorship
2016-18
Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business
MIT Sloan Research Fellowship
2008-2012
Education
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ph.D.
Management
2013
University of Pennsylvania
B.S.
Economics
2002
Yale University
M.B.A.
Strategy, Leadership
2008
Links
Articles
Purpose Claims and Capacity-Based Credibility: Evidence from the Labor Market
Academy of Management Proceedings2023
Organizational scholars have long recognized the importance of corporate purpose, defined as a goal beyond profit maximization, meant to galvanize workers in the firm. Increasingly, however, companies are making claims about corporate purpose to external audiences, and we have little understanding how these claims may be perceived. A key question is credibility; under what conditions are these claims believed by audiences?
The Mechanisms and Components of Knowledge Transfer: The Virtual Special Issue on Knowledge Transfer Within Organizations
Organization Science2022
Knowledge transfer within organizations has important implications for organizational performance and competitive advantage. In this virtual special issue, we review articles on this topic published in Organization Science between 2014 and 2020 and identify 53 articles for their theoretical and empirical contributions.
He’s Overqualified, She’s Highly Committed: Qualification Signals and Gendered Assumptions About Job Candidate Commitment
Organization Science2022
Evidence suggests that possessing more qualifications than is necessary for a job (i.e., overqualification) negatively impacts job candidates’ outcomes. However, unfair discounting of women’s qualifications and negative assumptions about women’s career commitment imply that female candidates must be overqualified to achieve the same outcomes as male candidates. Across two studies, experimental and qualitative data provide converging evidence in support of this assertion, showing that gender differences in how overqualification impacts hiring outcomes are due to the type of commitment—firm or career—that is most salient during evaluations.
Authenticity-Based Connections as Organizational Constraints and the Paradox of Authenticity in the Market for Cuban Cigars
Organization Science2022
We explore the organizational consequences that different authenticity claims carry for products and the firms that produce them. To do so, we build on the notion of an authenticity paradox—the idea that seeking to capture demand that is created by perceived authenticity can undermine the very authenticity that generated the demand in the first place. Using an experimental approach, we argue and show that provenance-based claims of authenticity (e.g., location of origin) constrain a firm spaciotemporally, limiting their ability to expand production in ways that might be economically rational but would undermine this authenticity claim.
Too Good to Hire? Capability and Inferences about Commitment in Labor Markets
Administrative Science Quarterly2019
We examine how signals of a candidate’s capability affect perceptions of that person’s commitment to an employer. In four experimental studies that use hiring managers as subjects, we test and show that managers perceive highly capable candidates to have lower commitment to the organization than less capable but adequate candidates and, as a result, penalize high-capability candidates in the hiring process.
