About

Rakoon Piyanontalee is an Assistant Research Professor with the Center for International Human Resource Studies (CIHRS) within the School of Labor and Employment Relations at Penn State. His research examines the impact of Human Resource Management practices on teams, units, and organizational outcomes. Prior to joining Penn State, Rakoon earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has also worked in HR recruitment and organizational development in Bangkok, Thailand. Rakoon speaks Thai and English and enjoys rock climbing and watching sports.

Research topics

• Business
• Psychology
• Economics
• Industrial organization
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• Mediation Research: Drawing Valid and Complete Inferences

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  Mediation research, when combined with strong methods, is uniquely valuable in understanding theoretical pathways and thus in providing a sound basis for policy decisions pertaining to people management. However, our comprehensive review shows that current mediation research in human resources, organizational behavior, and other areas of management has serious deficiencies that frequently result in incomplete, or worse, invalid conclusions and policy recommendations. The most fundamental problem in mediation research is the prevalent exclusive focus on the indirect effect while ignoring the direct and/or total effect (97.8% in our sample of studies). This problem is most serious when mediation is inconsistent (i.e., the sign of the direct effect is opposite to that of the indirect effect), which we find is common (occurring in 26.4% of sampled mediation studies), but almost always ignored. Focusing only on the indirect effect is especially problematic in inconsistent mediation when the direct effect is larger than the indirect effect, resulting in the total effect and indirect effect having opposite signs. Even when mediation is consistent, a sole focus on the indirect effect fails to satisfy a fundamental effect size requirement unique to mediation research: the need to quantify the size of the indirect effect relative to the size of the total effect. We provide a set of recommendations to address these concerns and to improve mediation research going forward. One key recommendation is to report and interpret not only the indirect effect, but also the direct effect and total effect. A second key recommendation is to report PM, as well as a form of PM, Absolute PM, that has been largely overlooked, but which our analyses demonstrate has crucial advantages (smaller sampling variability, robustness to inconsistent mediation) over PM alone.

  PublisherDOI

• Comparative Human Resource Management: Extending Beyond National Comparisons

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  articleSenior author

  This panel symposium is designed to extend our understanding of how people are managed in organizations across the globe – the traditional focus of comparative human resource management (HRM) research – exploring how international and global events and influences have an effect at the country level. Much of the evidence for this discussion has been gathered from the CRANET research network (www.cranet.org), a collaboration of HRM scholars in over 40 countries worldwide. The data collected in each country represent HRM policies and practices at organization level, which, when collated, provide a unique comparative dataset of HRM across much of the globe.

  PublisherDOI

• Looking back to look forward: Disruption, innovation and future trends in international human resource management

  International Business Review · 2024-11-05 · 13 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Institutions, economies and downsizing: evidence across time and countries

  The International Journal of Human Resource Management · 2024-11-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Downsizing is a legitimate yet highly disruptive human resource management practice that organisations can activate when costs need to be cut. We adopt an institutionalist lens to explore how both legislative and economic forces combine to shape organisations’ adoption of employee downsizing practices. We conduct multilevel mixed-effects ordered probit regression analyses on our survey data on human resource management practices from 29 countries and four rounds of data collection spanning seventeen years. The findings indicate that variations in downsizing practices can be partly explained by differences in national legal institutions as well as by prevailing economic conditions. Importantly, we also find that constraints imposed by national regulatory institutions may be relaxed during periods of economic crisis. We theorise the interaction of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphic effects to understand how organisational operating contexts are dynamic, whereby both constraints and opportunities can vary over time.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cultural Values as Predictors of Congruence between Employee and Supervisor HR Strength Perceptions

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Since employee perceptions of human resource management (HRM) can differ from their manager’s perception, it is important to study both sources of perceptions along with their degree of congruency. While countless studies exist on the role of congruency as predictors of employee attitudes and behaviors, few have been conducted on congruence as outcomes in general. Furthermore, none has examined the antecedents of congruency in the context of HRM. We overcame fundamental limitations of congruence research by using a novel methodological approach – the Directional and Nondirectional Differences (DNDD) framework. The current study contributes to the HRM process literature by exploring the antecedents of congruence between employee and supervisor perceptions of “strength” in the HRM system. Incorporating data from 782 employees and 244 supervisors across six countries, our results provide nuanced insight into the nature of congruency between employee and supervisor perceptions of HR strength. Specifically, we showed how the level of agreement between these two perceptions as well as their shared and unique variations can be predicted based on the cultural values of employees.

  PublisherDOI

• Examining the Relationship between Bonus Pay and Voluntary Turnover

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2021-07-26

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The relationship between bonuses and turnover is far from simple because bonuses not only influence the likelihood of turnover occurring, but also the timing at which they occur. Conventional beliefs suggest that bonuses help reduce the level of turnover; however, closer examinations suggest that such behaviors may simply be delayed, only to reemerge en masse. The current study investigates the turnover patterns surrounding multiple bonus pay periods in a call center context. Consistent with economic and psychological theories, results suggest that employee turnover decreases as bonus payout approaches before increasing sharply afterwards. Moreover, this pattern can also give rise to turnover clusters that are comprised of high performers. Since the extant literature indicates that turnover clusters and quality are negatively associated with unit and firm performance, the timing of bonus pay and its relationship with outcomes of interests should be of central importance when designing incentive schemes.

  PublisherDOI

• Talent Dispersion: Core/Periphery Distinctions, Team Performance, and Individual Talent Development

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2020-07-29

  article

  Talent dispersion, and the hierarchy it creates, has the potential to be both functional and dysfunctional in teams. We argue and demonstrate that an overly broad conception of talent dispersion contributes to the disagreements in the literature. Through incorporating the notion of core and peripheral team members, we are able to conceptually and empirically investigate talent dispersion associated with certain members of the team, which allows for a cleaner use of relevant theory (in particular, the functionality of hierarchy) and less noisy tests of dispersion’s consequences. Specifically, we focus on talent dispersion associated with individuals’ core and peripheral positions on the team to better understand dispersion’s effects on team performance. We also investigate how well the core members coordinate the tasks at hand as an important explanation for when talent dispersion may be beneficial to team performance. Finally, we recognize that talent dispersion’s implications for learning, opportunities to perform, and incentives may also influence the development of individuals over time. This heretofore unstudied dynamic may speak to talent dispersion effects in a new way, further illustrating our emphasis on the need to consider the individual team members to fully understand the collective talent dispersion construct in teams.

  PublisherDOI

• Consequences of Collective Turnover: A Matter of Time and Quality

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2019-08-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This study examines the impact of time and quality as boundary conditions for the relationship between collective turnover and unit performance. Using both turnover capacity and context-emergent turnover theory as our foundation, we consider how the effects of voluntary and involuntary turnover rates are moderated by time dispersion, turnover quality, replacement quality, and remaining employee quality. Our sample is comprised of 14 call center units over 9 monthly observations and we have objective measures for both employee quality and unit performance.

  PublisherDOI

• Discharges, Poor-Performer Quits, and Layoffs as Valued Exits: Is It Really Addition by Subtraction?

  Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior · 2019-10-05 · 24 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We contend that a variety of types of employee exits from the firm are presumed to be a net positive and are thus valued by management, resulting in a potentially important new way to think about these leavers. For each of three valued exit (VE) types (discharges, poor-performer quits, and layoffs) we examine incidence, construct similarities and differences, and antecedents. We also summarize and critique the literature on VE consequences for the organization. In doing so we discuss how an underlying tension must accompany the analysis of VEs. Specifically, the intuitive notion of addition by subtraction must be considered relative to important contextual considerations and to evidence that the operational disruption created by VE departures may at times mitigate or even outweigh the VE benefits. Underlying our analysis is the stipulation that the formal consideration of VEs is in its infancy and is thus laden with conceptual and methodological challenges that scholars must address if we are to benefit from this new approach to employee exits from the firm.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Human Capital Mobility: The Creator and Destroyer of Competitive Advantage

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2017-08-01

  article

  The relationship between human capital and firm performance has been explored extensively and continues to be a topic of great interest in the management literature (Becker, 1964; Coff, 1999; Lepak and Snell, 1999). Human capital as a firm-level resource is unique in both its ability to confer competitive advantage and its mobility (Barney, 1991; Huselid, 1995). Accordingly, there is great interest in the boundary conditions and antecedents of achieving - and losing - competitive advantage via human capital. This symposium aims to explore some of the mechanisms by which the mobility of human capital can impact firms' performance for better and for worse. The four papers included in this symposium range from the theoretical to the empirical, touching upon issues such as the potential positive negative impacts of the accumulation of certain types of human capital in a firm, the underlying mechanisms and potential impacts of different types of mobility events, and the efficacy of firms' attempts to control these impacts. Following the presentations of this research, Benjamin Campbell, a leading scholar in this area, will serve as a discussant to provide feedback, suggestions, and guide a question and answer session.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Elaine Farndale

  Pennsylvania State University

  4 shared

• Chris Brewster

  2 shared

• Charlie O. Trevor

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  2 shared

• Benjamin A. Campbell

  1 shared

• Astrid Reichel

  Pädagogische Hochschule Salzburg

  1 shared

• Frans Bévort

  Copenhagen Business School

  1 shared

• Tiffany Trzebiatowski

  Colorado State University

  1 shared

• Evan Starr

  1 shared