Federica De Stefano is an Assistant Professor of Management and Human Resources at HEC Paris and a Senior Fellow of Wharton People Analytics.
Her research examines how firms create and capture value from human capital. In studying this topic, she has developed three interrelated research streams that analyze: 1) employee mobility; 2) employee bargaining power; and 3) sustainable human resource management. Her first stream investigates the implications of employee internal mobility and turnover for firm performance and individual career outcomes. In her second stream of work, she examines the role of employee bargaining power in the generation and distribution of rents from human capital. Her third research stream explores the role of human resource management in corporate social responsibility and sustainability. The overarching ambition of her work is to understand how firms can achieve competitive advantage while simultaneously providing workers with high-quality jobs—that is, jobs granting equitable compensation, job security, a safe work environment, and opportunities for development.
Theoretically, her research seeks to speak to the literature on strategic human capital. Empirically, much of her work is quantitative and based on field studies in organizational contexts and large administrative data. She has created several databases collecting unique archival data that merge personnel and performance data from a diverse set of organizations across industries. Some of her projects also rely on original combinations of French Census data with large-scale surveys of French employers and employees. She complements her archival data sources with surveys and qualitative interviews.
Professor De Stefano is a member of the Editorial Board of Organization Science, Human Resource Management and Human Resource Management Review. She has been awarded with several research grants, including a Marie Curie grant from the European Commission to examine the relationship between employees’ health and safety and human capital strategies by firms (SAW - MSCA-IF-EF-RI). She serves as Engagement Officer for the Strategic Human Capital Interest Group of the Strategic Management Society (SMS).
Prior to joining HEC Paris, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration and Management, a M.Sc. in International Management, a BA in Management from Bocconi University in Milan (Italy), and a M.Sc. in Management Science and Corporate Management from Fudan University in Shanghai (China).