As most careers now span across organizations, former employees represent a growing source of potential hires for many organizations. Yet, we know little about whether and when firms benefit by rehiring former employees. To answer these questions, we adopt a knowledge-based view (KBV) of hiring to develop new theory about how returning former employees’ (“boomerangs”) post-hire performance might differ from that of external hires who have no previous experience with the firm (“new hires”). We theorize that, relative to new hires, boomerangs’ familiarity with the organization’s social system will allow them to more effectively engage in coordination and overcome internal resistance from organizational incumbents. As a consequence, boomerangs should have a particular advantage in roles that require a higher degree of coordination and in units that are likely more resistant to outsiders. Comparing the post-hire performance of 2,053 boomerangs and 10,858 new hires over an eight-year period in a large health care organization, we find that upon being (re)hired into the organization, boomerangs outperform new hires in their initial job spell and that this performance advantage is larger in jobs requiring greater internal coordination and in contexts characterized by greater internal resistance to external hires.

中文翻译：

---

与老？检查 Boomerang 员工何时表现优于新员工

由于现在大多数职业跨越组织，前雇员代表了许多组织的潜在雇员来源越来越多。然而，我们对公司是否以及何时通过重新雇用前雇员而受益知之甚少。为了回答这些问题，我们采用基于知识的招聘观点 (KBV) 来制定新的理论，说明前雇员（“回旋镖”）的招聘后表现可能与之前没有相关经验的外部雇员的表现有何不同。公司（“新员工”）。我们的理论是，相对于新员工，回旋镖对组织社会制度的熟悉将使他们能够更有效地参与协调并克服组织现任者的内部阻力。作为结果，回旋镖在需要更高程度协调的角色和可能对外界更有抵抗力的单位中应该具有特别的优势。比较一家大型医疗保健组织 8 年间 2,053 名回旋镖和 10,858 名新员工的聘用后表现，我们发现在被（重新）雇用到该组织后，回旋镖在最初的工作中表现优于新员工，并且这种绩效优势在需要更多内部协调的工作中以及内部对外部招聘的阻力更大的情况下更大。