I am an Assistant Professor of Business, Government and Society at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. I am also a senior fellow at the Wharton ESG Initiative. I study corporate ESG (environmental, social and governance issues), with an emphasis on employees.
My research uncovers strategic implications of the causes and consequences of ESG performance. To uncover ESG performance outcomes, I leverage novel, large-scale and independently-reported data both within and across firms, addressing the limitations associated with ESG ratings. In one study, I examine greenwashing by comparing how independent third parties evaluate companies’ ESG performance against how companies self-report their ESG policies. Consistent with a principle-agent framework, I find that manager’s language predicts better third-party evaluations of ESG outcomes, while firms with ESG oriented investors put ESG policies in place, but do not show outcome improvements.
In studying employees, I uncover that paying below living wages results in significantly higher turnover, but only for firms without labor market power. By using employee-reported turnover both within and across firms and across geography, I am able to identify the causal effect of paying additional employees below a living wage in a large population of firms within the United States. This study suggests that, in the presence of monopsony power, there is a significant case for government involvement in living wage regulation.
I also use experimental methods to identify causal pathways for inequities to form within companies. This work identifies how gender gaps in competitiveness disappear when competing for others, which has implications for how sponsorship might impact gender equity at upper levels of organizations. My current work examines how the decision to hire externally or promote internally has differential effects on gender and racial diversity in senior roles within corporations, and how venture capital firms influence entrepreneurial teams’ decisions to hire racial minority candidates and women.
Before joining McCombs, I completed my PhD at the University of Maryland. Prior to academia, I planned and was the founding principal of a charter high school in Los Angeles.
Recent work:
Barrymore, Nathan, Cristian Dezsö and Ben King, “Gender and Competitiveness When Earning for Others: Experimental Evidence and Implications for Sponsorship,” Strategic Management Journal (2022). [Link]
Barrymore, Nathan and Rachelle C. Sampson, “When Can Employers Pay Poverty Wages? The Relationship Between Living Wages, Monopsony, and Employee Turnover,” Working Paper. [SSRN]
Barrymore, Nathan. “Green or Greenwashing? How Manager and Investor Preferences Shape Firm Strategy,” Working Paper. [SSRN]
If Black Lives Matter, Transform Your Leadership Team, The Hill, September 2020 [Link]