About

M. Diane Burton is the Joseph R. Rich '80 Professor in Human Resource Studies at Cornell University's ILR School. Her research focuses on human resource studies, contributing to the understanding of workplace dynamics, labor relations, and organizational behavior. As a faculty member, she is involved in advancing knowledge in these areas through her academic work and teaching, supporting the development of future professionals in the field.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Business
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Economics
• Natural resource economics
• Psychology
• Knowledge management
• Finance
• Labour economics
• Anthropology
• Database

Selected publications

• Seeing human resources of entrepreneurial firms in new ways

  Journal of Business Venturing · 2025-10-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Despite ongoing interest in human resource management (HRM) in entrepreneurial organizations, we believe the moment is ripe to rethink notions of human resource management in ways that take advantage of the distinctive nature of entrepreneurial settings. A critical first step is recognizing that the people creating and building an entrepreneurial organization extend beyond the founders and include people who may or may not be employees. As such, rather than following traditional human resources (HR) research's focus on employees, HR research in entrepreneurial organizations must take a broader perspective. We propose a focus on “joiners”, people who, according to Roach and Sauermann (2015) , are a “distinct type of nonfounding entrepreneurial actors who are attracted to the startup work setting but have little desire to be founders themselves.” Joiners represent the human resources critical to venture progress. We argue that a research agenda focused on joiners that is pursued through explicitly understanding and engaging with the fundamental assumptions, debates, and conversations from an entrepreneurship perspective will yield novel questions and generate new insights. Through this editorial we hope to catalyze this important work by unpacking who joiners are and how they fit in the entrepreneurial context, highlighting the need for new research at the intersection of HRM and entrepreneurship, and suggesting novel questions, research opportunities, and methodologies related to HRM in entrepreneurial settings. Scholars have advanced our Understanding of human resource management (HRM) in entrepreneurial organizations from multiple perspectives. We believe the moment is ripe to rethink notions of human resource management in ways that take advantage of the distinctive nature of entrepreneurial settings, which will allow us to understand human resources of entrepreneurial firms in new ways. A critical first step is recognizing that the people creating and building an entrepreneurial organization extend beyond the founders and include people who may or may not be employees. We propose a definition of joiners that captures the original spirit of the term and emphasizes the people who are actively choosing an entrepreneurial work setting, remains agnostic to formal employment status, and focuses on the work that is being done: “ Joiners are non-founders who contribute physical and/or mental labor to a new venture and are subordinate to the founders ”. Our definition is well-suited to the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial firms that are navigating uncertain environments, in which more flexible and less formal labor contributions are needed than merely those provided by employees. By consequence, our definition of joiners includes employees, contractors, interns, freelancers and volunteers and excludes other stakeholders such as tech transfer and other entrepreneurial support organization staff, board members, investors, policy makers, customers, and suppliers. We also suggest it may be helpful to distinguish between “primary joiners” and “secondary joiners.” The first refers to the initial group of people who are in direct contact with founders and who are creating their role rather than inhabiting an established role. These individuals bring the human and social capital that determines an early venture's success. Other individuals who later join an entrepreneurial venture, particularly those who are not directly overseen by founders, can be referred to as “secondary joiners”, or if they are actually employed by the startup, simply as employees. We argue that the study of joiners merits fresh thinking that more explicitly takes into consideration the core aspects of entrepreneurship: that it involves uncertainty and dynamism, resource constraints and context dependence, informality, and social or interpersonal creation of opportunities, ventures, and systems. A traditional HR perspective is focused on employees within firms who are in a formal employment relationship, occupying defined roles, within a hierarchical reporting structure where there is a supervisor, a set of performance expectations, and a package of rewards. In contrast, an entrepreneurship perspective considers contributions from people who may be employees or contractors or non-contracted helpers, straddling the fuzzy boundaries of a new venture in roles and reporting relationships that are ambiguous and evolving, doing work that is uncertain and ever-changing, with risky and unknown outcomes, rewards, and career prospects. We highlight specific research questions focused on joiners from an HR versus an entrepreneurship perspective that warrant additional investigation and discuss the most appropriate methodologies for such study. Overall, while we acknowledge and commend the efforts of many scholars who have already explored issues related to joiners, we believe that more explicitly recognizing and engaging with the distinct focus, assumptions, debates, and conversations inherent to an entrepreneurship perspective, as well as taking a broader perspective on who is a joiner, will inspire new questions and uncover novel insights into human resources of entrepreneurial firms. We encourage work that advances a uniquely entrepreneurship-informed understanding of joiners and of HRM. • We re-define the term “joiners”, differentiate them from other stakeholders, and clarify their unique position in startups. • We encourage taking into consideration unique features of entrepreneurship in research on HRM in entrepreneurial firms. • We propose a set of novel questions related to HRM in entrepreneurial settings from an entrepreneurship-focused approach. • We discuss promising methodologies for investigating such questions.

  PublisherDOI

• Human Capital Metrics and CEO Pay

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Kara Swisher. Burn Book: A Tech Love Story SwisherKara. Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. Simon & Schuster, 2024. 320 pp. $30, hardcover.

  Administrative Science Quarterly · 2025-06-16

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Human Capital Metrics and CEO Pay

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Institutional Complexity, Stakeholders, and Political Dynamics: Museums for Organizational Insights

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  articleSenior author

  Museums offer an important research context for organizational scholars. Competing demands from stakeholders—including professionals, funders, visitors, etc.—are central in museum operations, and multiple logics in the institutional environment add to the complexity of managing and leading these organizations. Building on this rich history of museum research as a source of organizational insights, this symposium brings together multi-method and multi-disciplinary studies within the museum context to shed new light on core issues of interest to organization and management scholars. Applying different angles, the four presentations cover topics ranging from field-level structuration, institutional entrepreneurship, logic changes, and organizational governance and leadership, and they span varied national and institutional contexts. By bringing these studies together in the symposium, we hope to introduce attendees to new research within this rich context and contribute to organization and management theory. Community, hierarchy, and field legitimacy: Case of U.S. museum accreditation Author: Leonie Henaut; - Author: Shinwon Noh; U. of St. Thomas Embracing Community Participation: Changes in Institutional Logics in the U.S. Museum Field Author: Xiaofei Xie; Cornell U. Configuring Interdependence between Multiple Paradoxical Demands: The Work of Museum Leaders Author: Chris Moos; U. of Oxford Author: Michael Smets; U. of Oxford Until tomorrow: The governance of major arts museums in response to colonialism and repatriation Author: Carolyn Campbell; -

  PublisherDOI

• Unpacking the Relationship(s) Between Experience and Performance

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  article

  Experience is a pervasive concept used in a variety of fields as well as laymen’s conversations. In the management field, the meaning has not only relied on individuals’ work experience but also grown beyond individuals to produce constructs such as teams’ shared experience and organizational-level experience. The richness in the use of experience has led to a variety of meanings, values, and applications for a concept that many scholars and readers might take for granted. Because experience work has spanned research traditions and levels of analysis, scholarly studies can simultaneously build upon one another, exist beside each other, or contradict each other. Therefore, the purpose of this panel symposium is to engage accomplished scholars who have significantly advanced the fields’ view of individual, shared, and/or organizational experience through their research to reflect on their use of experience in research as well as on the assumptions that underlie their research at the individual and/or organizational levels. This reflection and the subsequent moderated discussion aim to uncover the variation in measurement, value, and implications of experience in individuals, teams, and organizations and to better our collective understanding of both the diversity of experience research and its value overall for management scholars. Finally, the panelists will suggest avenues for future research and engage with the audience about promising areas for their work.

  PublisherDOI

• Cognitive Diversity Within Entrepreneurial Teams: Contingencies of Their Cost and Benefit

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023

  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology

  This AoM symposium advances the debate on whether cognitive diversity - differences in how people think, perceive, and process information - facilitates or impedes the performance of entrepreneurial teams. The formation of entrepreneurial teams involves the decision by the first founder(s) to recruit other cofounders and early joiners. Conventional wisdom in the business world is that teams perform best when bringing different perspectives and ideas to their collective decision making (Bunderson & van der Vegt 2018). Indeed, recent reports by McKinsey (Barta, Kleiner, & Neumann 2012) and Deloitte (Bourke & Dillon 2018) suggest that different cognitive perspectives among senior leaders create substantial value for firms. The symposium aims to add an understanding of the circumstances whereby cognitive diversity facilitates the performance of entrepreneurial teams. It builds on a growing literature that recognizes that cognitive diversity is not unconditionally better in all contexts (Eesley, Hsu, & Roberts 2013; Ter Wal et al. 2016). With the assembled thought leaders on cognitive diversity and entrepreneurial teams, the panel addresses what we know and the most pressing research directions ahead.

  PublisherDOI

• People management in entrepreneurial firms

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2022-11-24 · 2 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  Startups are increasingly recognized as fonts of innovative people management practices; therefore, it is surprising that human resource (HR) management scholars continue to largely ignore entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial firms. In this chapter, we hope to make a compelling case for more entrepreneurial HR research by illustrating how entrepreneurial firms are an important and analytically useful context for HR studies. We characterize the current state of entrepreneurial HR research and identify gaps and opportunities. We conclude by sharing our perspective on where future entrepreneurial HR scholars can most fruitfully focus their attention.

  PublisherDOI

• Do Startup Employees Earn More in the Long Run?

  Organization Science · 2021 · 87 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Labour economics
  • Economics

  Evaluating the attractiveness of startup employment requires an understanding of both what startups pay and the implications of these jobs for earnings trajectories. Analyzing Danish registry data, we find that employees hired by startups earn roughly 17% less over the next 10 years than those hired by large, established firms. About half of this earnings differential stems from sorting—from the fact that startup employees have less human capital. Long-term earnings also vary depending on when individuals are hired. Although the earliest employees of startups suffer an earnings penalty, those hired by already-successful startups earn a small premium. Two factors appear to account for the earnings penalties for the early employees: Startups fail at high rates, creating costly spells of unemployment for their (former) employees. Job-mobility patterns also diverge: After being employed by a small startup, individuals rarely return to the large employers that pay more.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Startup Employees Take a Hit Financially

  Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange · 2021-03-24

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Olav Sorenson

  13 shared

• Michael S. Dahl

  Aalborg University

  12 shared

• James N. Baron

  Nasional University

  10 shared

• Michael T. Hannan

  10 shared

• Christine M. Beckman

  6 shared

• Donald S. Siegel

  4 shared

• Charles A. O’Reilly

  4 shared

• Ryan Allen

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• SUNY Chancellor's Award For Excellence in Faculty Service (2…