Pipelines and Their Portfolios: A More Holistic View of Human Capital Heterogeneity Via Firm-Wide Employee Sourcing

Scholars use the term pipelines to encapsulate many ways that firms target talent sources. Yet pipeline scholarship is fragmented to date, so we have few answers for several salient questions: Why do pipelines exist? What are their attributes? And what are their implications for firms? In this paper, we explore these questions. Based on an extensive literature review, we first distill the commonalities and core attributes of pipelines and then develop a theory-driven typology to ensure a consistency in understanding. Next, we suggest that a common theoretical justification runs through the uses of pipelines: Pipelines address labor market imperfections confronted by firms when they staff positions, counterbalancing the seemingly detrimental reduction in candidates that pipelines engender. We use this insight to theoretically delineate why different types of pipelines exist. Finally, we discuss how firms develop unique combinations, or portfolios, of pipelines to ameliorate the range of imperfections that they face to manage talent sourcing across the enterprise. In total, our paper describes how firms strategically manage pipeline portfolios, why firms turn to them to accumulate talent, and how they create between-firm heterogeneity of human capital resources.