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| Wharton People Analytics | |
|---|---|
| Name | Wharton People Analytics |
| Type | Research center |
| Established | 2016 |
| Location | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Affiliation | University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School |
| Director | Brian Uzzi |
| Focus | Organizational behavior, talent analytics, workforce management |
Wharton People Analytics Wharton People Analytics is an applied research initiative at The Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania that applies quantitative methods to questions about talent, leadership, diversity, and workforce strategy. It brings together scholars from fields including management science, statistics, computer science, and psychology to advise corporations, governments, and nonprofits on human capital decisions. The initiative collaborates with global partners and hosts public events that feature scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.
Founded in 2016, the initiative grew from earlier faculty projects at Wharton School and units such as the Wharton Behavioral Lab and the Mack Institute for Innovation Management. Early activities connected researchers from Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, Columbia Business School, and London Business School with practitioners from firms including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey & Company. Funding and collaborations drew on philanthropic support from donors similar to those behind centers at Kellogg School of Management, INSEAD, Sloan School of Management, and Tuck School of Business. Over time, leadership linked the program to interdisciplinary initiatives across Pennsylvania Hospital, Perelman School of Medicine, Wharton Finance Department, and the Annenberg School for Communication.
Research integrates methods from network science, machine learning, econometrics, natural language processing, and experimental economics. Studies use datasets from corporate HR systems, LinkedIn, academic archives like SSRN, and public records such as U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics outputs. Methodological work engages with approaches popularized by scholars at Princeton University, Yale University, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and University of California, Berkeley. Projects examine topics including team formation (building on research by Michael Burt and Ronald Burt), leadership assessment (in dialogue with work by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky), bias in selection (relating to studies by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz), and retention (connecting to research by Edward Lazear and James Heckman).
The initiative helps design courses and executive programs for students and professionals in collaboration with Wharton Executive Education, Penn Carey Law, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Offerings include MBA electives, custom corporate workshops, and joint certificates with units like The Wharton School Stats Department and centers such as the Reinvention Center and Joseph H. Lauder Institute. Curriculum development draws on pedagogical models used at Stanford University, Harvard University, Columbia University, Duke University, and Cornell University. Students engage with case studies inspired by firms like Procter & Gamble, Toyota, IBM, Deloitte, and PwC.
Partnerships extend to Fortune 500 companies, technology platforms, and consulting firms. Collaborators have included Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Ernst & Young, SAP SE, Workday, and Airbnb. Projects span workforce planning, diversity and inclusion initiatives connected to advocacy groups like National Urban League and Human Rights Campaign, and public sector work with entities such as City of Philadelphia, U.S. Department of Labor, and World Bank. Engagements have paralleled corporate programs at General Electric, Siemens, Johnson & Johnson, and Cisco Systems.
Faculty and affiliates come from economics, management, and statistics departments across institutions such as University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University, Columbia University, Yale University, Princeton University, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and UC Berkeley. Notable scholars associated with the initiative include leaders in network analysis, labor economics, organizational behavior, and data science, with intellectual connections to figures like Albert Hirschman, Herbert Simon, Peter Drucker, Gary Becker, and Oliver Williamson. Visiting fellows and partners have included executives and researchers from Google Research, Microsoft Research, Facebook AI Research, Amazon Web Services, Nielsen Holdings, and McKinsey Global Institute.
The initiative produces working papers, peer-reviewed articles, practitioner reports, and conference programs. Work appears in journals such as American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Organization Science, Personnel Psychology, and Harvard Business Review. It organizes symposia and workshops that attract participants from conferences like Academy of Management Annual Meeting, NeurIPS, SIGKDD, American Economic Association, and European Group for Organizational Studies.
Contributions include influencing corporate hiring practices, shaping diversity metrics, and informing public debates on automation, remote work, and skills policy discussed by organizations such as OECD, International Labour Organization, and U.S. Congress committees. Critics have raised concerns similar to debates at Cambridge Analytica and among scholars at Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding privacy, algorithmic bias, and the use of proprietary HR data. Ethical discussions reference standards from Belmont Report, Common Rule, and institutional review boards at University of Pennsylvania and peer institutions like Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Category:Research institutes