There’s a trend in the marketplace these days to go local. Restaurants and grocery stores are touting locally sourced ingredients while Small Business Saturday offers a local antidote to the mad Christmas shopping rush at the mall. Even clothing and furniture stores are jumping on the bandwagon by highlighting items manufactured within the region. But should the push to go local also extend to hiring retail employees? Or is that task best left to the head office? Wharton accounting professor Carolyn Deller and Harvard business professor Tatiana Sandino find answers in their latest research, which examines whether decentralized hiring results in better employee retention and store performance. The paper is titled “ Who Should Select New Employees, the Head Office or the Unit Manager? Consequences of Centralizing Hiring at a Retail Chain .” Deller recently spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about the findings. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.…