Toxic Workers

Michael Housman () and Dylan Minor ()
Additional contact information
Michael Housman: Cornerstone OnDemand
Dylan Minor: Harvard Business School, Strategy Unit

No 16-057, Harvard Business School Working Papers from Harvard Business School

Abstract: While there has been a strong focus in past research on discovering and developing top performers in the workplace, less attention has been paid to the question of how to manage those workers on the opposite side of the spectrum: those who are harmful to organizational performance. In extreme cases, aside from hurting performance, such workers can generate enormous regulatory and legal fees and liabilities for the .rm. We explore a large novel dataset of over 50,000 workers across 11 different firms to document a variety of aspects of workers' characteristics and circumstances that lead them to engage in what we call "toxic" behavior. We also explore the relationship between toxicity and productivity, and the ripple effect that a toxic worker has on her peers. Finally, we find that avoiding a toxic worker (or converting him to an average worker) enhances performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a superstar worker.

Keywords: strategic human resource management; misconduct; worker productivity; ethics; superstar (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2015-10, Revised 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hbs:wpaper:16-057

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