Boss Competence and Worker Well-being

Benjamin Artz, Amanda H Goodall and Andrew Oswald
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Amanda H Goodall: Cass Business School, City University London, and IZA

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Nearly all workers have a supervisor or ‘boss’. Yet little is known about how bosses influence the quality of employees’ lives. This study is a cautious attempt to provide new formal evidence. First, it is shown that a boss’s technical competence is the single strongest predictor of a worker’s job satisfaction. Second, it is demonstrated in longitudinal data -- after controlling for fixed effects -- that even if a worker stays in the same job and workplace a rise in the competence of a supervisor is associated with an improvement in the worker’s well-being. Third, a variety of robustness checks, including tentative instrumental-variable results, are reported. These findings, which draw on US and British data, contribute to an emerging literature on the role of expert leaders in organizations. Finally, the paper discusses potential weaknesses of existing evidence and necessary future research.

Keywords: bosses; expert leaders; leadership; job satisfaction; happiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J28 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hrm and nep-ltv
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w ... werp_1072_oswald.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Boss Competence and Worker Well-Being (2017)
Working Paper: Boss Competence and Worker Well-being (2015)
Working Paper: Boss Competence and Worker Well-being (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1072

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