 Why do leaders matter? A study of expert knowledge in a superstar settingAmanda Goodall (), Lawrence Kahn and Andrew Oswald Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2011, vol. 77, issue 3, 265-284 Abstract: This paper provides evidence of the importance of what might be termed 'expert leaders'. Although it is widely assumed that leaders affect the performance of their organizations, the complexity of this social-science research area has meant that comparatively little empirical progress has been made. We deliberately choose a narrow focus. We examine a high-skill setting in which there are accurate data on performance. We argue that an influential role is played by a leader's expert knowledge. A strong predictor of a leader's success in year T is that person's level of technical attainment, in the underlying activity, in approximately year T-20. Our data are on US professional basketball. The paper documents a correlation between brilliance as a player and the (much later) winning percentage and playoff success of that person as a team coach. The results suggest that leaders' effects on performance are substantial and are visible in the data within the first 12 months of a coach being hired. Keywords: Organizational; performance; Firms; Leadership; Expert; knowledge; Fixed-effects; Productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:77:y:2011:i:3:p:265-284 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.