The value of bosses

Edward Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher Stanton

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: How and by how much do supervisors enhance worker productivity? Using a company-based data set on the productivity of technology-based services workers, supervisor effects are estimated and found to be large. Replacing a boss who is in the lower 10% of boss quality with one who is in the upper 10% of boss quality increases a team’s total output by more than would adding one worker to a nine member team. Workers assigned to better bosses are less likely to leave the firm. A separate normalization implies that the average boss is about 1.75 times as productive as the average worker.

JEL-codes: J01 J50 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2014-06-13
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59022/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Value of Bosses (2015)
Working Paper: The Value of Bosses (2014)
Working Paper: The Value of Bosses (2012)
Working Paper: The Value of Bosses (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:59022

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