The value of bosses

Edward P. Lazear and Kathryn L. Shaw

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.

Keywords: Bosses; supervisors; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C13 C23 D20 L23 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2014-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:60611

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