But now a new study, published in Personnel Psychology, has found that the bell curve may not be the right way to measure human performance at all.
The study – The Best and The Rest: Revisiting the Norm of Normality of Individual Performance—researchers looked at the performance of 633,263 people and found that the bell curve doesn’t adequately capture individual performance.
Instead the researchers found that performance today unfolds along a “power distribution curve” – where there are a few superstars who outperform the rest of the workforce.
“In our study, we found in the case of researchers, for example, there is a minority of academics in more than 50 scientific fields who produce disproportionally large numbers of scientific articles that’s not predicted by the bell curve,” said Herman Aguinis, a professor of organizational behaviour at Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.
And it wasn’t just academics that the researchers looked at, but also sports, politics and entertainment. Surprisingly, the same pattern emerged—a small minority of superstars outperformed the bulk of their colleagues. In fact the majority performed below the mathematical average.
At first Aguinis, who also teaches human resource management, and his co-author Ernest O’Boyle Jr., from the College of Business and Economics at Longwood University, were surprised by the results.
After all what they were seeing challenged an idea that had been used to measure human performance since the 1940s. Initially they thought perhaps there was an error. So they kept looking, collecting data and plotting performance.
“We were amazed,” said Aguinis.
“After we collected the first few samples of data we started to see that the normal pattern – the bell curve – didn’t fit our data. We saw another pattern (the power law distribution curve) emerging and there were many more outliers than you would anticipate.”
The pattern was repeated again and again in entertainment, sports and politics. “In the case of the entertainers you saw a disproportionately large number of awards given to a small number of performers,” Aguinis added.
The study also identified outliers at the other end of the spectrum – those likely to engage in unethical or illegal behaviour. Using sports samples the study looked at yellow cards in soccer and first base errors in baseball. It found negative performance largely attributable to a few individuals.
So what are the implications of the study? If organizations and companies want to outperform competitors, perhaps they should begin looking at how to keep their superstars, Aguinis said.
“Maybe our goal shouldn’t be to improve the average, but emphasize the superstars. You have to recognize the success of an organization will depend on keeping superstars happy. We need to make sure a reward system is set up so superstar performers are rewarded to the extent they deserve.
“You need to value all employees – the vital few and the necessary majority,” Aguinis said. “You need average performers but you also have to recognize the success of an organization will depend on keeping superstars happy.”
Companies and organizations must begin to set up a better performance evaluation system. And that means stop imposing a bell curve on employees and reward superstars appropriately, he said.
But what does that mean for the so-called necessary majority who toil away without burning quite as brightly? Can members of that group rise to superstar status simply by perhaps improving their skills and knowledge and sharpening their motivation, energy and enthusiasm?
“Everyone has the same opportunity to reach that level of superstar performance,” said Aguinis. “It’s a combination of ability, skills and knowledge. You need to find ways to retrain yourself, improve yourself and learn new things all the time. Obviously there are individual differences, but the key point is how can I reach the level of superstar performance.”
Next up for Aguinis is some other studies that will try to examine what allows someone to become a superstar performer and stay there for a long period of time. “We’re trying to understand the flow of people in and out of the elite group,” he said.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Debra Black
No comments:
Post a Comment