Journal Article

People and process, suits and innovators: the role of individuals in firm performance

Mollick, Ethan

2012

Overview

Performance differences between firms are generally attributed to organizational factors rather than to differences among the individuals who make up firms. As a result, little is known about the part that individual firm members play in explaining the variance in performance among firms. This paper employs a multiple membership cross-classified multilevel model to test the degree to which organizational or individual factors explain firm performance. The analysis also examines whether individual differences among middle managers or innovators best explain firm performance variation. The results indicate that variation among individuals matter far more in organizational performance than is generally assumed. Further, variation among middle managers has a particularly large impact on firm performance, much larger than that of those individuals who are assigned innovative roles.

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd,John Wiley & Sons,Wiley,Wiley Periodicals Inc
• Subject: Business innovation / Business structures / Companies / Computerspiel / Corporate strategies / Economic models / Electronic games industry / Financial management / Financial performance / firm effects / firm performance / Individual differences / individual effects / Innovation / Innovations / Management theory / Managers / Menschen / Middle management / Middle managers / Mittleres Management / Organizational effectiveness / Organizational factors / Organizational performance / Project management / Publishing industry / Revenue / Softwareindustrie / Statistical variance / Studies / Technological innovation / Unternehmenserfolg / Variance / Wirkungsanalyse