Continuing the theme of this month's cover story, two recent pieces of research about the intersection of sports and business are worth mentioning.
A trio of academics from Cornell University -- Amanda Goodall, Lawrence Kahn and Andrew Oswald -- seek to answer the age-old question, "Why do leaders matter?" The search for evidence takes them to an unexpected source: professional basketball.
In studying more than 15,000 NBA games, the researchers find that "teams perform substantially better if led by a coach who was, in his day, an outstanding player." Roughly speaking, a predictor of a team's success can be traced to the extent of its coach's own achievements 20 years earlier (Isiah Thomas notwithstanding). Beyond basketball, this could prove useful for professional-service firms, high-tech companies, universities and other "high-performance workplaces where the employees are experts," the academics note.
But landing a corporate leadership role doesn't mean that a manager's playing days are over. After sifting through more than 20 years of German labour-market and socio-demographic data, Michael Lechner of the University of St Gallen in Switzerland finds that participation in sports boosts workers' earnings by making them more productive and strengthening their social networks.
Active sportspeople increase their earnings by around 1,200 euros per year, Lechner concludes, "suggesting similar magnitudes than for one additional year of schooling." This could prove useful in recruiting for the company softball team. |
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