Catching a falling star: Mobility of declining star performers, peer effects, and organizational performance in the National Football League

• Published in: Journal of business research 2023-10, Vol.165, p.114053, Article 114053
• Main Authors: Barlow, Matthew A., Hesterly, William S., Cameron Verhaal, J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Organizational Performance; Peer Effects; Star Human Capital; Star Mobility
• ISSN: 0148-2963; 1873-7978
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114053

•Falling stars are star performers whose individual ability has begun to decline.•Our context is falling star quarterback mobility in the National Football League.•Results show adding falling stars leads to an increase in team and peer performance.•Qualitative data points towards a knowledge sharing mechanism.•Empirical analysis points towards complementarities in job design. Research examining how star performers impact their peers largely finds that stars positively impact peer performance. Another stream of research has examined how stars impact their organizations, specifically after mobility events, and finds that hiring stars often leads to lower organizational performance. However, these research streams have developed independently. This paper attempts to reconcile these findings by examining the mobility of stars in the twilight of their career. Leveraging a dataset of individual and organizational performance in the NFL, we find that falling star quarterbacks have positive impacts on their peers when they change organizations. This peer effect leads to increased organizational performance, even though the individual performance of the falling star declines. Moreover, we test and compare the specific mechanisms driving this effect.