Star Connections Buffer the Effects of Work Performance on Career Outcomes

Abstract

Connections to people of high repute (such as to high performing industry stars) facilitate individuals’ job attainment. But what are the career consequences for people who benefit initially from these star connections? Prior work on star performers and those with work associations with the stars has neglected the possibility that work performance might be viewed differently for the star-connected relative to the non connected. We propose new theory concerning how the performances of star connected employees are viewed by their managers through high-expectation lenses. For the star-connected, we suggest, good performances are expected whereas poor performances are seen as aberrant. Thus, work performance has relatively little effect on firings and promotions. In contrast, those people hired despite the absence of star connections are likely to be promoted or fired based on their work performance. Using the career trajectories of assistant and head coaches in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1976-2015 we found that star-connected head coaches, relative to their non-connected peers, were protected from being fired when underperforming but benefited less when overperforming. Study 2 showed experimentally that a star-connected employee, relative to a non-connected peer, was buffered from the effects of work performance because of the high work performance expectations held by evaluators relative to the non-connected employee. The overall conclusion from the experiment and the field study is that star connectedness influences careers even beyond the hiring stage in ways that buffer individuals from their own performance outcomes.

Speaker Biography

Martin Kilduff (PhD Cornell, 1988) is Professor of Organizational Behavior at University College London, former editor of Academy of Management Review (2006-08) and former associate editor of Administrative Science Quarterly (2003-05, 2010-16). Prior to joining UCL he served as Diageo Professor of Management Studies at Cambridge University, and prior to that served on the faculties of University of Texas at Austin, Penn State, and Insead.

Martin’s work focuses on social networks in organizations and includes the co-authored books Social Networks and Organizations (Sage, 2003); and Interpersonal Networks in Organizations: Cognition, Personality, Dynamics and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Martin’s most recent work includes the following three articles. The first examines the personality profiles of people who broker between cliques in organizations (Academy of Management Journal, 2018). The second examines the paradox of people who feel powerful enough to engage in brokerage activities but whose sense of power blinds them to the brokerage opportunities that are available (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2018). The third paper examines how agency has been used in organizational social networks (Academy of Management Annals, 2021).