Study: Long-held view of ‘bell curve’ in performance measurement proven flawed…
“All five of our studies suggest that organizational success depends on tending to the few who fall at the ‘tails’ of this distribution, rather than worrying too much about the productivity of the ‘necessary many’ in the middle,” Herman Aguinis said of Indiana University.
“A new showing that 51 percent of recent college graduates were employed full-time struck many as a low total, but it represents an improvement over last year. The Rutgers University Worktrends report released Thursday found that 6 percent were unemployed and 6 percent were working part-time while actively seeking full-time jobs. The remainder were either pursuing additional education or training, not looking for work or were engaged in volunteer activities.” Source: By Janice Podsada, The Hartford Courant.
John Stossel – College is a RIP OFF!
Put Away the Bell Curve, and Why?
Researchers amassed a database of more than 600,000 individuals and conducted separate studies applying normal and power-law distributions to assess performers in four carefully chosen fields:
Academics in 50 disciplines, based on publishing frequency in the most pre-eminent discipline-specific journals. Entertainers, such as actors, musicians and writers, and the number of prestigious awards, nominations or distinctions received. Politicians in 10 nations and election/re-election results. Collegiate and professional athletes looking at the most individualized measures available, such as the number of home runs, receptions in team sports and total wins in individual sports.
“According to Aguinis and his co-author, Ernest O’Boyle of Longwood University (soon to join the University of Iowa), the entrenched notion of normality — notably in performance evaluations that force managers to assign only numeric or category ratings — is detrimental to individuals, the group and the larger organization. They suspected that any group, regardless of size or industry, would show a pattern with a few elite performers (“the best”) dominating the many (“the rest”).”
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