THE BEST AND THE REST: REVISITING THE NORM OF NORMALITY OF INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE

We revisit a long-held belief in human resource management, organizational behavior, and related fields that individual performance follows a Gaussian (normal) distribution. We conducted five studies involving 198 samples including 632,599 academics, entertainers, politicians, and amateur and professional athletes. Results are remarkably consistent and indicate that individual performance is not normally distributed—instead, it follows a Paretian (power law) distribution. Assuming normality of individual performance can lead to can lead to misspecified theories, incorrect conclusions, and misleading practices. Our results have the potential to influence all theories and applications that address the performance of individual workers including performance appraisal, personnel selection, leadership, and motivation, and others.

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