Citation annex

Does paying for talent work?

Reference document for the synthesis piece that connects The Mallory Group's four sports research studies (NHL Free Agency Research, NBA Analysis, NFL Analysis, and NHL Play for Contract) to the business literature on talent acquisition and performance portability.

Each entry below states what the source actually says. Where a claim was inferred rather than stated, the entry says so. Where a finding comes from a secondary citation rather than the primary document, the entry says so.

Last verified: June 2026.

Primary academic anchors

These four peer-reviewed sources carry the theoretical and empirical frame of the piece.

1. Groysberg (2010). Chasing stars.

Full citation: Groysberg, B. (2010). Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Link: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691154510/chasing-stars

Publisher: Princeton University Press. Originally published in hardcover (2010, ISBN 9780691127200). The link above is for the paperback edition (2012, ISBN 9780691154510), which is the currently active Princeton University Press page.

Review process: The book synthesizes a decade of original research. Parts of the underlying work were published as peer-reviewed papers in journals including Management Science and Organization Science.

Access and verification note: The book requires purchase to verify findings at the page level. For transparency, the findings summarized below are also documented in two of Groysberg's peer-reviewed Harvard Business Review companion articles based on the same underlying research:

  • Groysberg, B., Nanda, A., and Nohria, N. (2004). The risky business of hiring stars. Harvard Business Review, 82(5), 92-100. Available at https://hbr.org/2004/05/the-risky-business-of-hiring-stars. This article contains the core finding that star Wall Street analysts decline after switching firms, drawn from the same dataset that anchors Chasing Stars.
  • Groysberg, B., McLean, A. N., and Nohria, N. (2006). Are leaders portable? Harvard Business Review, 84(5), 92-100. Available at https://hbr.org/2006/05/are-leaders-portable. This article extends the portability framework to executives and is the published version of Groysberg's argument that performance depends on firm-specific resources.

Findings cited from Chasing Stars in this synthesis are drawn from the book's summaries, reviews, and the two HBR companion articles above, not from a verified page-level reading of the book itself. A reader who wants to verify a specific finding without purchasing the book should start with the two HBR articles.

Verification status as of June 2026: An independent audit attempted to verify the Groysberg findings against the HBR companion articles and could not proceed because the articles are paywalled. The Groysberg findings in this synthesis therefore remain verified only through secondary summaries and reviews, not against the primary sources. This is the weakest verification status of any primary anchor in the synthesis. Readers with HBR or institutional access are invited to verify and report through the audit page.

Stated findings:

  • Star Wall Street analysts who switched firms suffered an immediate and lasting decline in performance.
  • The decline depended on firm-specific resources, organizational cultures, networks, and colleagues.
  • Exceptions: stars who moved with their teams, stars who moved to firms with higher capabilities (measured through Institutional Investor rankings of investment banks), and female stars.
  • Analysts who moved to firms with similar capabilities saw less decline than the overall average. Analysts who moved to firms with lower capabilities saw the largest decline.
  • The original firm matters. Analysts who left firms that promoted portability (Credit Suisse First Boston, Salomon Brothers) suffered the least decline. Analysts from firms that built soft non-portability (Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch) suffered the most.
  • The author extends the framework to other occupations including general managers and football players.

Sample: more than 1,000 star analysts at 78 Wall Street investment banks, supplemented by interviews.

Related work by the same author: Groysberg, B. and Abrahams, R. (2006). Lift outs: How to acquire a high-functioning team. Harvard Business Review, December 2006. https://hbr.org/2006/12/lift-outs-how-to-acquire-a-high-functioning-team

The lift-out HBR piece extends the Chasing Stars framework to the question of team migration. Studied more than 40 high-profile team moves across industries and countries with interviews of team leaders. Identified four sequential stages of successful lift-outs: courtship, integration of the team leader with new top leadership, integration of work processes, and full cultural integration. The authors call the second stage the most important factor in success. Review status: HBR is a widely read but editor-curated practitioner journal, not peer-reviewed in the academic sense. The underlying research methods are academic, but the citation weight is lower than for Chasing Stars. Used in the implications page as operational guidance, not as a synthesis finding.

2. Bidwell (2011). Paying more to get less.

Full citation: Bidwell, M. (2011). Paying more to get less: The effects of external hiring versus internal mobility. Administrative Science Quarterly, 56(3), 369-407.

Link: https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Paying_More_ASQ_edits_FINAL.pdf

Publisher: SAGE Publications on behalf of the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University.

Review process: Published in Administrative Science Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal that uses double-blind review. ASQ is one of the most rigorous journals in management research.

Stated findings:

  • External hires were paid around 18 percent more than internal promotions into the same jobs, while also having higher levels of experience and education.
  • External hires received significantly lower performance evaluations during their first two years.
  • External hires had higher exit rates, both voluntary and involuntary.
  • External hires who survived past two years were promoted faster than internal hires.

Verification note: The premium figure was independently verified against the full text in June 2026. The paper states external hires "are initially paid around 18 per cent more than the promoted workers and have higher levels of experience and education."

3. Roll (1986). The hubris hypothesis of corporate takeovers.

Full citation: Roll, R. (1986). The hubris hypothesis of corporate takeovers. Journal of Business, 59(2), 197-216.

Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2353017

Publisher: University of Chicago Press.

Review process: Peer-reviewed. Foundational and heavily cited in the M&A literature.

Stated findings:

  • Acquirer cumulative abnormal returns around announcement dates are at best equal to zero, and often negative.
  • Bidding firms infected by hubris pay too much for their targets.
  • The empirical evidence supports the hubris hypothesis at least as well as alternative explanations such as taxes, synergy, or inefficient target management.

4. Boivie, Gee, Gentry, and Graffin (2025). Do boards learn to hire?

Full citation: Boivie, S., Gee, I. H., Gentry, R. J., and Graffin, S. D. (2025). Do boards learn to hire? The effect of board experience with CEO replacement on CEO performance. Strategic Management Journal, 46(10), 2467-2491.

Link (Wiley journal page, verified working): https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smj.3725

Alternate link (University of Georgia open access PDF): https://www.terry.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/Strategic-Management-Journal-2025-Boivie-Do-boards-learn-to-hire-The-effect-of-board-experience-with-CEO-replacement.pdf

Verification note: The findings below were independently verified against the full text via the Wiley page in June 2026, including the authors' use of the phrase "superstitious learning."

Publisher: Wiley on behalf of the Strategic Management Society. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 license, which is why the open access PDF link is available.

Review process: Peer-reviewed in Strategic Management Journal, a top-tier management journal. Received August 2022, revised May 2025, accepted May 2025. Approximately three years from initial submission to publication.

Stated findings:

  • Sample of S&P 1500 firms from 1999 to 2020.
  • Boards' prior experiences with hiring CEOs do not improve their ability to choose a higher-performing CEO.
  • Prior CEO selection experience has a small but consistent negative effect on subsequently hired CEO performance.
  • Little evidence that the domain specificity of prior CEO succession experience changes the result.
  • The authors interpret the pattern as suggestive of superstitious learning by directors.

Authors:

  • Steven Boivie, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University.
  • Inn Hee Gee, Michael F. Price College of Business, University of Oklahoma.
  • Richard J. Gentry, School of Business Administration, University of Mississippi.
  • Scott D. Graffin, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.

Portability counterpoint: peer-reviewed sources

These two academic sources test the exception clause that Groysberg identified. Both find that when the value-creating asset is portable, performance transfers more readily than in the analyst case.

5. Berry-Stolzle and Eckles (2019). Insurance salespersons and the book of business.

Full citation: Berry-Stolzle, T. R. and Eckles, D. L. (2019). It is about building a book of business: Incentives of insurance salespersons from future renewals. Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: Issues and Practice, 44(4), 702-731.

Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41288-019-00136-8

Access note: The Springer link opens to the official journal page. Full text is behind a paywall (per-article purchase or institutional access). I did not find an open-access SSRN or working paper version.

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (Springer Nature) on behalf of the Geneva Association.

Review process: Peer-reviewed. Received September 2017, accepted October 2018, published July 2019. Approximately one year of review at a Springer Nature journal specializing in insurance economics.

Stated findings:

  • Property-liability insurance policies have an average renewal rate of 89 percent.
  • A strong positive relationship exists between the fraction of renewals and salesperson output.
  • A strong positive relationship exists between output and salesperson compensation.
  • These results hold regardless of compensation structure (salary, commission, or mixed).
  • Findings support the view that insurance salespeople have strong incentives to build a book of business.

Authors:

  • Thomas R. Berry-Stolzle, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa.
  • David L. Eckles, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.

6. Gurun, Stoffman, and Yonker (2021). Unlocking clients.

Full citation: Gurun, U. G., Stoffman, N., and Yonker, S. E. (2021). Unlocking clients: The importance of relationships in the financial advisory industry. Journal of Financial Economics, 141(3).

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304405X21001562

SSRN working paper version: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3132127

Publisher: Elsevier.

Review process: Peer-reviewed. Journal of Financial Economics is one of the top finance journals globally.

Stated findings:

  • About 40 percent of client assets follow advisors when they move between firms.
  • The ability to maintain client relationships is a significant predictor of advisor employment decisions.
  • Once clients are "unlocked" via the Broker Protocol, firms become less willing to fire advisors for misconduct.
  • Firms that unlock their clients subsequently experience higher levels of misconduct and increase their fees.

Sample: over 760,000 financial advisors managing approximately $28 trillion in assets. Identification uses firm-level variation in adoption of the 2004 Protocol for Broker Recruiting (commonly called the Broker Protocol) as exogenous variation in client transferability.

Verification note: The 40 percent figure, the sample size, and the protocol identification strategy were independently verified against the paper in June 2026. The paper's own language refers to "the 2004 creation of the Protocol for Broker Recruiting (hereafter, 'the protocol')."

Portability counterpoint: industry research

These sources are not peer-reviewed. They come from financial services analytics firms and consulting houses. They measure adjacent but not identical questions. Use them to bracket practitioner-side numbers, not as primary evidence.

7. Cerulli Associates research on advisor transitions.

Reports referenced:

Publisher: Cerulli Associates, a financial services analytics firm based in Boston.

Review process: Industry research. Methodology is proprietary. Based on advisor and broker-dealer surveys. Not peer-reviewed.

Stated findings:

  • Advisors who switch broker-dealers lose approximately 22 percent of assets during transition.
  • Advisors who move to an independent model lose approximately 18 percent.
  • Operational challenges, learning new technology systems, and lost revenue during transition are the top reported difficulties.

Note: Cerulli reports asset loss during transition. The 22 percent loss figure does not tell us where those assets went. Assets lost could have stayed with the original firm under a new advisor, moved to a different firm, been managed independently by the client, or remained unaccounted for. Reporting the figure as "78 percent follow the advisor" would be an inference, not a stated finding.

Footnote-only citation

This source is cited in the piece but does not carry analytical weight. Use in supporting context, not as a primary anchor.

8. Bertrand and Mullainathan (2001). Are CEOs rewarded for luck?

Full citation: Bertrand, M. and Mullainathan, S. (2001). Are CEOs rewarded for luck? The ones without principals are. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(3), 901-932.

Link: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/116/3/901/1899775

Publisher: Oxford University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Review process: Published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, one of the top five peer-reviewed economics journals globally.

Stated findings:

  • CEO pay responds to observable shocks beyond the CEO's control as much as it responds to general performance.
  • A skimming model, where the CEO has captured the pay-setting process, is consistent with this fact.
  • Better-governed firms pay their CEOs less for luck.

Role in the piece: Supports the broader claim that talent markets do not cleanly distinguish skill from luck. Not the closest mirror to the sports findings. Footnote use only.

Notes on industry comparability

The portability spectrum the piece will argue rests on three populations:

  1. Equity research analysts. Groysberg (2010). Performance heavily dependent on firm infrastructure.
  2. Financial advisors in broker-dealer settings. Gurun, Stoffman, and Yonker (2021). About 40 percent of client assets follow on a move.
  3. Insurance salespeople in property-liability lines. Berry-Stolzle and Eckles (2019). High book renewal rates support strong portability of revenue.

The sports populations (NHL free agency at the team level, NFL free agency at the team level, NBA rotation players at the player level, and NHL Play for Contract at the contract level) sit in a fourth category: athletes whose physical skill transfers but whose system fit, role, teammates, and coaching do not.

These are different populations. They are not measuring the same number. The piece should frame this as a spectrum across populations, not as a direct comparison of identical metrics.

Status

Source list is locked.

  • All links verified to open the intended studies and pages.
  • All author names confirmed.
  • McKinsey, Schwab, and Morningstar industry sources dropped. Primary sources only.
  • Bertrand and Mullainathan moved to footnote-only citation.
  • Boivie, Gee, Gentry, and Graffin (2025) added as a fourth primary anchor.

The piece is now drafted using seven sources total: six peer-reviewed (four primary anchors and two portability counterpoints), one industry research source for practitioner context, and one footnote-only peer-reviewed source.