Boris Groysberg: Chasing Stars: the Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance

530/ASQ, September 2010 In Chasing Stars , Boris Groysberg attempts to answer a critical question about labor markets: are employees’ talents and skills portable across fi rms so that employee performance will remain constant after a change of employers? In answering this question, Groysberg focuses exclusively on “star” knowledge workers who are highly sought after by managers attempting to boost their own fi rms’ performance. Thus this book provides an evidence-based examination of the underpinnings of a common managerial myth described by Pfeffer and Sutton (2006): star systems are associated with strong fi rm performance. The book does not directly explore the effect on fi rm performance of hiring stars. But it does examine an essential assumption that must be true if hiring stars has a positive effect on fi rm performance, namely, that the performance of star employees will remain unchanged after they change employers.