Blinded by the Sun? Celebrity-Tie

Bias Effects on NFL Coaches’ Careers

Martin Kilduff, University College London

Craig Crossland, University of Texas at Austin

Wenpin Tsai, Penn State

Matthew Bowers, University of Texas at Austin

Why do people get ahead?

Network ties as lenses that bias decision-makers’

assessments of candidates observable

qualifications

Appropriate experience and record of achievement (universalism)

The right social networkconnections (particularism)

Social Network Theory

• Hard-to-achieve network connections can

signal underlying quality to observers.

• High-status network connections function as

prisms through which the quality of the

individual is assessed (cf. Podolny, 2001).

Prior cognitive social network

research

• Cognitive social network research has been

limited to the use of data concerning

perceived networks (Brands, 2013)

• The sociology of social networks uses

cognitive theory applied more generally to

understand how actual social network

connections affect appraisals (Podolny, 2001)

Research Questions

• How do celebrity ties distort decision-makers’

views of applicants’ qualifications?

• How do celebrity ties affect employees’ career

outcomes over time?

– Scapegoating

– Demotion

Contributions to Theory

• Celebrity-tie bias concept

– Industry stars bring beneficial gains to colleagues

• Social ties as lenses

– distort perceptions of other attributes –

contribution to networks as prisms

• Balanced perspective on social capital

– the debate over benefits and drawbacks of social

connections

Celebrity Ties: a connection between a star manager, whose

name is known and renowned to everyone in the profession, and

a subordinate member of the star manager's team

• weak ties (distant and sporadic connections – Granovetter,

1973).

• interorganizational latent ties (ties between organizations

that are currently inactive – Mariotti and Delbridge, 2012).

• interpersonal dormant ties (former social ties that have

lapsed – Levin, Walter, and Murnighan, 2011).

• career imprinting (the stamp of a distinctive organizational

culture on individuals' careers – Higgins, 2005).

Celebrity-Tie Bias

People:

• see others through the halo of perceived

high-status friends

• use cognitive reference points (such as

high status people) to make sense of

complex environments

• exaggerate the importance of high-status

others

Celebrity-Tie Bias

Affiliation with high status actors is a positive predictor of career

advancement (Halgin, 2006).

Hypothesis 1: Possessing a workplace tie to a

celebrated manager is positively associated

with the likelihood of being promoted.

How is celebrity-tie bias magnified or

corrected?

People get ahead because others distort their

value based on celebrity ties?

People get punished if the great expectations

aroused by celebrity ties are not fulfilled?

Celebrity-tied promoted people reach their level

of incompetence?

Magnification: The celebrity-tie positive effect

on promotions is enhanced for individuals…

…with less rather than more industry experience.

…with a record of affiliation with successful

organizations.

Celebrity tie weakens the importance of

career experience (H2)

Biases affect judgment under uncertainty (T & K,

1982).

Celebrity ties are likely to prove most beneficial

for individuals with little relevant work

experience.

Celebrity ties confer cognitive social capital that

substitutes for experience.

Celebrity Ties Makes Good

Performance Count More (H3)

Performance of junior coaches hard to assess.

Confirmation bias will tend to attribute team

success more to coaches with celebrity ties.

Celebrity coaches as cognitive reference points.

Easier to answer: “Is this person associated with

someone whose performance is easy to

assess?”

Correction of celebrity-tie bias

• Scapegoating: Celebrity tie magnifies the

negative aspects of bad performance

• Peter Principle: People rise to their level of

incompetence

Organization’s leader is fired � celebrity-tied

subordinates exit the industry (H4)

Violation of positive expectations leads to

disappointment and unwillingness to work

with the “great expectations” individual (Rink &

Ellemers, 2012)

Individuals, not teams, are blamed for failure

(Naquin & Tynan, 2003).

High profile individuals “sacrificed” for the

collective good (Boeker, 1992).

Peter-Principle Effect• People rise to their level of incompetence due

to mismatches between job requirements and

skills

• Observers are prompted to correct their

celebrity-tie bias by penalizing the celebrity-

tied individuals.

• Celebrity-tied promoted individuals are more

likely to receive demotions relative to non-

celebrity-tied promoted individuals (H4).

Competition for new

knowledge

•Sign stealing

•Payment for injury

• NFL draft

• Revenue sharing

• Salary cap

• Schedule adjustments

• Free agency restricted

•Head coach like CEO

of 3 divisions

•NFL valued at $33B

28-32 team National Football League1980-2010, 1298 coaches, 10,269 coach-team-years

Methods

Sample

• 1298 coaches entered the NFL between 1980-

2010: our sample

• 10,269 coach-team-year observations

• Data from NFL Record and Fact Book

• College and/or non-NFL coaching and playing

Name Position

Jim Caldwell Head Coach

Clyde Christensen Offensive Coordinator

Larry Coyer Defensive Coordinator

Jim Bob Cooter Offensive Assistant

Richard Howell Assistant Strength and

Conditioning Coach

Gene Huey Running Backs

Pete Metzelaars Offensive Line

Tom Moore Senior Offensive Assistant

Mike Murphy Linebackers

Rod Perry Special Assistant to the

Defense

Ron Prince Assistant, Offensive Line

Frank Reich Quarterbacks

Ray Rychelski Special Teams

Bill Teerlinck Defensive Assistant

John Teerlinck Defensive Line

Ricky Thomas Tight Ends

Jon Torine Strength and Conditioning

Ron Turner Wide Receivers

Alan Williams Defensive Backs

2010 Indianapolis Colts Coaching Roster

Coaching Positions for 1298 coaches in Sample

1. Head Coach (86)

2. Assistant head coach (80) Senior

3. Coordinator (140)

4. Position coach 565)

5. Assistant position coach / other (427)

1st head coach = 1 in year Smith attains level 1.

Promotion = 1 in year when Smith moves up.

Celebrity tie1. Winning 1 or more superbowls (23).

2. Appearing in 2 or more superbowls (18).

3. Winning 5 or more playoff games (30).

4. Appearing in 10 or more playoff games (24).

5. Winning 100 or more regular season games

(24).

6. Being named Coach of the Year in 2 or more

years by AP or Sporting News (13).

celebrity-tie inter-item correlation = .67, α = .92

Career Performance, etc prior to

start of focal year

• Individual’s Career performance = # NFL wins

prior to focal year / total number of games

coached

• Career experience = # of NFL years coaching

• Senior coaching tenure = # of years coaching

at levels 1, 2, 3

• Head coaching tenure =total # of years at level

1

Head coach dismissal (180 left)

• the dismissal of a head coach will lead to

assistant coach’s exit? (11 others on the

roster)

• 2 independent coders, (ICC .91), 142 =

dismissals, 38 = voluntary

• Tested on sub-sample of all individuals (not

head coaches) on rosters where head coach

left during or just after the season

• NFL exit = 1 if assistant coach never coached

again

Post-Promotion Outcome• We coded the outcome of every promotion in our data (N =

630).

• An individual could conclude a promoted role in one of four

ways: 1) a further promotion with the same or another team

(N = 86); 2) a lateral move to another team (N = 133); 3) a

demotion with the same or another team (N = 204); or 4) exit

from our sample (N = 83).

• We therefore coded outcomes into positive category including

a further promotion or a lateral move, and negative category

including demotion.

• In addition, 114 coaches were still in their original promoted

roles (i.e., with the same team and at the same coaching

level) in 2010, at the end of our sample frame.

1. Celebrity tie

2. Promotion

3. First senior

4. First HC

5. Career performance

6. Career experience

7. Senior tenure

8. HC tenure

9. Team performance

10. Exit

11. Team HC dismissal

12. Age of coach

13. Non-NFL experience

14. NFL playing tenure

15. NFL playing success (AP All-Pro

Team

16. QB college

17. QB NFL

18. Roster size = # coaches

19. Team total (# diff. teams)

20. NFC (vs. AFC)

21. Team age (# years in NFL)

22. Team past performance

23. Team super bowls

24. Super bowl recency

25. Previous HC co-working

26. IMR (inverse Mills Ratio)

27. Calendar year

Endogeneity

• Coaches seeking employment are likely to

perceive all 32 teams as potentially successful.

• Probit model to regress the binary celebrity tie

variable on variables likely to affect coach hire.

• Includes predictors not included in second

stage model: QB NFL, QB College

• Inverse Mills ratio (IMR) used in our second-

stage model.

DV: Celebrity tie

Constant -2.96** (0.18)

Age -0.14** (0.01)

Playing experience 0.00 (0.00)

Playing success 0.05 (0.10)

QB college 0.15** (0.05)

QB NFL 0.22* (0.11)

Career experience 0.09** (0.01)

Non-NFL experience -0.02 (0.02)

Career performance 2.19** (0.13)

Roster size 0.04** (0.01)

Team total 0.23** (0.01)

Log likelihood -4392.09

Chi-squared 3785.18**

First-stage Probit Model for Selection

Bias Correction

Analyses

• Binary DVS, so we used random-effects logistic

regression, fixed effects logit models after

omitting all coach-level variables (that don’t

change year to year.

• interaction effects: we created interaction

terms by mean-centering and multiplying,

respectively, career experience and career

performance with celebrity tie.

Results

• The longer an individual stays in the NFL, the

greater the chance of attaining a celebrity tie

(r = .53, p < .01).

• Positive team performance protects people

from industry exit (r = -17, p < .01)

Celebrity Ties and Career Success (H1)

Possessing a celebrity tie to a successful head

coach is positively associated with:

- being promoted (β = 0.39, p < .01);

- attaining first senior coaching position

(β = 0.55, p < .01);

- attaining first head coaching position

(β = 1.11, p < .01).

Did Celebrity Tie Facilitate Promotion?

• Overall promotion probability increased 45%.

– mean probability of being promoted in any given

coach-year was 3.81% for individuals without

celebrity ties and 5.54% for those with celebrity

ties.

• probability of receiving a first senior

promotion increased by 73%

• probability of receiving a first head coaching

position increased by 200%

Did a celebrity tie weaken the importance

of career experience? (H2)?

–being promoted (β = -0.02, ns)

–1st senior coaching position (β = -0.09, p < .01);

–1st head coaching position (β = -0.09, ns).

Did Celebrity Tie Make Good

Performance Count More? (H3)

Having a celebrity tie boosted how career performance affected:

–being promoted (β = 2.18, p < .01);

–1st senior coaching position (β=2.47, p < .05);

–1st head coaching position (β=5.55, p < 05).

Did celebrity tie enhance the negative

aspects of bad performance? (H4)

The dismissal of a head coach predicted

assistant coach’s exit (β=0.54, p < 05).

• Probability of exiting the NFL was 59% higher

for those with celebrity ties

• probability 15.4% vs. 9.7%

Peter Principle? Celebrity-tied promotions

more likely to end in demotion? (H5)

Coaches with

celebrity ties

Coaches without

celebrity ties

Total

Promotion or

lateral move71 (46.1%) 158 (56.6%) 229

Demotion 83 (53.9) 121 (43.4%) 204

Total 154 279 433

Chi-square test (χ2 = 4.413, df = 1; p < .05), Fisher’s exact test (p < .05).At coach-year level, pairwise correlation between celebrity-tied promotionand positive outcome was negative and significant (r = -.07, p < .01).

Robustness ChecksResults unchanged :

• if all individual-level control variables omitted and fixed effects used

instead of random effects.

• If we used network of all NFL coaches from 1980 onward (N = 1565) rather

than just those that first entered the NFL during or after 1980 (N = 1298).

• If we replace binary celebrity tie measure with an ordinal measure. For

each coach-year where celebrity tie was coded as zero, we made no

changes. For coach-years where the celebrity tie was coded as one, we

replaced this with the number of years that the individual had worked

with the sender of the celebrity tie (i.e., the relevant successful head

coach). If an individual had worked with multiple senders, we used the

sender that the individual had spent the most time working with. This

alternative measure provides an indication of the strength of the celebrity

tie.

Robustness of celebrity tie coding

• If the general celebrity tie measure replaced with, in turn,

each of the six component measures, results were consistent

for five of these measures (Super Bowl wins, Super Bowl

appearances, playoff wins, playoff appearances, and 100

wins), but were not robust to the use of the celebrity tie

(coach of the year) measure on its own.

• Instead of including all 36 coaches that had achieved a single

milestone (Table 3), we restricted our sample to only those 22

coaches that had achieved at least four of the six milestones.

Our findings were again unchanged.

Did celebrity ties represent knowledge transfer?

• Assuming rational observers perceive greater knowledge

transfer when there was a knowledge-match between the two

parties.

• A celebrity tie in a given coach-year was classified as a

“knowledge match” if the celebrity tie-sending coach’s

historical experience was in the same domain as the tie-

receiving coach. If not, the tie was categorized as a “no-

knowledge match.”

• both knowledge match ties and no-knowledge match ties

separately predicted promotions, first senior promotions, and

first head coaching appointments.

• regression coefficients for the two different types of celebrity

tie were not significantly different for any of the three models

(χ2 = 1.20; χ2 = 1.02; χ2 = 0.01; all ns).

Did celebrity coaches continue to pass on expertise to

ex-members of their coaching staff for years after they

leave?

• If so, celebrity-tie effects persist for many years.

• We re-coded data to record the length of time (in

years) that had passed since an individual coach had

first received their most recent celebrity tie.

• Working under a successful coach has no

incremental impact on promotion likelihood after the

first year in which the subordinate coach is out on his

own across all promotions, first senior promotions,

and first head coach promotions.

Summary of Results

• A celebrity tie to a successful head coach helped individuals

earn promotions in the NFL, including to senior positions and

head coach.

• For those individuals with little career experience (relative to

individuals with lots of experience), celebrity ties increased

the chances of achieving first senior appointments.

• The successes of celebrity-tied individuals counted for more in

promotion tournaments.

• Dark side of such celebrity connections: coaches with

celebrity ties were more likely to exit from the NFL following

the dismissal of the head coaches under whom they worked.

• Celebrity-tied coaches tended to get promoted beyond their

abilities relative to promoted coaches without the benefit of

celebrity ties.

Discussion

• What is new: celebrity tie as a biasing lens

that magnifies the importance of human

capital and exposes the individual to

scapegoating and demotion

• Does it pay to have connections to people

who are celebrated industry leaders (cf. Burt,

2010)?

Contribution

• A new theoretical direction social network

research: ties as lenses that distort individuals’

qualities both beneficially and detrimentally

• Different from cognitive social structure

research that focuses on misperceptions of

network ties

Contributions

• to the social capital approach that has

emphasized the effects of social network ties

on job mobility and achievement (e.g., Lin,

Cook, & Burt, 2001).

• To executive succession research: an

executive’s prior associations with celebrity

managers may help determine whether he or

she will rise to the top of a firm.

Practical Implications

• celebrity ties may have a “dark side” for both

organizations and individuals.

• social connections rather than just skills and

abilities enable people to move into positions

such as head coach.

• lessons learned concerning recruitment of

players have failed to be applied to hiring and

promoting coaching staff.

Limitations

• Special nature of the NFL

• Absence of specific coach performance

metrics

• No data on cognitive biases

Conclusion

• Affiliation with a successful manager can

facilitate or damage career progress

• Surprising given that competitive markets

reduce social network effects

• In making momentous decisions – such as

appointing a senior executive – judgments

concerning human capital can be swayed by

celebrity affiliations