Dancing with the stars: Benefits of a star employee’s temporary absence for organizational performance

Research Summary: While research has focused primarily on stars as individual contributors, we examine organizational situations where stars must work closely with non‐stars. We argue that, in such situations, building teamwork around a star is an exercise in learning under complexity. In response, organizations prioritize interactions involving the star to simplify learning. This simplification, however, creates organizational myopia. We claim that a star’s temporary absence helps the organization overcome myopia by triggering a search for new routines. When he returns, the organization may combine these new routines with pre‐absence routines to improve teamwork and performance. We exploit injuries to star players in the National Basketball Association as an exogenous shock and find that on average, teams perform better after a star’s return than before his absence. Managerial Summary: This study examines the effect of the temporary absence of a star employee on organizational performance. We find evidence that a star employee’s temporary absence helps the organization overcome an over‐reliance on the star and improve teamwork. Improved teamwork, in turn, enables the organization to perform better upon the star’s return than it did prior to his absence. This result suggests that organizations might want to revisit the tendency to view stars as too valuable to lose, even for a short time. In particular, organizations may want to pull stars from ongoing projects and encourage them to attend professional development programs. A star’s temporary absence and return from such a program improves not only the star’s skills but also the organization’s teamwork.