2010/07/03 by W. Stanley Siebert, Stanley Siebert, Nikolay Zubanov +1 · 46 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Business #Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing #Corporate Finance and Governance #Marketing #Merger and Competition Analysis #Retail sales #Sales management
paper · open access · doi:10.1287/mnsc.1100.1188
published in Management Science 56(8), 1398-1414 (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences)
openalex publication_date 2010/07/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We use unique data from 245 stores of a UK retailer to study links among middle (store) manager skills, sales, and manager pay. We find that, of the six management practice areas surveyed, the most important is “commercial awareness,” where abler managers achieve up to 13.9% higher sales per worker. We find that many stores have poor managers on this indicator. However, the company is careful to incentivize managers, operating a scheme giving shares (approximately 20%) in both positive and negative deviations of actual sales from expected. Abler managers do not receive higher pay, implying that their skills are company specific.