The Oscar for Best Picture goes to people, not to a studio. The rules for the 98th Academy Awards say: “The nominees will be those three or fewer producers who have performed the major portion of the producing functions.”
A “bona fide team of not more than two people” counts as a single producer only when the Producers Guild of America has certified the partnership. Every nominee must also be “determined awards-eligible by the Producers Guild of America.”
The National Basketball Association has named a Most Valuable Player every season since 1955-56. NBA players chose the winner in the early years. Since the 1980-81 season, a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters in the United States and Canada has decided.
Basketball is played five against five. The award names one player.
Individual contributor. This is an employee who manages no one. The human resources site of the State of Tennessee defines the term as “An employee who does not supervise others.”
IC. This is the short form. Technology companies use it for roles and career levels without direct reports.
In August 2010 the Los Angeles Times began publishing ratings of about 6,000 Los Angeles teachers by name. The ratings measured how much each teacher’s students gained on standardized tests, a method called value-added.
The reporter Jason Felch said that “individual teachers really matter.” Hundreds of teachers protested, and the union leader called for a boycott of the paper. The National Research Council had warned: “Too little is known about the accuracy of these methods to base high-stakes decisions on them right now.”
In Major League Baseball, the official scorer credits one pitcher with the win and one with the loss. Rule 9.17 gives the win to “that pitcher whose team assumes a lead” while he is pitching, with some exceptions. A starting pitcher usually has to complete five innings to get it. The loss goes to the pitcher who is “responsible for the run that gives the winning team a lead.”
Rule 9.12 does the same for mistakes in the field. An error is “a statistic charged against a fielder” whose misplay helped the other team.
The win is a famous number and a disputed one. In 2020 Matt Snyder of CBS Sports called it the “dumbest stat in all of sports.” In one game he described, a relief pitcher who recorded one out got the win. The starter threw four scoreless innings and did not get it.
“You may have heard the story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.” An important job had to be done, and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry, because it was Everybody’s job. In the end, Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done. The story is passed around in offices, schools and churches. Its author is unknown.
CATME stands for Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness. Purdue University developed it with support from the National Science Foundation. Students use it to rate themselves and each teammate in five areas. One area is contributing to the team’s work. The ratings look anonymous to the students, but the instructor sees who rated whom.
In 2015 its developers reported that more than 6,500 faculty at more than 1,200 institutions used it. One course syllabus on Bucknell University’s website multiplies each project grade by a personal grading factor. The factor typically ranges from 0.6 to 1.1, depending on the self and peer evaluations.
New York State requires every cardiac surgeon to report the results of bypass operations. In late 1991, after a lawsuit by the newspaper Newsday under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, the state released death rates for individual surgeons by name, adjusted for how sick the patients were.
Surgeons responded. In a survey published in 1999, a majority of the New York heart surgeons surveyed said they had refused to operate on at least one high-risk patient. Accounts of the survey give the share as 62% or 67%. In a survey published in 2005, 79% of interventional cardiologists in New York said the report cards influenced whether they offered angioplasty to high-risk patients.
An audit of an American public company is signed by the audit firm. Since 2017, the public can also learn the name of the one partner who led it. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board adopted the rule in December 2015. For audit reports issued on or after January 31, 2017, the firm must file a Form AP that gives “the name of the engagement partner.”
The board said the rule was “intended to provide increased transparency and accountability for key participants in issuer audits.”
That’s Mike’s project. She owns the redesign. He built that. Her numbers. American workplace speech attaches work to a named person as a matter of routine, in praise and in criticism alike. The attribution is automatic, and it runs both ways.