If the blog post seems anecdotal, there's a great, underused book, 'Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations' by Robert Austin that covers his CMU PhD work, which came to the same conclusion as the quote attributed to Harford: "If a job is complex, multifaceted and involves subtle trade-offs, the best approach is to hire good people, pay them the going rate and tell them to do the job to the best of their ability." It doesn't hurt to make sure they don't have to worry about where to get, e.g., paper clips, lunch, or health care, so some level of administration is helpful.