Does individual work performance follow a Paretian distribution?
An alert of a follow up paper ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF JOB PERFORMANCE: THE ROLE OF MEASUREMENT CHARACTERISTICS IN OBSERVED DEPARTURES FROM NORMALITY and subsequent search brought me to this discussion. I don't have full access to these articles unfortunately.

Of the two questions that posed, no, I wouldn't expect to find a normal distribution and no, I wouldn't expect to find a pareto distribution. As was mentioned in the G+ discussion that Artem linked to, what we tend to see is some skewed distribution such as a log-normal.

A good tool for exploring these types of situations, especially in a dynamic / systems-based situation is to use simulation.  This is what I did in a 2010 blog post on 'forced ranking' which at it's heart frequently assumes normally distributed performance.

The post shows selection of any sort quickly produces a skewed population. This selection can be either on entry level selection or during a performance review cycle.  What I didn't explore in that simple model, but again supports the outcome, is self-selection - i.e. the likelihood of an employee leaving is to some degree based on their assessment of fit.

I also explore what happens if we use a probability distribution not only for the individual, but also a distribution for the likely measurement error (because only in rare situations can be objectively measure performance.) For me this is the sort of instance where a Bayesian Hierarchical model makes sense.

In my day job working with senior HR people to help them understand their workforces I find simulation a powerful tool. We can make a few simple assumptions and show that over time unexpected results will occur.  Many times it will show that normal distributions don't logically hold over time.