Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (28)
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- 2025
- Working Paper
Management and Firm Dynamism
By: Nicholas Bloom, Jonathan S. Hartley, Raffaella Sadun, Rachel Schuh and John Van Reenen
We show better-managed firms are more dynamic in plant acquisitions, disposals, openings and closings in U.S. Census and international data. Better-managed firms also birth better-managed plants, and improve the performance of the plants they acquire. To explain these... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Remote Work across Jobs, Companies, and Space
By: Stephen Hansen, Peter John Lambert, Nick Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Raffaella Sadun and Bledi Taska
The pandemic catalyzed an enduring shift to remote work. To measure and characterize
this shift, we examine more than 250 million job vacancy postings across five
English-speaking countries. Our measurements rely on a state-of-the-art language-processing
framework... View Details
- January 2021
- Article
Turbulence, Firm Decentralization and Growth in Bad Times
By: Philippe Aghion, Nicholas Bloom, Brian Lucking, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
What is the optimal form of firm organization during “bad times”? We present a model of delegation within the firm to show that the effect is ambiguous. The greater turbulence following macro shocks may benefit decentralized firms because the value of local information... View Details
- July 2020
- Article
Healthy Business? Managerial Education and Management in Healthcare
By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We investigate the link between hospital performance and managerial education by collecting a large database of management practices and skills in hospitals across nine countries. We find that hospitals that are closer to universities offering both medical education... View Details
- September 26, 2018
- Article
Ownership and Power Structure: Together at Last
By: Laura Alfaro, Nicholas Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew Newman, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
Economists have largely ignored the deep interdependency between integration and delegation. This column describes a new theory of integration and delegation choices aimed at shedding light on how these distinct elements of organizational design interact. Contrary to... View Details
- April 10, 2017
- Article
The Different Approaches Firms Use to Set Strategy
By: Kimberly Teti, Mu-Jeung Yang, Nicholas Bloom, Jan Rivkin and Raffaella Sadun
Many senior executives struggle to describe how they make strategic decisions. That’s a serious problem since the process for making strategic decisions can shape the strategy itself. To understand better how companies really make strategic choices, we interviewed 92... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Management as a Technology?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
Are some management practices akin to a technology that can explain firm and national productivity, or do they simply reflect contingent management styles? We collect data on core management practices from over 11,000 firms in 34 countries. We find large cross-country... View Details
- August 2015
- Article
Hospital Board and Management Practices Are Strongly Related to Hospital Performance on Clinical Quality Metrics
By: Thomas C Tsai, Ashish K. Jha, Atul A. Gawande, Robert S. Huckman, Nicholas Bloom and Raffaella Sadun
National policies to improve health care quality have largely focused on clinical provider outcomes and, more recently, payment reform. Yet the association between hospital leadership and quality, although crucial to driving quality improvement, has not been explored... View Details
- Article
Do Private Equity Firms Have Better Management Practices?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
Using an innovative survey measure of management practices on over 15,000 firms, we find private equity firms are better managed than government, family, and privately owned firms, and have similar management to publicly listed firms. This is true both in developed and... View Details
- Article
Does Management Matter in Schools?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year-olds in eight countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden,... View Details
Keywords: Management; Education; Business Strategy; Education Industry; Germany; Sweden; India; Canada; Italy; Brazil; United Kingdom; United States
- December 2014
- Article
The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization
By: Nicholas Bloom, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
Empirical studies on information communication technologies (ICT) typically aggregate the "information" and "communication" components together. We show theoretically and empirically that this is problematic. Information and communication technologies have very... View Details
- August 2014
- Article
The New Empirical Economics of Management
By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen
Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
The New Empirical Economics of Management
By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen
Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
The New Empirical Economics of Management
By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen
Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review... View Details
- November 2012
- Article
Does Management Really Work?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
HBR's 90th anniversary is a sensible time to revisit a basic question: Are organizations more likely to succeed if they adopt good management practices? The answer may seem obvious to most HBR readers, but these three economists cast their net much wider than that. In... View Details
- November 2012
- Article
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details
Keywords: Decentralization; Social Capital; Theory Of The Firm; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Diffusion Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Technology Adoption; Multinational Firms and Management
- February 2012
- Article
Americans Do IT Better: US Multinationals and the Productivity Miracle
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
US productivity growth accelerated after 1995 (unlike Europe's), particularly in sectors that intensively use information technologies (IT). Using two new micro panel datasets we show that US multinationals operating in Europe also experienced a "productivity miracle."... View Details
- February 2012
- Article
Management Practices across Firms and Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across 20 countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best... View Details
Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Competency and Skills; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizations; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Sectors; Performance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Private Equity; Multinational Firms and Management; United States; Germany; Japan; China; India
- 2011
- Working Paper
Management Practices Across Firms and Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across 20 countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing, American, Japanese, and German firms are the best... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details