Strategy
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- 2024
- Article
The International Empirics of Management
By: Daniela Scur, Scott Ohlmacher, John Van Reenen, Morten Bennedsen, Nick Bloom, Ali Choudhary, Lucia Foster, Jesse Groenewegen, Arti Grover, Sjoerd Hardeman, Leonardo Iacovone, Ryo Kambayashi, Marie-Christine Laible, Renata Lemos, Hongbin Li, Andrea Linarello, Mika Maliranta, Denis Medvedev, Charlotte Meng, John Miles Touya, Natalia Mandirola, Roope Ohlsbom, Atsushi Ohyama, Megha Patnaik, Mariana Pereira-López, Raffaella Sadun, Tatsuro Senga, Franklin Qian and Florian ZimmermannA country’s national income broadly depends on the quantity and quality of workers and capital. But how well these factors are managed within and between firms may be a key determinant of a country’s productivity and its GDP. Although social scientists have long studied the role of management practices in shaping business performance, their primary tool has been individual case studies. While useful for theory-building, such qualitative work is hard to scale and quantify. We present a large, scalable dataset measuring structured management practices at the business level across multiple countries. We measure practices related to performance monitoring, target-setting, and human resources. We document a set of key stylized facts, which we label “the international empirics of management”. In all countries, firms with more structured practices tend to also have superior economic performance: they are larger in scale, are more profitable, have higher labor productivity and are more likely to export. This consistency was not obvious ex-ante, and being able to quantify these relationships is valuable. We also document significant variation in practices across and within countries, which is important in explaining differences in the wealth of nations. The positive relationship between firm size and structured management practices is stronger in countries with more open and free markets, suggesting that stronger competition may allow firms with more structured management practices to grow larger, thereby potentially raising aggregate national income.
- 2024
- Article
The International Empirics of Management
By: Daniela Scur, Scott Ohlmacher, John Van Reenen, Morten Bennedsen, Nick Bloom, Ali Choudhary, Lucia Foster, Jesse Groenewegen, Arti Grover, Sjoerd Hardeman, Leonardo Iacovone, Ryo Kambayashi, Marie-Christine Laible, Renata Lemos, Hongbin Li, Andrea Linarello, Mika Maliranta, Denis Medvedev, Charlotte Meng, John Miles Touya, Natalia Mandirola, Roope Ohlsbom, Atsushi Ohyama, Megha Patnaik, Mariana Pereira-López, Raffaella Sadun, Tatsuro Senga, Franklin Qian and Florian ZimmermannA country’s national income broadly depends on the quantity and quality of workers and capital. But how well these factors are managed within and between firms may be a key determinant of a country’s productivity and its GDP. Although social scientists have long studied the role of management practices in shaping business performance, their...
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- October 2024
- Case
Tonik
By: Andy Wu, Maliha Malek Quadir and Aticus PetersonThis case study examines Tonik, the first digital bank in the Philippines, as it navigates the challenges of scaling its lending operations and achieving profitability in an evolving fintech landscape. It explores Tonik's journey from its launch in 2018 to early 2024, highlighting the company's innovative approach to digital banking, its rapid deposit growth, and its struggles to fine-tune its lending products. Key themes include the tension between growth and profitability, regulatory challenges, and the strategic decisions faced by founder Gregory Krasnov in balancing investor expectations with market realities. The case provides insights into the complexities of digital banking in emerging markets and the broader fintech funding environment.
- October 2024
- Case
Tonik
By: Andy Wu, Maliha Malek Quadir and Aticus PetersonThis case study examines Tonik, the first digital bank in the Philippines, as it navigates the challenges of scaling its lending operations and achieving profitability in an evolving fintech landscape. It explores Tonik's journey from its launch in 2018 to early 2024, highlighting the company's innovative approach to digital banking, its rapid...
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- 2024
- Working Paper
Generative AI and The Nature of Work
By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin XuRecent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate considerable potential to complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid to how AI might change the nature of work itself. How do individuals, especially those in the knowledge economy, adjust how they work when they start using AI? Using the setting of open source software, we study individual level effects that AI has on task allocation. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the deployment of GitHub Copilot, a generative AI code completion tool for software developers. Leveraging millions of work activities over a two year period, we use a program eligibility threshold to investigate the impact of AI technology on the task allocation of software developers within a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity design. We find that having access to Copilot induces such individuals to shift task allocation towards their core work of coding activities and away from non-core project management activities. We identify two underlying mechanisms driving this shift - an increase in autonomous rather than collaborative work, and an increase in exploration activities rather than exploitation. The main effects are greater for individuals with relatively lower ability. Overall, our estimates point towards a large potential for AI to transform work processes and to potentially flatten organizational hierarchies in the knowledge economy.
- 2024
- Working Paper
Generative AI and The Nature of Work
By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin XuRecent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate considerable potential to complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid to how AI might change the nature of work itself. How do individuals, especially...
About the Unit
The Strategy unit studies firms as competitors in an economic landscape. Key issues include: the development and effectiveness of firm strategy at both a business and corporate level; the analysis of the competitive environment; and the sustainability of strategy over time.
Our research, course development, and teaching draws on multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, and political science, and focuses on both domestic and global competition. The objective of the work is to generate findings and develop concepts that will help managers improve their strategic decisions while advancing the state of knowledge in the academic study of strategy and related disciplines.
Recent Publications
The International Empirics of Management
- 2024 |
- Article |
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Tonik
- October 2024 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Generative AI and The Nature of Work
- 2024 |
- Working Paper |
- Faculty Research
Edizione
- October 2024 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Gojek (A)
- October 2024 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
The Semiconductor Industry
- October 2024 |
- Background Note |
- Faculty Research
EU‘s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act
- October 2024 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Why Multibusiness Strategies Fail and How to Make Them Succeed
- September–October 2024 |
- Article |
- Harvard Business Review