Management practices across firms and countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen
Contributors: Genakos, Christos; Sadun, Raffaella; Van Reenen, John; Harvard Business School
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 12-052
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2011
Place of publication: [Boston]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 40
Description: 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 twenty countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best managed. Firms in developing countries, such as Brazil, China and India tend to be poorly managed. American retail firms and hospitals are also well managed by international standards, although American schools are worse managed than those in several other developed countries. We also find substantial variation in management practices across organizations in every country and every sector, mirroring the heterogeneity in the spread of performance in these sectors. One factor linked to this variation is ownership. Government, family, and founder owned firms are usually poorly managed, while multinational, dispersed shareholder and private-equity owned firms are typically well managed. Stronger product market competition and higher worker skills are associated with better management practices. Less regulated labor markets are associated with improvements in incentive management practices such as performance based promotion.
Notes: "December 2011" -- Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references.