Does Management Matter? with Raffaella Sadun, Part 1 of 3

In this seminar series, “Management Strategy and Beyond”, Raffaella Sadun discusses the role of management practices—and managers—for organizational performance. The sessions will include an overview of studies documenting the variation in the adoption of management practices across firms and countries, as well as its impact on firm performance. We will explore the reasons for the variation in management, and conclude with a session exploring the role of management in the public sector. In the first video of this three-part series, “Does Management Matter?”, Sadun reviews the evidence on the quality of management practices across firms, focusing on both variations across firms and their effect on firm performance. Sadun looks at findings emerging from “big-data” documenting the adoption of management practices across and within countries, as well as experimental studies aiming at identifying causal effects. Raffaella Sadun is the Thomas S. Murphy Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on the economics of productivity, management and organizational change. Her research documents the economic and cultural determinants of managerial choices, as well as their implications for organizational performance in both the private and public sector (including healthcare and education). She is among the founders of the World Management Survey and the Executive Time Use Study. Professor Sadun's work has appeared in leading peer reviewed journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Economic Journal, and has been featured in the business press, including The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. She is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Faculty Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, Research Affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research and Research Associate in the Ariadne Labs Program in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.