Current Research
Published Papers
Are Family Friendly Workplace Practices A Valuable Firm Resource?
Nicholas Bloom, Toby Kretschmer and John Van Reenen, 2010
Published in the Strategic Management Journal ▼▲ This paper examines firm and environmental characteristics which may determine better family-friendly workplace practices.
New approaches to measuring management and firm organization
Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen, 2010
Published in the American Economic Review ▼▲
This paper describes our management research and survey tool for measuring management and organizational practices.
Does product market competition lead firms to decentralize?
Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, 2010
Published in the American Economic Review ▼▲
This paper utilizes management measures from 4000 firms across 12 countries to investigate whether greater product market competition increases firm decentralization.
Modern management: Good for the Environment or just Hot Air?
Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Ralf Martin and Raffaella Sadun, 2010
Published in The Economic Journal ▼▲
This paper matches management measures to firm production and energy usage information and examines how management practices are associated with improved productivity and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries
Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen, 2007
Published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics (click here for Working Paper) ▼▲
This paper discusses the methodology behind our management survey tool and examines how our management measures are associated with firm-level productivity, profitability, Tobin Q, and survival rates as well as product market competition and firm ownership structure.
The Land that Lean Manufacturing Forgot: Management Practices in Transition Countries
Nicholas Bloom, Helena Schweiger and John Van Reenen, 2011
Published in The Economics of Transition ▼▲
This paper looks at management practices from over 1800 face-to-face interviews with factory managers in 10 Central Asian transition countries. It shows that competition, multinational ownership, private ownership and human capital are all strongly correlated with better management and suggests that poor management practices may be impeding development in the region.
Working Papers
Americans do I.T. Better: US Multinationals and the Productivity Miracle
Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, 2009 ▼▲
This paper shows that US multinationals operating in Europe obtain higher productivity from information technologies than non-US multinationals mainly due to its people management practices on promotions, rewards, hiring and firing.
The organization of firms across countries
Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, 2009 ▼▲
This paper utilizes organizational structure data to discuss how social capital (as proxied by regional trust and the Rule of Law), non-hierarchical religions and product market competition can improve aggregate productivity through facilitating greater firm decentralization.
Do private equity owned firms have better management practices?
Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, 2009 ▼▲
This report evaluates the differences in management practices and performance between private equity owned firms and other ownership
types.
The distinct effect of communication technology and information technology on firm organization
Nicholas Bloom, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, 2009 ▼▲
This paper utilizes management data in the US and Europe to examine the impact of ICT on worker autonomy, plant manager autonomy and spans of control.
Do Management Practices Affect the Economic Performance of Firms Located in Southeast Wisconsin, USA
Gary F. Keller, 2009 ▼▲
This paper utilizes management data from 682 for-profit manufacturing and service firms in southeast Wisconsin to determine whether a firm’s management practices are related to its economic performance defined as increases/decreases in the number of employees.
Survey Papers
Management practices across firms and countries
Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, 2012
Forthcoming in the Academy of Management Perspectives ▼▲
This paper presents evidence from our cross-country management data to examine substantial variation in management practices across organizations in every country, mirroring the heterogeneity in the spread of performance in the manufacturing, healthcare, education and retail sectors.
Why do management practices differ across firms and countries?
Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen, 2010
Published in the Journal for Economics Perspectives ▼▲
This paper presents evidence from our cross-country management data to examine variations in management practices as a possible explanation for persistent differences in productivity at the firm and the national level.
Human resource management and productivity
Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen, 2010
Published in the Handbook of Labor Economics ▼▲
This paper examines the relationship between Human Resource Management and productivity, looking at some of the determinants of HRM risk, competition, ownership and regulation and analyzing the impact of HRM on productivity.
Recent advances in the empirics of organizational economics
Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, 2009
Published in the Annual Review of Economics: Recent advances in the empirics of organizational economics ▼▲
This paper presents a survey of recent econometric works on management practices and decentralization which have contributed to empirical organizational economics.
Management practices, work-life balance, and productivity: a review of some recent evidence
Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen, 2006
Published in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy ▼▲
This paper presents a survey of recent econometric works on management practices and work-life balance.
Country-specific Papers
Transition: Where should it stand and where should it go?
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2010 ▼▲
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and World Bank have run a management and organization survey as part of their Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) to collect management data on a number of transitional countries. The report, published in the EBRD’s Transition Report 2010, Chapter 5, examines how well firms are managed in the transition region and how they compare in this respect to firms in non-transition countries.
Management Matters: New Zealand
Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand, 2010 ▼▲
This report, commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) and undertaken by Professor Roy Green and Dr. Renu Agarwal from University of Technology Sydney, benchmarks management practices in New Zealand manufacturing firms against other countries.
Management Matters: Australia
Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Australia, 2009 ▼▲
This report, commissioned by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) and undertaken by Professor Roy Green and Dr. Renu Agarwal from University of Technology Sydney, benchmarks management practices in Australia manufacturing firms against other countries.
Management Matters: Canada
Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity, 2009▼▲
This report uses management data to examine the relationship between management capabilities and productivity and innovation in the manufacturing sector in Canada and in Ontario.
Management Matters: Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland
Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment, InvestNI, the Department for Employment and Learning, Intertrade Ireland, Forfas and the Management Development Council, 2009 ▼▲
This report, commissioned by the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment, InvestNI, the Department for Employment and Learning, Intertrade Ireland, Forfas and the Management Development Council, looks at management practices in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and compare managerial skills in manufacturing firms with those in Great Britain and other countries.
Future Research
US Census Data Survey: We are also working with Erik Brynjolfsson, Lucia Foster and Ron Jarmin, to develop and run a large-scale national census surveys on management practices. This will be delivered by the US Census Bureau. This study will collect about 45,000 surveys on management and organizational practices across the US. The data should hopefully be available publicly in an anonymous form and to authorized researchers via the US Census Bureau’s confidential data-user system.
