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- 2024
- Working Paper
Human-Computer Interactions in Demand Forecasting and Labor Scheduling Decisions
By: Caleb Kwon, Ananth Raman and Jorge Tamayo
We investigate whether corporate officers should grant managers discretion to override AI-driven demand forecasts and labor scheduling tools. Analyzing five years of administrative data from a large grocery retailer using such an AI tool, encompassing over 500 stores,...
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- September 2023
- Article
The Changing Role of Managers
By: Letian Zhang
This study argues that the increase in middle management in recent decades was
accompanied by a major shift in managerial roles. Increased task complexity and a
new management philosophy have reduced the need for direct supervision but generated
a much greater...
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- February 2023
- Article
The Effect of Systems of Management Controls on Honesty in Managerial Reporting
By: Aishwarrya Deore, Susanna Gallani and Ranjani Krishnan
While budgetary controls with capital rationing are optimal in theory and widespread in practice, empirical research documents their association with higher employee dishonesty compared to budgetary controls without rationing. In this study, we examine whether...
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- May 2022
- Article
Variance Analysis: New Insights from Health Care Applications
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Susanna Gallani
We use a health care application to illustrate how variance analysis can be used to benchmark costs across similar service delivery sites. Variances for personnel costs, typically the largest cost component in service organizations, are calculated for price, quantity,...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
An Anatomy of Performance Monitoring
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
Performance monitoring is a mainstay management tool in most organizations. Yet we still know little about whether—and why—better monitoring yields better performance in practice. To shed light on these questions, we study the introduction of a performance monitoring...
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Keywords:
Performance Monitoring;
Worker Skills;
Skill Depreciation;
Managerial Inattention;
On-the-job Training;
Productivity;
Multitasking;
Quick Serve Restaurants;
Performance Evaluation;
Employees;
Competency and Skills;
Training;
Performance Productivity;
Management;
Information Technology;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Puerto Rico
- Article
A Better Way to Assess Managerial Performance
Total shareholder return (TSR) has become the definitive metric for gauging performance. Unlike accounting measures such as revenue growth or earnings per share that reflect the past, TSR is based on share price and thus captures investor expectations of what will...
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- Article
Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: A Paradigm Shift
By: Ethan Rouen and George Serafeim
The last decade has seen an exponential increase in corporate sustainability activities and efforts by investors to use these activities in their portfolio formation, valuation, and stewardship activities. This paper explains the need for a uniform strategy to measure...
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- 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...
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- September–October 2020
- Article
Managing Churn to Maximize Profits
By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta
Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a...
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- October 2018
- Case
P-Will at DISCO
By: Ethan Bernstein, Naoko Jinjo and Yuna Sakuma
From the outside, DISCO—a Japan-based manufacturer of precision tools for semiconductor production devices—appeared to be a rather ordinary company that had achieved rather extraordinary success: it had simultaneously achieved 70% global market share, had lifted its...
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- April 2018
- Case
Happy UAE
By: Joshua Schwartzstein, Brian J. Hall, Tiffany Y. Chang, Karim Sameh and Alpana Thapar
This case centers on the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) national goal of raising the happiness of its residents and visitors through ambitious government initiatives. They combined this bold national goal with an accountability structure (incentive plan) built on Key...
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- March 2018
- Article
Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster
By: Hazhir Rahmandad, Rebecca Henderson and Nelson P. Repenning
Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"—delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term investments—makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive...
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- 2018
- Book
Horngren's Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis
By: Srikant M. Datar and Madhav Rajan
Horngren’s Cost Accounting defines the cost accounting market and continues to innovate today by consistently integrating the most current practice and theory into the text. This acclaimed, market-leading text emphasizes the basic theme of “different costs for...
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- August 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
VTS
By: Mark Roberge and Michael Roberts
The case raises issues around sales force deployment and management issues in the SaaS industry. Specifically, VTS sells a software product to the real estate industry and has designed a Go-to-Market strategy for what the founders perceive to be the unique...
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- 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...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Economic Uncertainty and Earnings Management
By: Luke C.D. Stein and Charles C.Y. Wang
In the presence of managerial short-termism and asymmetric information about skill and effort provision, firms may opportunistically shift earnings from uncertain to more certain times. We document empirically that when financial markets are less certain about a firm's...
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- December 2015
- Case
Stephen Richards: Addressing FAQ
By: Eugene Soltes
Stephen Richards, former global head of sales at Computer Associates, addresses frequently asked questions from "A Letter from Prison."
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- 2015
- Chapter
Managerial Responsibility and the Purpose of Business: Doing One's Job Well
By: Nien-he Hsieh
Business managers routinely make decisions that significantly affect the lives of others in both positive and negative ways. In the light of these wide-ranging effects, much scholarship has been devoted to specifying the responsibilities of managers of for-profit...
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- 2015
- Other Unpublished Work
Do Managers Have a Role to Play in Sustaining the Institutions of Capitalism?
By: Rebecca Henderson and Karthik Ramanna
In a capitalist system based on free markets, do managers have responsibilities to the system itself? If they do, should these responsibilities shape their behavior when they engage in the political processes that structure the institutions of capitalism? The...
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- 2014
- Working Paper
Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' & the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster
By: Hazhir Rahmandad, Nelson P. Repenning and Rebecca Henderson
Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"―delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer term investments―makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive...
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