There are strong links between the performance of US manufacturing plants and the quality of their systems of monitoring, targets and incentives, according to research by Professor Nicholas Bloom and colleagues. Their analysis of data on more than 30,000 establishments, gathered in the first large-scale survey of management practices in America, finds that effective performance monitoring, targets and incentives are strongly linked to more intensive use of IT. The study also finds that there is huge variation in management in America: for example, establishments in America?s South and Midwest have more structured management practices on average than those in the Northeast and West. Higher management scores have a strong relationship with improved productivity and profits.

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8 May 2014     Paper Number CEPCP423

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This CentrePiece article is published under the centre's Growth programme.