We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from 732 medium-sized firms in the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level productivity, profitability, Tobin's Q, and survival rates. Management practices also display significant cross-country differences, with U.S. firms on average better managed than European firms, and significant within-country differences, with a long tail of extremely badly managed firms. We find that poor management practices are more prevalent when product market competition is weak and/or when family-owned firms pass management control down to the eldest sons (primogeniture).

---

Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen

1 November 2007

---

The Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(4), pp.1351-1408, 2007

---

DOI: 10.1162/qjec.2007.122.4.1351

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/122/4/1351/1850493

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

This publication comes under the following theme: Management practices and productivity