Partnering with the Census we implement a new survey of "structured" management practices in 32,000 US manufacturing … plants. We find an enormous dispersion of management practices across plants, with 40% of this variation across plants within … the same firm. This management variation accounts for about a fifth of the spread of productivity, a similar fraction as …

Are some management practices akin to a technology that can explain company 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 differences in the adoption of basic management practices, with the US having the highest …