We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year …-olds in eight countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational … outcomes. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the highest management scores closely followed by Germany, with a gap to …

We study the impact of and reward to middle management ability using data from 245 stores of a nationwide retailer. The … company scores six broad areas of management practice, the most important of which turns out to be commercial awareness, where … managers do not receive higher pay all else equal, which implies that middle management ability is not fully tradable. …

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 …