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 …

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms … owners, this difference is not statistically significant. Looking at management practices in detail we find that Private … Equity-owned firms have strong people management practices (hiring, firing, pay and promotions) but even stronger operations …