How Do CEOs Make Strategy? / Mu-Jeung Yang, Michael Christensen, Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, Jan Rivkin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yang, Mu-Jeung.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Christensen, Michael.

Bloom, Nick, 1973-

Sadun, Raffaella.

Rivkin, Jan W.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w27952.

NBER working paper series no. w27952

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

We explore the critical question of how executives make strategic decisions. Utilizing a new survey of 262 CEO alumni of Harvard Business School, we gather evidence on four aspects of each executive's business strategy: its overall structure, its formalization, its development, and its implementation. We report three key results. First, different CEOs use markedly different processes to make strategic decisions; some follow highly formalized, rigorous, and deliberate processes, while others rely heavily on instinct and intuition. Second, more structured strategy processes are associated with larger firm size and faster employment growth. Third, using a regression discontinuity centered around a change in the curriculum of Harvard Business School's required strategy course, we trace differences in strategic decision making back to differences in managerial education.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2020.