Work

How Do CEOs Make Strategy?

Year: 2020

Type: report

Abstract: 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.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

DOI: 10.3386/w27952

Authors: Mu-Jeung Yang, Michael Christensen, Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, Jan Rivkin

Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard University, University of Utah, Stanford University

Language: English

Topic: Organizational Management and Leadership

Subfield: Management of Technology and Innovation

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W3045560307

Cites: 59

Cited by: 10

Related to: 10