Benchmarking: Field Evidence

 

时间：2020年11月4日（周三）上午 8：30-9：00

地点：线上zoom平台

链接：见下

主讲人：Ivan Png and Hou Yun,  National University of Singapore

题目：Benchmarking: Field Evidence

摘要：How can the management of business be improved? Benchmarking -- comparing relative performance and practices -- is a widely advocated but little-researched strategy. Theoretically, managers might not apply existing knowledge and not implement better management practices, for two reasons. Managers might suffer from information frictions and not know that better management practices exist. Managers might give insufficient attention to some practices and misunderstand how they contribute to performance. Benchmarking addresses both issues and motivates managers to implement better management practice by directly providing information as well as demonstrating the relationship between practices and performance. Accordingly, benchmarking is more likely to effect change among worse-performing businesses. Also, benchmarking would more likely affect practices about which businesses are inattentive.

To investigate the causal impact of benchmarking, we carried out a randomized controlled experiment among food stalls in Singapore. Every owner was informed of their own performance. Additionally, treatment owners were told their relative performance and best practices. The experiment will conclude in late 2020 with visits to observe the treatment effect on practices and performance.

Ivan Png is a Distinguished Professor in the NUS Business School and Department of Economics at the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on the economics of innovation and productivity.  He is the author of Managerial Economics, which has been published in multiple editions. He is the Principal Investigator of SPIRE, a S$4.75 million research project on service productivity. In free time, he exercises with his wife and plays tennis and the violin (both badly).

Hou Yun is PhD student in the Department of Strategy & Policy, National University of Singapore. She graduated with a Master in Urban Economics from Peking University, 2016.

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