Organizational Capital, Corporate Leadership, and Firm Dynamics

Wouter Dessein and Andrea Prat

Journal of Political Economy, 2022, vol. 130, issue 6, 1477 - 1536

Abstract: We argue that economists have studied the role of management from three perspectives: contingency theory (CT), an organization-centric empirical approach (OC), and a leader-centric empirical approach (LC). To reconcile these three perspectives, we augment a standard dynamic firm model with organizational capital, an intangible, slow-moving, productive asset that can be produced only with the direct input of the firm’s leadership and that is subject to an agency problem. We characterize the steady state of an economy with imperfect governance and show that it rationalizes key findings of CT, OC, and LC as well as generates a number of new predictions on performance, management practices, chief executive officer behavior and compensation, and governance.

Date: 2022
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