Working Papers
Specialization and Professional-Client Matching in Organizations
with Jillian Chown
Abstract. Organizations introduce specialized roles to deepen the division of labor, aiming to enhance efficiency and expertise. However, realizing these benefits depends not just on specialization itself, but on effective professional-client matching—ensuring that specialists are assigned to clients and opportunities that align with their expertise. Without effective matching, specialization may lead to misallocation of expertise, inefficiencies, and suboptimal outcomes. This study examines how introducing a new specialized role affects professional-client matching and explores organizational and contextual conditions that moderate this relationship. We investigate the adoption of obstetric (OB) nurses in the Brazilian public healthcare system, where some hospitals introduced OB nurses to specialize in low-risk births, deepening the division of labor in the hospital. Using data on over 15 million births (2012–2022) and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that OB nurse adoption is associated with improved professional-client matching. The positive association is stronger when client demand is higher, workflow is more predictable, and professionals have greater organizational familiarity. Improved professional-client matching is associated with better maternal and newborn outcomes, including higher APGAR scores, lower complication rates, and shorter hospital stays. This study contributes to research on specialization, organizational design, and workforce coordination by theorizing professional-client matching as a distinct coordination challenge in organizations. While prior research emphasizes inter-specialist coordination, we highlight how assignment coordination—matching work to the right specialist—plays a critical role in performance. These insights extend beyond healthcare to professional services and other expertise-driven industries where matching specialized workers to clients is critical for performance.
Individuals’ Direct and Indirect Contributions in Organizations: Evidence from Temporary Absences of Physicians
Abstract. This study investigates how individuals affect organizational performance. It isolates the role of an individual’s direct contributions from the role of their indirect contributions—i.e., the influence on the performance of coworkers in the organization. I examine this question using data on physicians treating patients with ischemic heart disease in several hospitals in Brazil. Exploiting temporary absences of high-volume physicians, I find that in-hospital patient mortality increases 17 percent during these absences. The impact of an absence on the performance of colleagues—the role of indirect contributions—accounts for 40 percent of the increase in patient mortality. The increase in patient mortality during an absence of a high-volume physician correlates with declines in percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), necessary for stent implantation, and is weaker when colleagues use PCI more intensively. This study contributes to a growing body of research examining the influence of individuals on organizational performance by assessing how highly productive individuals affect organizational performance as a result of their own contributions and their influence on the others.
Journal Articles
Peer Influence in the Workplace: The Moderating Role of Task Structures Within Organizations
with Jillian Chown
Administrative Science Quarterly, 70(2).
Abstract. Peer influence is crucial in shaping work practices within organizations, yet the impact of formal organizational structures on this influence remains underexplored. We argue that task structures, which capture how tasks are allocated and configured within organizations, significantly affect peer interactions and influence. Specifically, we examine how two features of task structures—task variety and task similarity with peers—moderate peer influence in a highly consequential setting: physicians’ decisions to perform a birth via caesarean section (C-section) versus vaginal delivery. Using data on nearly 5 million births performed by more than 16,500 physicians across 915 hospitals in Brazil, we find that working alongside peers whose practice style (enduring preference) favors C-sections leads the focal physician to perform more C-sections, even after controlling for features of the mother and the pregnancy. This influence is significantly stronger for physicians with higher task variety and with higher task similarity with peers. Through post-hoc analyses, we provide evidence that the observed behaviors are consistent with a mechanism of information sharing between physicians. This study contributes to our understanding of peer influence in the workplace by showing how the task structure within organizations can either amplify or diminish peer influence. This awareness is particularly crucial for health care organizations in which such dynamics can have life-changing consequences.
Resource Redeployment as an Entry Advantage in Resource-Poor Settings
with Jasmina Chauvin and Chris Poliquin
Strategic Management Journal, Early View.
Abstract. Scarcity of productive factors poses a challenge for firms entering underdeveloped regions. We theorize that incumbent firms can overcome scarcity of skilled human capital in local labor markets by redeploying workers from existing units. We predict that redeployment is more valuable when factor markets exhibit large differences in resource scarcity. Redeployment is also more valuable when output is highly sensitive to worker skill and is responsive to complementarities between labor and other inputs. Important implications are that redeployment can endow firms with superior resources and enable them to enter more markets. Data on sugar mills in Brazil, where a sudden demand boom incentivized expansion, corroborate the predictions. Our research identifies a new mechanism of value-creation from resource redeployment across factor markets.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 65(3), 2020.
Abstract. This study develops a dynamic perspective on how elected state officials’ political incentives shape the behavior and performance of organizations, particularly state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Drawing on theoretical views about the relationship between politicians and firms, I argue that state officials seeking votes manipulate SOEs to boost employment before elections. As a result, SOEs exhibit both higher employment levels and lower financial performance in election years. The positive relationship between elections and SOE employment, however, is not uniform across firms and geographic communities: it is likely to be stronger in economically disadvantaged communities and weaker for SOEs with private investors. Data from Brazil’s water sector—an industry managing a crucial societal resource—support these predictions. These results shed light on the mechanisms linking officials’ political incentives and SOE behavior and show that SOE performance is politically contingent and thus varies systematically over time. More broadly, this study reveals how firm responses to political pressures depend on both organizational and community attributes and highlights how the interplay of election cycles, organizations, and communities shapes the performance of organizations in state capitalism.
Leviathan as a Minority Shareholder: Firm-Level Implications of State Equity Purchases
with Sergio Lazzarini and Aldo Musacchio
Academy of Management Journal, 56(6), 2013.
Abstract. In many countries, firms face institutional “voids” that raise the costs of doing business and thwart entrepreneurial activity. We examine a particular mechanism that may address those voids: minority state ownership. Minority stakes are less affected by the “agency distortions” commonly found for full-fledged state ownership. Using panel data from publicly traded firms in Brazil, where the government holds minority stakes through its development bank, we find a positive effect of those stakes on firms’ returns on assets and on the capital expenditures of financially constrained firms with investment opportunities. However, these positive effects are substantially reduced when minority stakes are allocated to business group affiliates and as local institutions develop. Therefore, we shed light on the firm-level implications of minority state ownership, a topic that has received scant attention in the strategy literature.
Book Chapters
Commodities no Brasil: Maldição ou Benção? [Commodities in Brazil: A Curse or a Blessing?]
with Sergio Lazzarini and Marcos Jank
In O Futuro da Indústria no Brasil: Desindustrialização em Debate. [Ed.] Edmar Bacha and Monica de Bolle. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2015.