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Organizing managerial work after information technology adoption

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Previous studies have shown that organizations assign more subordinates per manager as Information Technology (IT) improves the productivity of managers. But organizations can have a wide variety of job requirements for their managers. For some organizations, adopting IT may actually make their managers’ jobs more demanding and decrease their productivity. I study the reorganization of hospital divisions after IT adoption using a data set consisting of employment records, an IT survey, and occupational information. I find that IT adoption leads divisions with high manager communication requirements to employ fewer managers that supervise more subordinates. Divisions with low manager communication requirements employ more managers that supervise fewer subordinates after IT adoption. I demonstrate for the first time in the literature that some IT-adopting organizations require more managers to manage the same number of workers and provide evidence that this effect may be driven by IT changing the requirements of managerial work. Finally, I discuss the implications of these changes for organization performance and individual managers.

This event is open to faculty, doctoral students, academic researchers, and graduate students.

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