Good Management Practices

During my working life, and for about thirty years as a senior manager and consultant my "frame of mind" was mostly influenced by a single article in Harvard Business Review authored by Neil Churchill and Virginia Lewis.
(I was thrilled to have the opportunity of a face-to-face discussion with Neil back in 1996 at INSEAD, when I followed the Owners/Managers Programme).

Now in retirement, I am having a "paradigm shift", having come across the work of Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen (pdf) "Why Do Management Practices Differ across Firms and Countries?". (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol.24/1)

By way of recommendation to all management practitioners let me say that it would have been a challenge to use their framework and help a Greek firm raise its management score.

Management of Greek Firms: grim reading (updated)

It is true that "competitiveness is not just unit labour cost" .Most commentators repeat the phrase, but fail to say what else determines/influences competitiveness. I would contend that the crucial determinant of competitiveness is "firm management".

I came across the lecture slides on "core modern management practices and firm organization" given at Stanford by Nick Bloom of  Stanford and John Van Reenen of Stanford and LSE 
(ss. the link is to the homepage of professor J. VanReenen)

The "course  is built on 8 years of research by LSE, McKinsey & Stanford, with recent extensions with Accenture, the World Bank & European Bank for Reconstruction & Development. Interviewed about 6000 firms across Asia, Europe, US & South America"

UPDATE

There is an article one can download from The Journal of Economic Perspectives  Vol.24 No.1 (winter 2010) co-authored by Bloom and Van Reenen with the same material pdf