Cross-Functional Management Complementarity
RCTClinical Trial
Firms frequently treat factory operations and commercial functions as isolated domains, missing opportunities to apply systematic data-driven decision-making across all business units.
Picture this
Think of a person who learns to rigorously track their daily calories and workouts; once they experience the benefits of structured fitness tracking, they naturally apply the exact same habit of systematic data collection to their household budget and retirement savings.
What the evidence says
Treated firms significantly increased marketing practice adoption by 2017 (+2.965 points on a 10-practice scale, p=0.068) and increased paid commercial consulting usage (+2.491 log days, p=0.098), proving cross-domain expansion of structured management frameworks.
- Who was studied
- 17 family-owned cotton textile manufacturing firms near Mumbai, India.
- How
- Firm-level Intention-to-Treat (ITT) panel regressions across four periods (2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017) measuring a 10-point marketing practice adoption scale and commercial consulting usage days.
What to do
Extend standardized operational monitoring systems and data-driven evaluation protocols from manufacturing plants into commercial sales, marketing, and external advisory engagements.
From the source
"Improving production and human-resource management practices led firms to value a more data-driven, systematic management approach, and hence apply this to other areas like marketing."
Do-Management-Interventions-Lasts_Bloom-et-al_June2018.pdf