Raffaella Sadun

Raffaella Sadun is the Charles E. Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, co-chair of Harvard Business School's Project on Managing the Future of Work, and co-principal investigator of the Digital Reskilling Lab. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, the Center for Economic Policy Research, and Ariadne Labs. Sadun is an organizational economist whose research examines the managerial and organizational drivers of productivity and growth in corporations and the public sector, with a focus on management practices, digital transformation, and workforce reskilling.

Sadun received her doctorate in economics from the London School of Economics. She has co-founded several large-scale projects to measure management practices and managerial behavior in organizations, including the World Management Survey, the Executive Time Use Study, and the first large-scale management survey in hospitals, MOPS-H, conducted in partnership with the US Census Bureau. Her work has contributed to understanding how the diffusion of management and organizational practices varies across organizations and countries, and how these differences affect productivity at both micro and macro levels. Sadun's research also explores the economic and cultural determinants of managerial choices and their implications for organizational performance in sectors such as healthcare and education.

Alongside Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen, Sadun received the HBR McKinsey Award for the Harvard Business Review article "Why Do We Undervalue Competent Management?" Her research highlights the significant impact of effective management practices on company and national growth, beyond technological innovation. Sadun is the author of articles published in journals such as The Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, and Journal of Political Economy, and has been recognized for best articles published in Harvard Business Review. Her work has been featured in business media, including The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times.

Sadun co-leads the Digital Reskilling Lab at Harvard Business School, where she studies the effectiveness of large-scale digital training investments in private and public sector organizations. Her research investigates how artificial intelligence can empower individuals with intermediate expertise, such as store managers and blue-collar workers, to improve efficiency and job satisfaction. Drawing on large-scale data and field experiments, Sadun examines how hybrid work is reshaping labor markets, how management practices influence organizational performance at scale, and how generative AI is changing team collaboration and decision-making.

Sadun has served as an economic advisor to the Italian government and received the honor of Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, the highest-ranking order of the Republic awarded for national merit. She was also awarded the Prize Fondazione de Sanctis per le Scienze Economiche. Sadun serves as faculty chair for the Strategy Unit Executive Education program and as co-editor for the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, as well as associate editor for Management Science and Economica. She is recognized for her rigorous economic research on management, digital transformation, and the future of work.