My research explores the links between strategy and organization. I study formal aspects of organizational design (e.g., managerial hierarchy, or design for human-AI collaboration), informal firms’ characteristics such as organizational culture, as well as their interplay, and their implications for collaboration and firm performance.

You can find more about my research on my SSRN page.

PUBLICATIONS

Choudhary, V., Marchetti, A; Shrestha, Y.R., Puranam, P. (2023) “Human-AI Ensembles: When Can They Work?”. Journal of Management. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063231194968 — Video abstract available here.

Abstract: An “ensemble” approach to decision-making involves aggregating the results from different decision makers solving the same problem (i.e., a division of labor without specialization). We draw on the literatures on machine learning-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as on human decision-making to propose conditions under which human-AI ensembles can be useful. We argue that human and AI-based algorithmic decision-making can be usefully ensembled even when neither has a clear advantage over the other in terms of predictive accuracy, and even if neither alone can attain satisfactory accuracy in absolute terms. Many managerial decisions have these attributes, and collaboration between humans and AI is usually ruled out in such contexts because the conditions for specialization are not met. However, we propose that human-AI collaboration through ensembling is still a possibility under the conditions we identify.

Marchetti, A; Puranam, P. (2022) Organizational Cultural Strength As The Negative Cross-entropy Of Mindshare: A Measure Based On Descriptive Text”. Humanities and Social Science Communication, Springer Nature. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01152-1

Abstract: The strength of an organization’s culture is an important property that may have implications for organizational structure, performance, diversity, and inclusion, independent of its content. However, progress on conceptualizing and measuring cultural strength has been restricted so far. We propose a novel measure of an organization’s cultural strength as the negative average cross-entropy of its members’ mindshare distributions, defined on a support comprising a set of firm-specific cultural elements. Using descriptive text data produced by 2.9 million individuals in about 95 thousand US firms from the employee review website Glassdoor.com, we calculate our measure of organizational cultural strength using topic modeling and show that it behaves as theoretically expected: older, smaller, and more geographically concentrated firms have stronger organizational cultures. We also note some intriguing associations between organizational cultural strength, role differentiation, and gender imbalance within firms. Finally, we discuss opportunities for using this new measure to understand how organizations work more generally.

PAPERS IN PEER REVIEW PROCESS & WORKING PAPERS

Marchetti, A. “Firms of a Feather Merge Together: The Role of Acquirer-Target Culture Compatibility in Technology Acquisitions” (copy available here).

  • Best Conference PhD Paper Prize Winner—SMS Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, 2019

Marchetti, A., Puranam, P. “Interpreting Topic Models Using Prototypical Text: From ‘Telling’ To ‘Showing’” (copy available here).

Marchetti, A., Puranam, P. [A study of culture and hierarchy] (copy available upon request).

  • Honorable Mention for Best Conference Paper Prize—SMS Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, 2019

  • Most Novel Proposal Winner, Behavioral Strategy Interest Group—SMS Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, 2019

  • Finalist for Research Methods Conference Paper Prize—SMS Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, 2019

Marchetti, A. [A study on cultural heterogeneity] (copy available upon request).

Marchetti A., Sevcenko, V., Ghoshsamaddar, S. [A study of cultural strength and employee turnover] (copy available upon request).

Choudhary, V., Marchetti, A., Puranam, P., Shrestha, Y.R. “Working Together, Forever? Project Evaluation, AI, and Managerial Redundancy” (copy available here).

Gulati, P., Marchetti, A., Puranam, P. [A study on technology adoption and hierarchy] (copy available here).

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

Glassdoor Data To Advance Organizational Culture Studies (with Jennifer Chatman and Anna Yan).

The Remote Shock: Impact on Organizational Culture (with Marco Minervini, and Victoria Sevcenko).