Claudine Gartenberg

Claudine Gartenberg
  • Associate Professor of Management

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    2010 SH-DH
    3620 Locust Walk
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: corporate strategy; organizational strategy; firm scope; motivation; corporate governance; compensation and pay inequality; corporate purpose

Links: CV, @cmgartenberg, Inaugural Corporate Strategy and Innovation Conference

Overview

Claudine Gartenberg is Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on organizational strategy, examining how ownership structure, corporate purpose, and compensation practices shape how firms compete and perform. Her work is published in leading journals including Management Science, Organization Science, and Review of Economic Studies.

Her current research investigates how AI is reshaping organizations, including how firms are restructuring decision-making, reallocating work, and repositioning strategically in response to these changes.

She serves as Senior Editor at both Organization Science and Strategy Science, and was formerly Associate Editor at Management Science. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and Associated Faculty at Penn’s Institute of Law and Economics. Her work has appeared in practitioner outlets including Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

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Research

  • Claudine Gartenberg and Elaine Pak (2026), Internal versus Market Pay References in Knowledge-Intensive Firms, Organization Science. Abstract

    How do firms balance market competitiveness with internal cohesion when setting employee pay? We examine this question using confidential compensation data on 19 million U.S. employees across 479 firms varying in knowledge intensity. We construct precise pay reference groups: internal benchmarks based on skill-equivalent peers across functions and market benchmarks based on same occupation, skill level, and region at other firms. We find that in low knowledge-intensity firms, pay is equally sensitive to both internal and market benchmarks, whereas in high knowledge-intensity firms, pay becomes decoupled from market forces and aligns with internal benchmarks. Internal pay alignment also increases following chief executive officer transitions that prioritize innovation. These patterns are driven by high-skilled employees in roles requiring complex problem-solving and collaboration. Moreover, firms with greater internal pay alignment generate more patents, including breakthrough innovations. Altogether, our findings reveal that although some firms maintain close market alignment, knowledge-intensive firms appear to decouple pay from market forces. This is particularly the case for their skilled workers, consistent with firms prioritizing internal social dynamics in contexts where complex problem-solving and collaboration are important for value creation.

  • Claudine Gartenberg and Elaine Pak (2026), More Monitoring, Less Pay: Active Ownership and Employee Compensation, Management Science, Forthcoming (). Abstract

    The rise of active owners—hedge funds and private equity firms—has raised questions about the influence of corporate owners on employee compensation. Prior research documents that active owners reduce overall compensation through workforce restructuring and slower wage growth. What remains unexplored is whether active owners also pay less for comparable work: whether they compensate the same jobs differently than other owners. Using detailed compensation from over 20 million employee records across 896 U.S. firms, we compare pay within narrowly defined labor markets that hold constant year, region, occupation, and skill level. We find that firms with active owners pay 2 to 4% less for comparable work than other firms. These differentials manifest both as lower base salary and flatter incentive pay, and appear to reflect, at least in part, an owner treatment effect. Notably, the effects are concentrated in more monitorable contexts, including routine jobs, jobs with quantifiable outputs, and those in less knowledge-intensive industries. These patterns are consistent with active owners substituting compensation-based incentives with managerial oversight, particularly in quantifiable and routine settings. This suggests that, as work becomes more measurable, firm ownership may play a greater role in shaping employee outcomes.

  • Claudine Gartenberg (2024), Corporate Purpose and Firm Strategy, Strategic Management Review. Abstract

    This paper explores the relevance of corporate purpose to strategy research. Corporate purpose can be conceived as a shared understanding of why an organization exists, made real by the beliefs of employees and tangible actions by firm leaders. While it has a long history within organization theory, law, and finance, purpose has received relatively less attention within the field of strategy. This essay argues that incorporating purpose into strategy research is both consistent with the view from practice and can open up the field to new channels by which firms compete and survive. It also outlines potential areas for future research, including links between corporate purpose and strategy at the individual, firm, and industry level.

  • Sinziana Dorobantu, Claudine Gartenberg, Sergio Lazzarini, Anita McGahan (2024), What Would the Field of Strategic Management Consider if We Took Stakeholders Seriously?, Strategy Science .
  • Claudine Gartenberg and Todd Zenger (2024), Corporate Purpose and the Problem of Social Choice in Firms, .
  • Claudine Gartenberg (2023), The Contingent Relationship Between Purpose and Profits, Strategy Science (in press). Abstract

    When do for-profit corporations pursue both purpose and profits and when do they prioritize one over the other? This study explores this question, measuring the strength of purpose based on the perceptions of nearly 1 million employees across 635 U.S. public companies within 14 industry categories. Two main findings emerge. First, the relationship between purpose and profits varies widely across companies and industries. Second, companies with higher levels of innovation intensity, intangible capital, or long-term investors tend to pursue both purpose and profits, whereas companies with lower levels of these factors tend to prioritize one over the other. This evidence suggests that purpose and profits are compatible in settings that rely on innovation and long temporal horizons for value creation and opposed in settings that do not.

  • Claudine Gartenberg and Shun Yiu (2023), Acquisitions and Corporate Purpose, Strategy Science (in press). Abstract

    Purpose is undergoing a resurgence of interest across research and practice. Yet, we know little about how it relates to strategy and specifically, how strategic actions reinforce or undermine purpose in organizations. This study explores this question in the context of acquisitions. We examine 831 transactions using data from approximately 1.7 million employees to construct our measure of purpose. We find that, on average, employees’ sense of purpose drops after acquisitions. This drop is particularly pronounced among firms that undertake unique acquisitions: those involving unusual industry combinations. This relationship suggests a possible tension between strategic and motivational consequences of boundary changes. Firms may benefit strategically from these changes, particularly those that enable expansion into unique areas. These same actions, however, may also erode the purpose of the organization, with consequences for downstream performance.

  • Claudine Gartenberg and Anita M McGahan (2023), Authoritarianism, Populism, and the Global Retreat of Democracy: A Curated Discussion, Journal of Management Inquiry, 32 (1), pp. 3-20. Abstract

    To the surprise of many in the West, the fall of the USSR in 1991 did not lead to the adoption of liberal democratic government around the world and the much anticipated “end of history.” In fact, authoritarianism has made a comeback, and liberal democracy has been on the retreat for at least the last 15 years culminating in the unthinkable: the invasion of a democratic European country by an authoritarian regime. But why does authoritarianism continue to spread, not only as an alternative to liberal democracy, but also within many liberal democracies where authoritarian leaders continue to gain strength and popularity? In this curated piece, contributors discuss some of the potential contributions of management scholarship to understanding authoritarianism, as well as highlight a number of directions for management research in this area.

  • Claudine Gartenberg and George Serafeim (2023), Corporate Purpose in Public and Private Firms, Management Science.
  • Claudine Gartenberg and Todd Zenger (2023), The Firm as a Subsociety: Purpose, Justice, and the Theory of the Firm, Organization Science (in press). Abstract

    Research in the “theory of the firm” tradition has often characterized firms as subeconomies, in which economic exchange is shaped by a central authority. We propose an expanded view of firms as subsocieties, in which authority is also responsible for establishing principles that shape cooperation among members. We draw on insights from political theory, sociology, and, to a lesser degree, legal theory to discuss how employees become members of subsocieties by exchanging rights, such as formal control over their work, for the benefits of membership. With this rights exchange, subsociety members develop expectations that those in positions of authority will use their control to define and sustain principles of justice and common purpose consistent with members’ moral sentiments. This view suggests expanded roles for authority and firm boundaries from what are incorporated into standard theories of the firm. These expanded roles have implications both for internal governance and for the boundary itself: When considering boundary changes, leaders must weigh both the economic and the social consequences of their decision.

  • All Research from Claudine Gartenberg »

Teaching

Current Courses

  • MGMT9260 - Seminar In Strategy And Organization Design

    This half-semester course examines one of the foundational questions in strategy: the role of organizational structure in both supporting and shaping strategy. As Winston Churchill famously said: "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us." This course examines this proposition from two traditions, the "institutional economics" and "information processing" schools of organizational design. We will examine foundational works from both schools, such as Coase, Williamson, Simon, March, and others, and then proceed to recent work in the area. Some of the questions that we will explore in the class are: why do firms exist? What determines their boundaries? What determines formal and informal structures within firms? How does the strategic context shape the answers to these questions? How might the nature of the firm and its boundaries relate to innovation, human capital, and knowledge creation? The aim of this class is to provide students with a grounding in the fundamental questions and contributions in this area, and to spark ideas for research in their own graduate work.

    MGMT9260001 ( Syllabus )

Past Courses

  • MGMT6110 - Managing Est Enterprise

    This course is about managing large enterprises that face the strategic challenge of being the incumbent in the market and the organizational challenge of needing to balance the forces of inertia and change. The firms of interest in this course tend to operate in a wide range of markets and segments, frequently on a global basis, and need to constantly deploy their resources to fend off challenges from new entrants and technologies that threaten their established positions. The class is organized around three distinct but related topics that managers of established firms must consider: strategy, human and social capital, and global strategy.

  • MGMT6130 - Manag Estab Enterprise

  • MGMT7820 - Strategic Implementation

    Much more is known about strategy formulation than its implementation, yet valid, sensible strategies often fail because of problems on the implementation side. This course provides you with tools to turn good strategy into successful reality. It covers the choices, structure, and conditions that enable the successful attainment of strategic objectives. Students learn from rigorous academic research on successful implementation, as well as a series of seasoned business leaders who will visit to share their own experience from the front lines.

  • MGMT8910 - Advanced Study-Smgt

    This 1.0-credit experiential learning course matches small teams of MBA students with innovative technologies developed by Penn researchers. Students will engage directly with inventors to understand the science behind early-stage innovations and explore their potential for commercialization. Through a combination of instructor-led discussions on commercialization frameworks and independent team research, students will gain hands-on experience at the intersection of strategy, innovation, corporate venturing, and entrepreneurship. Projects for this class have been sourced from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, School of Arts and Sciences, Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry, and the Stuart Weitzman School of Design. In some cases, established corporations may also be involved, providing additional industry context and pathways to impact. Students must apply to be considered for the course. The course is open to second-semester and second-year MBA students; Wharton Executive MBA (WEMBA) students may also be considered. Ideal candidates have experience or a strong interest in commercialization, innovation, or entrepreneurship.

  • MGMT9000 - Sem Strat Mgmt

    This course examines some of the central questions in management with economic approaches as a starting point, but with an eye to links to behavioral perspectives on these same questions. Economics concerns itself with goal directed behavior of individuals interacting in a competitive context. We adopt that general orientation but recognize that goal directed action need not take the form of maximizing behavior, particularly for organizations comprised of individuals with possibly divergent interests and distinct sub-goals. Further, we treat competitive processes as playing out over meaningful periods of calendar time and, in general, not equilibrating instantaneously. A central property of firms, as with any organization, is the interdependent nature of activity within them. Thus, understanding firms as "systems" is quite important, a perspective which has important implications for understanding processes of organizational adaptation. Among the sorts of questions we explore are the following: What underlies a firm's capabilities? How does individual knowledge aggregate to form collective capabilities? What do these perspectives on firms say about the scope of a firm's activities, both horizontally (diversification) and vertically (buy-supply relationships)? As a "foundations" course, readings will cover key conceptual foundations, but also provide an arc to current work --- an "arc" that will be developed more fully in our in-class discussions.

  • MGMT9260 - Sem Strat & Org Des

    This half-semester course examines one of the foundational questions in strategy: the role of organizational structure in both supporting and shaping strategy. As Winston Churchill famously said: "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us." This course examines this proposition from two traditions, the "institutional economics" and "information processing" schools of organizational design. We will examine foundational works from both schools, such as Coase, Williamson, Simon, March, and others, and then proceed to recent work in the area. Some of the questions that we will explore in the class are: why do firms exist? What determines their boundaries? What determines formal and informal structures within firms? How does the strategic context shape the answers to these questions? How might the nature of the firm and its boundaries relate to innovation, human capital, and knowledge creation? The aim of this class is to provide students with a grounding in the fundamental questions and contributions in this area, and to spark ideas for research in their own graduate work.

Awards And Honors

  • Glueck Best Paper Award, (Best Conference Paper, STR Division) AOM, 2024
  • Best Paper Proceedings of the Academy of Management, 2024
  • “Above and Beyond” MBA Teaching Award, 2024
  • Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2024
  • SMS Best Research Methods Award, Nominated, 2023
  • Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2020
  • Iron Prof MBA Teaching Competition (third place), 2019
  • Ralph Gomory Best Industry Studies Award, Runner Up, 2018
  • SMS Best Paper Award Nomination (voluntarily opted out once paper was accepted for publication), 2018
  • SMS Best Paper Award Nomination (voluntarily withdrew from consideration when paper was accepted for publication), 2018
  • SMS Best Interdisciplinary Paper Award Nomination (voluntarily withdrew from consideration when paper was accepted for publication), 2018
  • Best Paper Proceedings of the Academy of Management, 2018
  • Ralph Gomory Best Industry Studies Award, Runner Up, 2018
  • Wyss Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research, Harvard Business School (one of 4 recipients across all departments), 2010
  • Financial Management Association, Best Paper Awards Semifinalist, “Did fair valuation depress equity values during the 2008 financial crisis?” with George Serafeim., 2010
  • Wyss Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research, Harvard Business School, 2010
  • Harvard University, Derek Bok Center Teaching Award, (rated 5.0 / 5.0 by students versus division average of 4.0 / 5.0)., 2008
  • Harvard University, Derek Bok Center Teaching Award, (rated 5.0 / 5.0 by students versus division average of 4.0 / 5.0), 2008
  • Harvard Business School, Baker Scholar (top 5% of class)., 2006
  • Harvard Business School, Baker Scholar (top 5% of MBA class), 2006

In the News

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Activity

Latest Research

Claudine Gartenberg and Elaine Pak (2026), Internal versus Market Pay References in Knowledge-Intensive Firms, Organization Science.
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In the News

Rethinking Tax Refunds and Financial Decision-Making

Professor Wendy De La Rosa explores how people think about tax refunds and why those decisions often don’t align with their financial goals.…Read More

Knowledge @ Wharton - 2026/03/31
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Awards and Honors

Glueck Best Paper Award, (Best Conference Paper, STR Division) AOM 2024
All Awards