Essays on Organizational Design and Performance in the Public Sector
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Nguyen_canguyen_Management_2026_thesis.pdf
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Author(s)
Nguyen, Christina Angie
Advisor(s)
Azoulay, Pierre
Stern, Scott
Date Issued
May 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This dissertation examines how organizational design and human capital shape performance, leveraging longitudinal federal personnel data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and linked to patent, grant, and bibliometric records.
The first two essays examine how an accountability system can produce outcomes that diverge from those implied by its formal structure, using the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as the empirical setting. In the first essay, I develop a conceptual and empirical lens on "deadwood": employees who shift from adequate productivity into a sustained period of low productivity but persist in the organization, often protected by tenure or other safeguards. Workgroups with high concentrations of deadwood examiners experience longer processing delays among productive peers, higher turnover, and reduced adaptive capacity under institutional shocks. In the second essay, I document how an organization uses its discretion over performance measurement to satisfy external oversight while optimizing internally for different objectives. At the USPTO, career advancement follows an internal performance measure that diverges drastically from the one reported to Congress.
The final two essays turn to the role of managers in driving innovation. In the third essay, I study hiring across federal scientific agencies, finding that a shift toward recruiting managers from outside the federal government leads to increases in their scientists' publications, citations, and external collaborations. In the fourth essay, I examine the value added of innovation managers (program officers) at the National Institutes of Health, finding that managerial discretion amplifies the impact of program officer quality on the publication output of first-time grantees but not established grantees. Program officers with doctoral degrees also exhibit greater value added, suggesting that scientific training enhances managerial effectiveness.
Together, these essays show that organizational outcomes are shaped not only by formal structures, but by what happens in the discretionary spaces those structures create.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
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