John Paul MacDuffie

Current Courses (Fall 2024)

• MGMT2430 - Wrk & Tech:choices & Out

  That technology affects work is a commonplace - but we accept technology’s impact too readily as inevitable and unchangeable. This 0.5 CU course challenges the mindset of technological determinism and explores what choice points are available to managers implementing new technologies as well as the engineers who design them. • Module 1: “Technology and Its Impact on Jobs and Skills” considers which technologies deserve the characterization of “revolutionary” due to their capacity to change entire organizations – and even societies — vs. those that only substitute narrowly for past technologies. We’ll examine past anxieties related to automation and evaluate the extent to which the “worst-case” scenarios about employment loss have or have not come to pass – and evaluate claims of “this time it’s different”. • Module 2: “Intelligent Technologies: How Will They Affect Work and Organizations?” explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing core “managing people” activities (e.g., hiring and performance appraisal) – plus shifting the locus of management away from human bosses and into algorithms. We’ll examine controversies around “gig work”, i.e., the positives of worker schedule flexibility vs. the negatives of algorithmic control. We’ll also consider the metaverse and its potential for unleashing human creativity and fostering richer and more nuanced virtual communication - as well as providing organizations with new ways to monitor and control. • Module 3: “Technology and Policy” examines three policy issues. First, how can we inject more ethical criteria into the development of artificial intelligence and algorithms affecting work? Second, what are the pros and cons of “universal basic income”, whose premise is that technological change will soon lead to an unprecedented amount of job elimination? Third, how does “technology make us dumber”? How can we avoid the obsolescence of critical human skills? Take this course to be ready to manage the strategic and analytic issues involving the design and implementation of technology at work - and for a preview of your own future work life. Requirements include: class participation; in-class quizzes; interviewing someone you know to ask how technology has affected their work life; and the “In Hindsight” group assignment looking back on past scares about a particular technology’s impact on work - and what actually happened.

  MGMT2430002 ( Syllabus )

All Courses

• MGMT2430 - Wrk & Tech:Choices & Out

  That technology affects work is a commonplace - but we accept technology’s impact too readily as inevitable and unchangeable. This 0.5 CU course challenges the mindset of technological determinism and explores what choice points are available to managers implementing new technologies as well as the engineers who design them. • Module 1: “Technology and Its Impact on Jobs and Skills” considers which technologies deserve the characterization of “revolutionary” due to their capacity to change entire organizations – and even societies — vs. those that only substitute narrowly for past technologies. We’ll examine past anxieties related to automation and evaluate the extent to which the “worst-case” scenarios about employment loss have or have not come to pass – and evaluate claims of “this time it’s different”. • Module 2: “Intelligent Technologies: How Will They Affect Work and Organizations?” explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing core “managing people” activities (e.g., hiring and performance appraisal) – plus shifting the locus of management away from human bosses and into algorithms. We’ll examine controversies around “gig work”, i.e., the positives of worker schedule flexibility vs. the negatives of algorithmic control. We’ll also consider the metaverse and its potential for unleashing human creativity and fostering richer and more nuanced virtual communication - as well as providing organizations with new ways to monitor and control. • Module 3: “Technology and Policy” examines three policy issues. First, how can we inject more ethical criteria into the development of artificial intelligence and algorithms affecting work? Second, what are the pros and cons of “universal basic income”, whose premise is that technological change will soon lead to an unprecedented amount of job elimination? Third, how does “technology make us dumber”? How can we avoid the obsolescence of critical human skills? Take this course to be ready to manage the strategic and analytic issues involving the design and implementation of technology at work - and for a preview of your own future work life. Requirements include: class participation; in-class quizzes; interviewing someone you know to ask how technology has affected their work life; and the “In Hindsight” group assignment looking back on past scares about a particular technology’s impact on work - and what actually happened.

• 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.

• MGMT6120 - Managing Emerg Entrprse

  This course is about managing during the early stages of an enterprise, when the firm faces the strategic challenge of being a new entrant in the market and the organizational challenge of needing to scale rapidly. The enterprises of interest in this course have moved past the purely entrepreneurial phase and need to systematically formalize strategies and organizational processes to reach maturity and stability, but they still lack the resources of a mature firm. The class is organized around three distinct but related topics that managers of emerging firms must consider: strategy, human and social capital, and global strategy.

• MGMT6130 - Manag Estab Enterprise

• MGMT7430 - Wrk & Tech:Choices & Out

  This course is situated at the intersection of technological and social/human issues involving work. The first module “Technology and Its Impact on Jobs and Skills” considers the types of technologies whose impact concerns us and probes which deserve the characterization of “revolutionary”. We’ll examine past anxieties related to automation and evaluate the extent to which the “worst-case” scenarios about, for example, employment loss have or have not come to pass. In the process, we’ll sharpen our lens for which technological changes have effects on entire organizations rather than simply individual jobs. The second module “Intelligent Technologies: How Will They Affect Work and Organizations?” explores how these technologies are changing the structure, performance, and experience of work amid changes in how organizations are managing people. We consider how these technologies provide managers new ways to enact control and to induce commitment – and how workers (both employees and contractors) react. In the third module “Technology and Policy” we will examine the ethics of algorithms and artificial intelligence, proposals for a “universal basic income” (UBI) premised on the idea that technological change will lead to an unprecedented amount of job displacement, and the premise that “technology makes us dumber” by taking tasks away that have helped humans maintain a certain level of competence. Take this course to be ready to manage the strategic and analytic issues involving the design and implementation of technology at work - and if you want a glimpse into the future of your own work life. Students will be evaluated on class participation, in-class quizzes, written work and a group assignment.

• MGMT8900 - Advanced Study-Ind

• MGMT8970 - Global Modular Course A

  Special course arranged for Wharton MBA students, focused on global business, management and innovation.

• MGMT9180 - Personnel Economics A

  This is a half-semester PhD course in the Management Department that is also open to any current PhD students at Wharton. The canonical model in economics views an agent as a fully rational, atomistic individual making optimal choices under scarcity. This approach has been very powerful theoretically and empirically to explain and to predict behavior in the workplace. This model has also been enriched to accommodate other phenomena arguably affecting behavior in the workplace like the social context (e.g. peer effects, altruism, or social comparison), non-standard time preferences, loss aversion, and cognitive costs. Incorporating these ideas into the standard model can be accomplished in various ways but the real stress test for these theories is whether they predict behavior more generally (i.e. we don't just use theory to explain one choice but choices more generally) and to generate empirical predictions that can be tested using experiments. In this mini-course we start-off with a tour de force of the fundamental principal-agent model and the various behavioral extensions. The core of the course is, however, not theoretical but a practical course on how to design field experiments to test these ideas.

• WH2130 - Global Modular Course B

  TBD

• President of Industry Studies Association, 2019
• Founding Board Member and Vice-President of the Industry Studies Association, 2018-present
• Excellence in Teaching Award from the Philadelphia WEMBA Class of 2018, 2018
• Co-curator, Automotive Transformation Map, World Economic Forum, 2017-present
• MBA Executive Excellence in Teaching Award for Core Curriculum (San Francisco), University of Pennsylvania, 2012
• Member of Automotive Experts Group, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 2010-2015
• Industry Agenda Council (Automotive), World Economic Forum, 2010-2012
• Founding Member of Board of Directors, Industry Studies Association, 2008-2015
• Advisor to Automotive Governors (CEO group), World Economic Forum, 2004-2007
• MBA Excellence in Teaching Award for Core Curriculum, University of Pennsylvania, 2000
• Outstanding Young Scholar Award, Industrial Relations Research Association, 1997
• MBA Excellence in Teaching Award for Core Curriculum, University of Pennsylvania, 1996-1998
• Miller-Sherrerd Teaching Award for MBA Core Courses, University of Pennsylvania, 1994
• Undergraduate Division Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Pennsylvania, 1992
• Zannetos PhD Thesis Prize, Sloan School of Management, MIT, 1991
• International Professional Practice Research Award, American Society of Training and Development, 1989

• Who’s Shaping Who? Tech + Automotive in the 2020s, Forbes - 03/09/2021
• Response to Perkins and Murmann: Pay Attention to What Is and Isn’t Unique about Tesla, Tesla - Management and Organization Review - 10/01/2018
• The Future of Electric Cars Is Brighter With Elon Musk in It, New York Times - 10/01/2018

Wharton Stories

• Meet Dr. Frank Igwé, WG’20, One of Philadelphia Business Journal’s “Most Admired CEOs”, Wharton Stories - 07/18/2022
• What Wharton Prof. John Paul MacDuffie Wants Students to Know about Human Capital and Competitive Advantage, Wharton Stories - 07/26/2021
• How an MBA Graduate Founded a New Club at Wharton and Found a New Home in Philly, Wharton Stories - 09/27/2016
• Five Takeaways on Driverless Cars from Wharton Professor John Paul MacDuffie, Wharton Stories - 07/19/2016