Productivity: Multi-disciplinary Perspectives for Policy and Management

Productivity is increasingly critical for developed economies. It has always been important: as Paul Krugman puts it, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker”(Krugman, 1994). Analyses of productivity have, by and large, been the preserve of economists. Operations Management (OM) is rooted in a similar concern for the efficient use of scarce resources; Management Accounting (MA) is concerned with the institutionalised measurement and management of productivity. Yet the three perspectives are rarely connected. This paper is a sketch of a literature review seeking to identify, contrast and reconcile these three perspectives. In so
doing, it aims to strengthen the connections between policy and managerial analyses of productivity.