Does Decentralized Organization Improve Individual Performance? Evidence from Journalists

In this paper, I explore a natural experiment of organizational change from decentralization to centralization in a leading Chinese newspaper. Using a dierences-in-dierences approach, I …nd that centralization substantially increases the journalists'performance in the dimension desired by the newspaper. I provide evidence that the journalists whose jobs are potentially associated with larger private bene…ts respond more to the centralization reform and the journalists whose incentives are more aligned with the newspaper's goal respond less to the reform. The main …ndings are consistent with recent eco- nomic theories of organization that emphasize the tradeos between