Claudine Gartenberg
Associate Professor of Management
The Wharton School · University of Pennsylvania
Senior Editor, Organization Science and Strategy Science
Research Fellow, CEPR
Associated Faculty, Penn Institute of Law and Economics
Research interests
Organizations and institutions; AI and collective choice; corporate purpose, governance, and incentives.
I study corporations and other organizations: why they exist, how they govern collective action, and what enables them to create value. My work connects theories of the firm, social choice, and firms as subsocieties with empirical research on corporate purpose, ownership, compensation, and inequality.
Across this work, I ask how people with different interests and values organize around shared problems—and what leaders can do to make that cooperation work. AI brings new urgency to these questions: how does it change what organizations are for, where judgment and authority reside, and the institutions through which we work and cooperate? As AI systems become more general and capable, I am interested in what remains distinctive about human organizations, and how their purpose, governance, and capacity for collective choice may need to change.
I serve as Senior Editor at Organization Science and Strategy Science, coedit the special issue on AI-Enabled Frontiers in Organizational Science, and am a member of the Organization Science AI Task Force. I co-organize the Wharton Corporate Strategy and Innovation Conference and previously served as an Associate Editor at Management Science. Before joining Wharton, I taught at NYU Stern. I hold a DBA and MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in physics1 from Harvard University.
Research
Explore researchAI and institutions
How institutions organize collective choice, allocate authority, and sustain cooperation—and how AI is reshaping these arrangements.
Corporate Ownership, Purpose, and the Social Choice Problem
Working paper · Listed as 2027 in the September 2026 CV
Corporate Purpose and the Problem of Social Choice in Firms
Working paper · In revision
Corporate purpose & ownership
How purpose, ownership, and strategic choices shape what firms pursue and how they perform.
The Firm as a Subsociety: Purpose, Justice, and the Theory of the Firm
Organization Science, 34(5), 1965–1980
Compensation, incentives & inequality
How firms reward work, respond to social comparisons, and shape economic outcomes for employees.
Internal Versus Market Pay References in Knowledge-Intensive Firms
Organization Science · Forthcoming
More Monitoring, Less Pay: Active Ownership and Employee Compensation
Management Science · Forthcoming
Competition and Pay Inequality Within and Between Firms
Management Science, 66(12), 5925–5943
Pay Inequality and Corporate Divestitures
Strategic Management Journal, 39(11), 2829–2858
Pay Harmony? Social Comparison and Performance Compensation in Multibusiness Firms
Organization Science, 28(1), 39–55
Public writing
All writingOrganization Science · Substack · 2026
More Versus Better
A three-part series on AI, academic research, and the future of peer review.
Read the seriesShorter reflections and ongoing conversations.
Posts on LinkedInAI-Enabled Frontiers in Organizational Science
I am coediting an Organization Science special issue on how AI can enable new forms of organizational and social science research.
Call for Science and submission details