Gal Blatman
Strategy scholar · Post-Doctoral Researcher, Zage Business of Energy Transition Initiative · USC Marshall School of Business
I study how the structure of an institutional environment shapes what organizations and individuals do, often more than the content of the demands themselves. Environments are built things. Demands come in some number, not just some content. Activities are governed under arrangements that assign who answers for them. Conduct is tracked by measurement systems that stand between what organizations do and what the world concludes.
Much of my empirical work sits in the energy transition, where firms are pressed at once to decarbonize and to deliver. I am on the 2026-27 academic job market.
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Governance
When their direction is contested, firms can respond without retreating: they change who governs the activity, and who can be called on to answer for it.
Job market paper → -
Multiplicity
Where more immigration policies are in force, education's advantage in business ownership erodes among immigrants: a 6.7-point postgraduate advantage at zero policies becomes a deficit at eight, whether the policies support or restrict them.
The paper → -
Measurement
An authorized measure can keep its force after it stops tracking what it was built to represent, because no actor governs the whole chain.
In progress →
Job market paper
To Partner or Go Alone: Governance Mode as a Response to Institutional Complexity
Research on institutional complexity explains responses to incompatible demands as changes to practices, claims, structures, or categories. This paper argues that firms can also respond by changing who governs an activity. Under shared governance the focal firm still answers for its participation, but other governing organizations can be called on as well. Using 1,331 acquisitions, joint ventures, and alliances by 16 integrated oil and gas firms from 2010 through 2023, it finds that greater contestation of firm direction was associated with more shared governance, without evidence that firms cut back on deals. What is contested matters: goal-level contestation shifts governance across the portfolio, while means-level contestation makes sharing vary deal by deal, shaped by what the firm already operates.
Background
Before academia, I spent nine years in marketing and advertising strategy. I hold a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.Sc. in Management Science from Tel Aviv University, and a B.A. in Social Science and Communication from The College of Management. I am a member of the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and the International Network for Social Network Analysis.
If our interests overlap, whether for a seminar, a collaboration, or simply a conversation, I would welcome hearing from you at Gal.Blatman@marshall.usc.edu.