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Biography of John Paul MacDuffie

John Paul MacDuffie is an Associate Professor in the Management Department at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. degree from Harvard University and his Ph.D. degree from the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. His research is centrally concerned with the rise of lean or flexible production as an alternative to mass production, focusing on the world automotive industry.  He has published extensively on topics such as the consequences of lean production for economic performance; the diffusion of this approach across company and country boundaries; patterns of collaborative problem-solving and knowledge transfer within and across firms; and the implications of these changes for individual managers, engineers, and workers. Prof. MacDuffie has worked for many years with M.I.T.'s International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP), and is currently IMVP’s Co-Director.  His research on the comparative performance of manufacturing plants worldwide was featured centrally in the best-selling IMVP book The Machine That Changed the World (1990) and he edited (with Thomas Kochan and Russell Lansbury) After Lean Production: Evolving Employment Practices in the World Auto Industry (1997). His current research examines patterns of collaboration between automakers and global first-tier suppliers, particularly in connection with the transfer of design responsibility to suppliers, and also the factors affecting the global locational decisions made by first-tier suppliers for both design and manufacturing activities. He directs a custom executive development program at Wharton for Toyota’s global managers.