Giacomo Marchesini of Copenhagen Business School was a recipient of the Early Career Research Grant program. Learn more about their work:

What is your research question/topic?

How do organizational design and knowledge regimes shape doctors’ diagnostic decision-making?

What are you hoping to accomplish through your research? 

This research project investigates diagnostic decision-making by examining how the organizational design of primary care clinics and the evolution of scientific knowledge jointly influence how doctors identify complex conditions, with a specific focus on endometriosis. Endometriosis is a common but frequently underdiagnosed condition in women, making it a critical area for studying medical decision-making. The project will examine how financial incentives, team composition, and clinic type affect a General Practitioner’s (GP) ability to accurately refer patients to specialists. Moreover, the study will look at scientific advancements and how organizational designs interact with evolving medical knowledge and technologies. By analyzing high-quality administrative data from Denmark, the goal is to determine if certain clinic structures help doctors learn more effectively from specialist feedback, reduce diagnostic biases, and ultimately improve patient outcomes by providing more timely and accurate diagnoses.

What impact could this research have more broadly on the field of strategic management?

Diagnostic decisions are judgments that involve inferring underlying conditions and causal mechanisms from incomplete or ambiguous information. This project has the potential to deepen our understanding of the factors shaping expert performance in such decisions within knowledge-intensive environments, how organizations manage semi-autonomous experts who must interpret ambiguous signals, exploring the complementarities between organizational design and knowledge regimes.

What SMS resources (members, workshops, events, etc.) were helpful to you during the application process?

The SMS Annual Conference and mentorship from other SMS members were instrumental in refining the conceptual framework and research design of this project.

Who inspires you the most to do this work? (whether that is professionally or personally).

This project emerged from engaging interactions with colleagues in the Strategy and Innovation Department at CBS and from my direct exposure to healthcare contexts. These experiences highlighted the critical need for more management research on how patient care is delivered and how it can be improved.