Tatiana Sandino

Tatiana Sandino is the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Business Administration in the Accounting and Management Unit, most recently teaching and undertaking the role of course head for the required first-year MBA course Financial Reporting and Control. She has also taught the second-year MBA course Mastering Strategy Execution, the doctoral course Management Control and Performance Measurement, and teaches various executive programs such as Driving Corporate Performance and Driving Profitable Growth.

Professor Sandino's research examines how organizations use management control systems—systems put in place by managers to ensure the actions and decisions of employees are consistent with the organization’s objectives. She is particularly interested in addressing challenges associated with scaling up businesses. Her research has been focused on introducing management control systems in growing, multiunit organizations (such as retailers, banks, hotels, or restaurant chains). As these organizations grow, founders implement management systems to maintain consistency and achieve economies of scale. But these systems can limit the organization’s flexibility to take advantage of new opportunities and enter new markets. Professor Sandino looks at design choices of management control systems to enable agility: how systems can be designed to empower employees, promote an engaging organizational environment, and nurture their intrinsic motivation to create value.

Professor Sandino’s work has been published in The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, Management Science, and Contemporary Accounting Research. Her research has also been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review, CNBC, NPR news, and Strategic Finance among others. Professor Sandino is an editor of The Accounting Review and has also served as an editor of the Journal of Management Accounting Research.

Professor Sandino earned her doctorate from Harvard Business School, her MBA from INCAE Business School, Managua, Nicaragua, and her Licentiate degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Costa Rica. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, Professor Sandino was an Assistant Professor at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, where she received the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence. She has received various other awards for her research and student mentorship, and the Greenhill Award for outstanding contributions to Harvard Business School.