Tano Santos

Tano Santos is the Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Asset Management and Finance at Columbia Business School and academic director of its Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing. His research interests include asset pricing, financial intermediation, and organizational economics. He earned a PhD from the University of Chicago and joined Columbia Business School in 2003.

In the 2006 paper Adaptive Organizations, Santos and Wouter Dessein examine how organizations coordinate specialized tasks while responding to information held by individual employees. Their theoretical model distinguishes two approaches: employees can follow a prearranged plan that limits the need for communication, or they can adapt to local information, which makes coordination more important. The paper does not establish that one approach is best for every organization.

For leaders designing interdependent work, the distinction offers a useful question: where is a reliable plan sufficient, and where must people share information to adjust their actions? That is a practical interpretation of the model, not a tested prescription from it.