Publication: Essays on the economic theory of organizations
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2012-09-18
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2012-09-18
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Mi tesis doctoral consta de tres capítulos: Reputation with Endogenous Monitoring, Strategic Communication in Networked Organizations y Information Technology, Decision Making and Incentives. En ellos utilizo diferentes herramientas de la Teoría Microeconómica para entender cómo las empresas, organizaciones u otras institituciones ajenas al mercado agregan la información obtenida por sus miembros en su toma de decisiones. En el primer capítulo, Reputation with Endogenous Monitoring, estudio la interacción estratégica entre un individuo que debe tomar decisiones y un experto que posee la información relevante. El experto puede tener preferencias distintas que las del decisor (y esto es su información privada) y sus recomendaciones son estratégicas. Por su parte, el decisor puede verificar la recomendación del agente pero esto es costoso para él. Asumiendo que ambas partes interactúan repetidamente, analizo los incentivos que tiene el decisor para verificar la recomendación del agente dependiendo de su horizonte temporal. Muestro que si el decisor es paciente y está suficientemente seguro que el agente tiene distintas preferencias que él, verificará con menor probabilidad en cualquier equilibrio de Markov que en el caso en que es absolutamente impaciente. Además como al decisor paciente le gustaría comprometerse a verificar con mayor probabilidad de la que resulta del equilibrio, está dispuesto (en algunos casos) a delegar la decisión en uno impaciente. Finalmente, relaciono estos hallazgos teóricos con evidencia empírica obtenida en diversas relaciones bancarias. En el segundo capítulo, Strategic Communication in Networked Organizations analizo organizaciones compuestas por un número arbitrario (finito) de individuos que deben tomar una decisión. Su pago depende de su nivel de coordinación y de la realización de una variable aleatoria sobre la que solamente tienen una señal imperfecta. Mi contribución es que les permito enviar mensajes a otros individuos antes de tomar la decisión. En concreto, cada individuo puede comunicarse con un número determinado de ”vecinos” con los que está unido en la red. Muestro que la necesidad de coordinación y el uso de información imperfecta genera problemas en la comunicación excepto en el caso que las redes generen una distribución de la informacióon igualitaria (por ejemplo, redes ”regulares” en las que todos los individuos tienen el mismo número de vecinos). En otro caso, la comunicación añadirá ruido a la información y la organización no podría coordinarse eficientemente. Muestro que estas redes igualitarias pueden ser ”redes de equilibrio” si permitimos a los individuos decidir cuánta información adquiren y que los resultados cualitativos pueden extenderse al caso en que la comunicación se produce en rondas sucesivas. La conclusión general del artículo es que en organizaciones en la que la toma de decisiones sea descentralizada, las jerarquías y otras redes cuya distribución de información con desigualdad producen sesgos y ruido en la comunicación e ineficiencia en la toma de decisiones. Este resultado es notablemente distinto del obtenido por modelos de organizaciones en las que la comunicación es no estratégica. Por último, en el tercer capítulo, Information Technology, Decision Making and Incentives analizo el funcionamiento de una organización compuesta por múltiples unidades locales (o individuos) relacionados a través de una unidad central. La unidad central toma una decisión común para todas, dependiendo de la información recogida y transmitida por cada unidad. La transmisión de información se realiza mediante la una señal costosa en forma de esfuerzo. En este contexto, determino la estructura óptima de información que la unidad central obtiene sobre el comportamiento de las unidades locales para tomar decisiones acertadas y encauzar correctamente sus esfuerzos. Encuentro que la cantidad de información que la unidad central quiere adquirir dependera del grado de volatilidad del entorno y de la importancia de coordinacion, pero que nunca deseará observar perfectamente las acciones realizadas por las unidades locales. Finalmente, relaciono estos resultados teóricos con la forma organizativa y la inversión en tecnologías de la información realizada en diversas empresas.
My Ph.D. thesis contains three Chapters: Reputation with Endogenous Monitoring, Strategic Communication in Networked Organizations and Information Technology, Decision Making and Incentives. In each of them I use different theoretical techniques to understand how firms, organizations and other institutions aggregate the information acquired by their member in order to make appropriate decisions. In the first Chapter, Reputation with Endogenous Monitoring, I analyze the strategic interaction between an uninformed decision-maker and an informed expert. The expert may have a conflict of interest with the decision-maker, but this is his private information. The decision-maker is allowed to verify the recommendation of the expert, but this is costly. Assuming that these two individuals interact repeatedly over time, I study the incentives of the decision-maker to verify the recommendation depending on her time horizon. I show that if the decision-maker is patient and sufficiently pessimistic about the preferences of the agent, she will verify with less probability in any Markov Perfect Equilibrium as compared with the case in which she is myopic. I also show that, due to a lack of commitment, the principal could increase his payoff by delegating to a myopic one. Finally, I relate this theoretical findings with the empirical evidence from the banking industry. In the second Chapter, Strategic Communication in Networked Organizations I analyze organizations comprised of a finite number of individuals, each of whom must take a single decision. Their payoff depends both on their coordination and on the realization of a random variable over which they only observe a noisy signal. I allow them to send messages to other individuals through an undirected network. I show that the need for coordination and the use of partial information difficulties communication even if there is no intrinsic conflict in preferences. I characterize the set of networks that guarantee efficient information transmission, and show that they imply that the ex-post distribution of information is very equal. Otherwise, the communication process will add noise and hamper the quality of the decisions made and the degree of coordination across individuals. I also show that, under some conditions, these networks can be rationalized as the outcome of a (larger) game in which the individuals do also decide how much information to acquire. The main insight of the paper is that in organizations relying on decentralized decision-making hierarchies and other networks generating unequal information distributions create biases and noises in communication, and therefore, inefficiencies in decision making. This result is in sharp contrast with the literature on non-strategic communication in organizations. Finally, in the third Chapter, Information Technology, Decision Making and Incentives I study the behavior of a multi-unit organization where the Headquarters must take a common decision, based on the information transmitted by each unit. The information transmission process takes the form of a signalling game. I analyze the optimal information structure that the Headquarters would choose in order to balance the trade-off between improved decisions from better information and worse incentives. I show that this information structure will depend on the volatility of the environment and the need for coordination, but it will never be the case that the Headquarters want to know perfectly the amount of effort that each local unit makes. I relate these findings to the organizational form and the empirical evidence on the value of the investments in Information and Communication Technologies.
My Ph.D. thesis contains three Chapters: Reputation with Endogenous Monitoring, Strategic Communication in Networked Organizations and Information Technology, Decision Making and Incentives. In each of them I use different theoretical techniques to understand how firms, organizations and other institutions aggregate the information acquired by their member in order to make appropriate decisions. In the first Chapter, Reputation with Endogenous Monitoring, I analyze the strategic interaction between an uninformed decision-maker and an informed expert. The expert may have a conflict of interest with the decision-maker, but this is his private information. The decision-maker is allowed to verify the recommendation of the expert, but this is costly. Assuming that these two individuals interact repeatedly over time, I study the incentives of the decision-maker to verify the recommendation depending on her time horizon. I show that if the decision-maker is patient and sufficiently pessimistic about the preferences of the agent, she will verify with less probability in any Markov Perfect Equilibrium as compared with the case in which she is myopic. I also show that, due to a lack of commitment, the principal could increase his payoff by delegating to a myopic one. Finally, I relate this theoretical findings with the empirical evidence from the banking industry. In the second Chapter, Strategic Communication in Networked Organizations I analyze organizations comprised of a finite number of individuals, each of whom must take a single decision. Their payoff depends both on their coordination and on the realization of a random variable over which they only observe a noisy signal. I allow them to send messages to other individuals through an undirected network. I show that the need for coordination and the use of partial information difficulties communication even if there is no intrinsic conflict in preferences. I characterize the set of networks that guarantee efficient information transmission, and show that they imply that the ex-post distribution of information is very equal. Otherwise, the communication process will add noise and hamper the quality of the decisions made and the degree of coordination across individuals. I also show that, under some conditions, these networks can be rationalized as the outcome of a (larger) game in which the individuals do also decide how much information to acquire. The main insight of the paper is that in organizations relying on decentralized decision-making hierarchies and other networks generating unequal information distributions create biases and noises in communication, and therefore, inefficiencies in decision making. This result is in sharp contrast with the literature on non-strategic communication in organizations. Finally, in the third Chapter, Information Technology, Decision Making and Incentives I study the behavior of a multi-unit organization where the Headquarters must take a common decision, based on the information transmitted by each unit. The information transmission process takes the form of a signalling game. I analyze the optimal information structure that the Headquarters would choose in order to balance the trade-off between improved decisions from better information and worse incentives. I show that this information structure will depend on the volatility of the environment and the need for coordination, but it will never be the case that the Headquarters want to know perfectly the amount of effort that each local unit makes. I relate these findings to the organizational form and the empirical evidence on the value of the investments in Information and Communication Technologies.
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Keywords
Información, Toma de decisiones, Comunicación en la empresa, Tecnologías de la infomación