Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance,
Stockholm School of Economics

No 634: Organizational Structure as the Channeling of Boundedly Rational Pre-play Communication

Tore Ellingsen () and Robert Östling ()
Additional contact information
Tore Ellingsen: Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Postal: Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden
Robert Östling: Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Postal: Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: We model organizational decision making as costless pre-play communication. Decision making is called authoritarian if only one player is allowed to speak and consensual if all players are allowed to speak. Players are assumed to have limited cognitive capacity and we characterize their behavior under each decision making regime for two different cognitive hierarchy models. Our results suggest that authoritarian decision making is optimal when players have conflicting preferences over the set of Nash equilibrium outcomes, whereas consensual decision making is optimal when players have congruent preferences over this set. The intuition is that authoritarian decision making avoids conflict, but sometimes creates insufficient mutual trust to implement socially optimal outcomes.

Keywords: Organizational decision making; coordination games; communication; cognitive hierarchy models

JEL-codes: C72; L20; M21; M54

35 pages, September 25, 2006

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