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Information Sharing and Incentives in Organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Jean-Etienne de Bettignies
  • Jan Zabojnik
Abstract
We study an organization, consisting of a manager and a worker, whose success depends on its ability to estimate a payoff-relevant but unknown parameter. If the manager has private information about this parameter, she has an incentive to conceal it from the worker in order to motivate him to search for additional information. Due to a time-inconsistency problem, the manager conceals her information more often than if she could commit to an information sharing policy, but even a manager with commitment power shares her information less than would be efficient. We also show that managers who are more likely to get informed are more willing to share their information and that unless the manager’s information substantially improves the worker’s productivity, managerial and worker abilities are substitutes in the firm’s profit function.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Etienne de Bettignies & Jan Zabojnik, 2019. "Information Sharing and Incentives in Organizations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 619-650.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:35:y:2019:i:3:p:619-650.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewz008
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
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    3. Jan Zabojnik, 2002. "Centralized and Decentralized Decision Making in Organizations," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-22, January.
    4. Malcomson James M, 2009. "Principal and Expert Agent," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-36, May.
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    6. Steven D. Levitt & Christopher M. Snyder, 1997. "Is No. News Bad News? Information Transmission and the Role of "Early Warning" in the Principal-Agent Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(4), pages 641-661, Winter.
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    Cited by:

    1. Catonini, Emiliano & Stepanov, Sergey, 2023. "Reputation and information aggregation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 156-173.
    2. Hideshi Itoh & Kimiyuki Morita, 2023. "Information Acquisition, Decision Making, and Implementation in Organizations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 446-463, January.
    3. Mehdi Shadmehr & Dan Bernhardt, 2015. "State Censorship," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 280-307, May.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production

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