An uninformed principal elicits non-contractible recommendations from a privately informed agent regarding the quality of projects. The agent is biased in favor of implementation and no credible communication is possible in a one-shot setting. In a repeated setting, the fear of losing future...

This thesis consists of three theoretical essays that examine the role of organizational architecture in facilitating organizational adaptation to a changing environment. Chapter 1 develops a model of coordinated adaptation where .an organization needs to respond to incoming information about...

We analyze a class of sender-receiver games with quadratic payoffs, which includes the communication games in Alonso, Dessein and Matouschek (2008) and Rantakari (2008) as special cases, for which the receiver's maximum expected payoff when players have access to arbitrary, mediated...

An uninformed principal elicits soft information from privately informed agents regarding the quality of their projects, and may then further investigate their proposals. The principal's ability to acquire further information crowds out soft information, and may even worsen organizational...

I analyze the impact of managerial involvement and the allocation of authority on employee initiative in a setting where both a manager and an employee can come up with new ideas for implementation. Extending the analysis of Aghion and Tirole (1997), the model introduces two effects that are...

We use a simple agency model to clarify and characterize the various avenues through which changes in the level of uncertainty impact the optimal strength of linear incentives. Instead of attempting to characterize different "types" of uncertainty, which has been the approach in the literature...

I investigate the impact of environmental volatility and the cost of information on the preferred organizational structure, as determined by the allocation of decision rights, the compensation structure of the managers and the degree of operational integration (such as the use of shared...

A manager's compensation contract and the level of resources available to him jointly influence his incentives to acquire information about different investment alternatives as well as his resource allocate decisions. We show that the optimal compensation contract induces investment allocations...

Agents need to be motivated to develop ideas and to share information regarding their potential value. When the principal needs to rely on the agents' claims when choosing between the alternatives, she needs to decide how conflict between the alternatives is resolved. This resolution can be...

To generate downstream sales, manufacturers often spend both effort and compensation when working with their dealers. Existing theories are inconclusive about the interdependent role of the two kinds of instruments in motivating dealer effort; that is, whether they are substitutes or...