This paper studies the effects of open disagreement on motivation and coordination. It shows how - in the presence of differing priors - motivation and coordination impose conflicting demands on the allocation of authority, leading to a trade-off between the two. The paper first derives a new...

I show that an agent's motivation to do well (objectively) may be unambiguously bad in a world with differing priors, i.e., when people openly disagree on the optimal course of action. The reason is that an agent who is strongly motivated is more likely to follow his own view of what should be...

This paper shows why members of an organization often share similar beliefs. I argue that there are two mechanisms. First, when performance depends on making correct decisions, people prefer to work with others who share their beliefs and assumptions, since such others 'will do the right thing'....

This paper studies, in a world with differing priors, the role of organizational beliefs and managerial vision in the behavior and performance of corporations. The paper defines vision operationally as a very strong belief by the manager about the right course of action for the firm. The...

What makes a decision strategic? When is strategy most important? This paper studies the structure and value of strategy (in its everyday sense), starting from a (functional) definition of strategy as 'the smallest set of (core) choices to optimally guide the other choices.' This definition...

This paper studies how strategy - formally defined as 'the smallest set of (core) choices to optimally guide the other choices' - relates to the strategist, for example, whether an optimal strategy should depend on who is CEO. The paper first studies why different people may systematically...

Corporations simultaneously claim that human capital is increasingly important to their success and that they seek to maximize shareholder value. This paper studies the relationship between these two developments. We show that the pursuit of shareholder interests may require ceding a role in...

This paper derives two mechanisms through which Bayesian-rational individuals with differing priors will tend to be relatively overconfident about their estimates and predictions, in the sense of overestimating the precision of these estimates. The intuition behind one mechanism is slightly...

Equity participations affect the hold-up problem in two ways. On the one hand, they allow to reduce the externality that is created ex-post by hold-up. On the other hand, they change the bargaining positions by partially internalizing the threat of walking away from the bargaining. It turns out...

Corporations simultaneously claim that human capital is increasingly important to their success - quot;People are our most important assetquot; - and that their executives are the loyal agents of shareholders - quot;Our primary goal is the maximization of shareholder value.quot; This paper...