Rational Inattention and Organizational Focus 
Wouter Dessein (Colombia Business School)

We examine the allocation of scarce attention in team production. Each team member is in charge of a specialized task, which must be adapted to a privately observed shock and coordinated with other tasks. Coordination requires that agents pay attention to each other, but attention is in limited supply. We show that when attention is scarce, organizational focus and leadership naturally arise as a response to organizational trade-offs between coordination and adaptation. At the optimum, all attention is evenly allocated to a select number of “leaders.” The organization then excels in a small number of focal tasks at the expense of all others. Our results shed light on the importance of leadership, strategy and “core competences,” as well as new trends in organization design. We also derive implications for the optimal size or “scope” of organizations. Surprisingly, improvements in communication technology may result in smaller but more adaptive organizations. (joint with Andrea Galeotti and Tano Santos)

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Monitored by your friends, not your foes: Strategic ignorance and the delegation of real authority
Silvia Dominguez-Martinez (UvA)

In this laboratory experiment we study the use of strategic ignorance to delegate real authority within a firm. A worker can gather information on investment projects, while a manager makes the implementation decision. The manager can monitor the worker. This allows her to exploit any information gathered by the worker, but also reduces the worker’s incentives to gather information in the first place. Both effects are influenced by the interest alignment between manager and worker. Our data confirm the prediction that optimal monitoring depends non-monotonically on the interest alignment between managers and workers. Managers also show some preferences for control that seem to be driven by loss aversion. We also find mild evidence for hidden benefits and costs of control. However, behavioral biases have only limited effects on organizational outcomes. (joint with Randolph Sloof, and Ferdinand von Siemens)