Nadya Malenko

Timing Decisions in Organizations: Communication and Authority in a Dynamic Environment

We consider a problem where an uninformed principal makes a timing decision interacting with an informed but biased agent. Because time is irreversible, the direction of the bias crucially affects the agents ability to credibly communicate information. When the agent favors late decision making, full information revelation often occurs. In this case, centralized decision making, where the principal retains authority and communicates with the agent, implements the optimal decision-making rule. When the agent favors early decision making, communication is partial, and the optimal decision-making rule is not implemented. Delegation adds value when the bias is for early decision making, but not for late decision making.

Advising the Management

We study the optimal size and composition of an advisory committee when shareholders differ in preferences and beliefs and strategically acquire and communicate information. If shareholders and management have similar objectives but disagree due to different beliefs, and information is cheap, the optimal advisory body includes all shareholders. Conversely, if agents have conflicting preferences or information is sufficiently costly, the optimal advisory body is a strict subset of shareholders. Thus, advisory voting (board) is optimal in the former (latter) case. Similar implications hold if the committee also has authority, but unlike purely advisory committees, committees with authority are more diverse.

Deadlock on the Board

We develop a dynamic model of board decision-making. We show that a board could retain a policy all directors agree is worse than an available alternative. Thus, directors may retain a CEO they agree is bad—a deadlocked board leads to an entrenched CEO. We explore how to compose boards and appoint directors to mitigate deadlock. We find that board diversity and long director tenure can exacerbate deadlock. Moreover, we rationalize why CEOs and incumbent directors have power to appoint new directors: to avoid deadlock. Our model speaks to short-termism, staggered boards, and proxy access.