Bureaucracy as a Mechanism to Generate Information / Walter Novaes, Luigi Zingales.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Novaes, Walter.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Zingales, Luigi.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w9763.

NBER working paper series no. w9763

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2003.

Summary:

Firms that maintain no formal record of actions and events would hardly be considered well managed. Yet, organizations that require the recording of actions and the filing of reports are often labeled bureaucratic' and inefficient. This paper argues that the thin line between efficient management practices and inefficient bureaucracy is crossed to curb managerial agency costs in a multi-layer hierarchy. The model predicts that bureaucracy increases with the frequency of managerial turnover, and it establishes a link between bureaucracy, incentive schemes, and leverage in a cross-section of firms.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2003.