We study the optimal management of evolving hierarchies, which abound in real-life phenomena. An initiator invests into finding a subordinate, who will bring revenues to the joint venture and who will invest herself into finding another subordinate, and so on. The higher the individual...

The emergence and survival of cooperation is one of the hardest problems still open in science. Several factors such as the existence of punishment, repeated interactions, topological effects and the formation of prestige may all contribute to explain the counter-intuitive prevalence of...

Previous research has suggested that information processing and hierarchy costs play a role in firm-level diseconomies of scale. Using separate accounts (SAs) as a laboratory, we examine if these costs vary across investment style (quantitative vs. fundamental) and what role, if any, they play...

We examine how unfavorable social comparisons differentially spur employees of varying hierarchical levels to engage in deception. Drawing on literatures in social psychology and workplace self-esteem, we theorize that negative comparisons with peers could cause either junior or senior employees...

What determines the distribution of information acquired within the hierarchy of a public organization? Without market processes, the generation and absorption of information in bureaucracy relies on individual actors undertaking costly action to acquire it. This paper reports on comparisons...

We study three elements of management control: incentive compensation, performance monitoring, and delegation of authority to managers to contract with lower-level employees. Using a principal-agent model, we highlight important direct and indirect interactions between and among these endogenous...

Cover -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Thinking with roads -- Penny Harvey -- 1. Why highways remake hierarchies -- Luke Heslop and Galen Murton -- 2. Stuck on the side of the road -- Mobility, marginality, and neoliberal governmentality in Nepal -- Galen Murton and Tulasi...