IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/the/publsh/1468.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Communication and influence

Author

Listed:
  • Calvó-Armengol, Antoni

    (ICREA, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Barcelona GSE)

  • ,

    (Departament d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona GSE)

  • ,

    (Columbia Business School and Department of Economics, Columbia University)

Abstract

We study the information flows that arise among a set of agents with local knowledge and directed payoff interactions, which differ among pairs of agents. First, we study the equilibrium of a game where, before making decisions, agents can invest in pairwise active communication (speaking) and pairwise passive communication (listening). This leads to a full characterization of information and influence flows. Second, we show that, when the coordination motive dominates the adaptation motive, the influence of an agent on all his peers is approximately proportional to his eigenvector centrality. Third, we use our results to explain organizational phenomena such as: the emergence of work cliques; the adoption of human resources practices that foster communication (especially active communication); and the discrepancy between formal hierarchy and actual influence.

Suggested Citation

  • Calvó-Armengol, Antoni & , & ,, 2015. "Communication and influence," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(2), May.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:1468
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20150649/13040/401
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Prat, Andrea & Garicano, Luis, 2011. "Organizational Economics with Cognitive Costs," CEPR Discussion Papers 8372, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Jeanne Hagenbach & Frédéric Koessler, 2010. "Strategic Communication Networks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(3), pages 1072-1099.
    3. Esther Gal-or, 1986. "Information Transmission—Cournot and Bertrand Equilibria," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(1), pages 85-92.
    4. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 1994. "The Firm as a Communication Network," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 809-839.
    5. Raith, Michael, 1996. "A General Model of Information Sharing in Oligopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 260-288, October.
    6. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2009. "Policy with Dispersed Information," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 11-60, March.
    7. Coralio Ballester & Antoni Calvó-Armengol & Yves Zenou, 2006. "Who's Who in Networks. Wanted: The Key Player," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1403-1417, September.
    8. Venkatesh Bala & Sanjeev Goyal, 1998. "Learning from Neighbours," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(3), pages 595-621.
    9. Prat, Andrea & Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio, 2010. "Measuring the Impact Factor of Agents within an Organization Using Communication Patterns," CEPR Discussion Papers 8040, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Jacques Crémer & Luis Garicano & Andrea Prat, 2007. "Language and the Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 373-407.
    11. Oriana Bandiera & Luigi Guiso & Andrea Prat & Raffaella Sadun, 2011. "What Do CEOs Do?," EIEF Working Papers Series 1101, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Oct 2010.
    12. Ichniowski, Casey & Shaw, Kathryn & Prennushi, Giovanna, 1997. "The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Productivity: A Study of Steel Finishing Lines," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 291-313, June.
    13. Timothy Van Zandt, 2004. "Information Overload in a Network of Targeted Communication," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(3), pages 542-560, Autumn.
    14. Vives, Xavier, 1984. "Duopoly information equilibrium: Cournot and bertrand," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 71-94, October.
    15. Galeotti, Andrea & Ghiglino, Christian & Squintani, Francesco, 2013. "Strategic information transmission networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 1751-1769.
    16. Timothy van Zandt, 1999. "Real-Time Decentralized Information Processing as a Model of Organizations with Boundedly Rational Agents," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(3), pages 633-658.
    17. Gal-Or, Esther, 1985. "Information Sharing in Oligopoly," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(2), pages 329-343, March.
    18. Timothy Van Zandt & Roy Radner, 1998. "Real-Time Decentralized Information Processing and Returns to Scale," Discussion Papers 1233, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    19. Cabrales, Antonio & Calvó-Armengol, Antoni & Zenou, Yves, 2011. "Social interactions and spillovers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 339-360, June.
    20. Dessein, Wouter & Santos, Tano & ,, 2013. "Rational Inattention and Organizational Focus," CEPR Discussion Papers 9395, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    21. Luis Garicano, 2000. "Hierarchies and the Organization of Knowledge in Production," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(5), pages 874-904, October.
    22. Radner, Roy, 1993. "The Organization of Decentralized Information Processing," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(5), pages 1109-1146, September.
    23. Bramoulle, Yann & Kranton, Rachel, 2007. "Public goods in networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 478-494, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Garcia, Daniel, 2012. "Communication and Information Acquisition in Networks," MPRA Paper 55481, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 24 Apr 2014.
    2. Prat, Andrea & Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio, 2010. "Measuring the Impact Factor of Agents within an Organization Using Communication Patterns," CEPR Discussion Papers 8040, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. , & , M. & ,, 2013. "Hierarchical cheap talk," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(1), January.
    4. Jackson, Matthew O. & Zenou, Yves, 2015. "Games on Networks," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    5. Sergio Currarini & Francesco Feri, 2015. "Information sharing networks in linear quadratic games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 44(3), pages 701-732, August.
    6. Kieron Meagher & Andrew Wait, 2008. "Who Decides about Change and Restructuring in Organizations?," CEPR Discussion Papers 587, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    7. Luis Garicano & Yanhui Wu, 2012. "Knowledge, Communication, and Organizational Capabilities," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(5), pages 1382-1397, October.
    8. Maria Guadalupe & Hongyi Li & Julie Wulf, 2014. "Who Lives in the C-Suite? Organizational Structure and the Division of Labor in Top Management," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(4), pages 824-844, April.
    9. Safi, Shahir, 2022. "Listen before you link: Optimal monitoring rules for communication networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 230-247.
    10. Migrow, Dimitri, 2018. "Designing Communication Hierarchies," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 44, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    11. Takashi Ui, 2009. "Bayesian potentials and information structures: Team decision problems revisited," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 5(3), pages 271-291, September.
    12. Fernando Vega-Redondo, 2008. "Network Organizations," Economics Working Papers ECO2008/09, European University Institute.
    13. Mohamed Belhaj & Sebastian Bervoets & Frédéric Deroïan, 2013. "Network Design under Local Complementarities," AMSE Working Papers 1309, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised 12 Feb 2013.
    14. Pérez, Jessica Helen & Iranzo Sancho, Susana, 2012. "Determinants of Decentralization within the Firm: Some Empirical Evidence from Spanish Small and Medium- Sized Enterprise," Working Papers 2072/211755, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    15. Thomas Hubbard & Luis Garicano, 2004. "Hierarchies, Specialization, and the Utilization of Knowledge: Theory and Evidence from the Legal Services Industry," Working Papers 04-07, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    16. Prat, Andrea & Garicano, Luis, 2011. "Organizational Economics with Cognitive Costs," CEPR Discussion Papers 8372, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Wouter Dessein & Tano Santos, 2003. "The Demand for Coordination," NBER Working Papers 10056, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Yanhui Wu, 2015. "Organizational Structure and Product Choice in Knowledge-Intensive Firms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1830-1848, August.
    19. Maria De Paola & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2009. "Task assignment, incentives and technological factors," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 43-55.
    20. Syngjoo Choi & Edoardo Gallo & Shachar Kariv, 2015. "Networks in the laboratory," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1551, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Team theory; organizations; communication; invariant method;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:the:publsh:1468. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martin J. Osborne (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econtheory.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.