Contributions in Merlin

This paper proposes a `re-construction' of organization studies in order to deal with the chronic incommensurability that characterizes the discipline. The paper begins by discussing the issue of incommensurability between organization studies schools of thought, arguing that it represents a significant problem with which the field must cope. Ambiguity of the key constructs that form the building blocks of organization studies schools is identified as one major reason for persistent inter-school incommensurability. To help deal with the problem, we recommend the creation of a dictionary that would include democratically produced definitions of key organization studies constructs. The procedures used by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to develop new accounting standards are presented as a possible model for the dictionary-building process. The role of the dictionary in reducing inter-school incommensurability is discussed, and possible disadvantages considered. While the need to formally create construct definitions is symptomatic of the low paradigm development of organization studies, the dictionary is envisioned as a tool for increasing the future paradigm development of the field.

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Economic literature has proposed several incentive mechanisms in order to induce agents in divisionalized organizations to reveal their private information. Among these mechanisms the class of Groves mechanisms has the distinguishing property of implementing truthful reporting as an equilibrium in dominant strategies. However, critiques maintain that agents may collude and transmit false information to headquarters. This paper demonstrates that the agents' collusion game results in a prisoners' dilemma because agents cannot credibly commit themselves to play the collusive message strategies. The paper also outlines an organizational setting to enhance the plausibility of the fundamental assumptions underlying the Groves/Loeb approach, in which payoffs are observable ex post so that compensation contracts can be based on them. The task of informing headquarters is not assigned to the division manager himself but to a pertinent management accountant. This setting reduces the impact of subjective utility components of agents' payoffs so that the assumptions of this mechanism seem more realistic.

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I m zweiten Teil der Antrittvorlesung von PD Dr. Andrea Schenker- Wicki an der Hochschule St. Gallen versucht die Autorin aufzuzeigen, wie die Leistungen einer Hochschule sichtbar und einem breiten Publikum verständlich gemacht werden und welche Methoden dabei zum Einsatz kommen konnen.

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The winner?take?all nature of all?pay auctions makes the outcome sensitive to decision errors, which we introduce with a logit formulation. The equilibrium bid distribution is a fixed point: the belief distributions that determine expected payoffs equal the choice distributions determined by expected payoffs. We prove existence, uniqueness, and symmetry properties. In contrast to the Nash equilibrium, the comparative statics of the logit equilibrium are intuitive: rent dissipation increases with the number of players and the bid cost. Overdissipation of rents is impossible under full rationality but is observed in laboratory experiments. Our model predicts this property.