The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Informal authority in organizations
Abstract
We assert that decision rights in organizations are not contractible: the boss can always overturn a subordinate's decision, so formal authority resides only at the top. Although decision rights cannot be formally delegated, they might be informally delegated through self-enforcing relational contracts. We examine the feasibility of informal authority in two informational environments. We show that different information structures produce different decisions not only because different information is brought to bear in the decision-making process, but also because different information creates different temptations to renege on relational contracts. In addition, we explore the implications of formal delegation achieved through divestitures.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Formal and Informal Contracting: Theory and Evidence
Gil, R., & Zanarone, G. (2017) · Annual Review of Law and Social Science · doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110316-113413 · Cited by 56
Bernacchio, C., & Foss, N. (2024) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.4736313 · Cited by 17
Metadata
- Authors
- Baker, G.
- Venue
- Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1999-03-01
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 56-73
- ISSN
- 1465-7341 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2158846242
- Cited by
- 405
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 28.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Informal authority in organizations. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/jleo/15.1.56
- The paper
- Baker, G. (1999). Informal authority in organizations. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization. https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/15.1.56
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
