報告要旨

It is often touted that decisiveness is one of the most important qualities to be possessed by leaders, broadly defined. To see how and why decisiveness can be a valuable asset in organizations, we construct a model of strategic information transmission where: (i) a decision maker solicits opinions sequentially from experts; (ii) how many experts to solicit opinions from is the decision maker's endogenous choice. We show that communication is less efficient when the decision maker is indecisive and cannot resist the temptation to ask for a second opinion. This result also implies that a decision maker can be made better off by committing herself to taking an action immediately, if such a commitment is ever feasible. We also discuss the relationship between decisiveness and personal traits such as fairness, open-mindedness, and selfishness and derive some implications for organizational design.