Efficient communication in organizations

This paper studies the organization of communication between biased senders and a receiver in binary decision-making problems. Senders can misreport their private information at a cost. Efficiency is achieved by resolving information asymmetries without incurring these costs—i.e., by attaining the complete-information outcome. Only one communication protocol is efficient, robust to collusion, and free from unnecessary complexities. This protocol has a simple, adversarial, and sequential structure. It always induces efficient equilibria, for which a closed-form characterization is provided. The findings are relevant for the design of organizations seeking to improve decision-making while limiting wasteful influence activities.