The Silent Treatment∗

A principal’s attention is repeatedly sought by multiple agents, each eager for his ideas to be implemented. An idea’s quality stochastically affects the principal’s profit, and agents’ abilities to generate good ideas may be private information. The principal is unable to review proposals before choosing one each period. She can provide incentives only through her selection rule among proposals, but cannot commit to this rule in advance. We show how she may discipline agents to exercise restraint, achieving her first-best in an intuitive belief-free equilibrium. Whether first best is achievable hinges on the worst possible agent, the organization’s ‘weakest link.’