document: The ultimate control group Empirical research on the organization of firms requires that firms be classified on the basis of their control structures . This should be done in a way that can potentially be made operational . It is easy to identify the ultimate controller of a hierarchical organization , and the literature has largely focused on this case . However , many organizational structures mix hierarchy with collective choice procedures such as voting , or use circular structures under which superiors are accountable to their subordinates . The author develops some analytic machinery that can be used to map the authority structures of such organizations , and show that under mild restrictions there is a well-defined ultimate control group . The results are consistent with intuitions about the nature of control in familiar economic settings
doc_bio_tags: O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O