Optimal Incentive Contracts for Teams

团队最优激励合同

• 批准号: 9730472
• 负责人: Yeon-Koo Che
• 金额: $ 3.02万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-07-01 至 2000-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9730472&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Optimal; Incentive; Contracts; Teams

Much of the existing theory of incentives describes a relationship that lasts for just one transaction. Except for a few recent articles, the view emerging from these static models promotes incentive schemes that are sensitive to employees' individual performance measures and encourage competition among employees through tournaments or relative performance evaluation. The static nature of these models is not only unrealistic, given that most real world organizations have long, often open-ended, life spans, but their predictions appear to be at odds with many (long-term) agency relationships. Incentives for many employees are often muted, and firms increasingly rely on `self-managed teams` that encourage cooperative relationships among their members through mutual accountability, group incentives and delegated authority. While there has been no firm proof of their benefit, many prominent firms attribute their productivity gains and high performance records to the successful operation of work teams. Several recent authors such as Holmstrom, Milgrom and Itoh demonstrated the benefits of inducing cooperation among workers through team-based incentives. The static nature of these papers leaves unexplained how cooperation among agents can be achieved, however. This project remedies this limitation by focusing on the repeated nature of agency relationships. Doing so not only enables us to explain cooperation among agents as self-enforcing behavior, but it also yields much richer, interrelated predictions on various aspects of internal organization. The new element in the proposed model, absent in the static models, is the possibility of an `implicit incentive` being created. Agents can be induced to monitor and punish one another's shirking, when appropriately motivated by the explicit incentives designed by the principal. The objective of the study is to explore how the implicit incentives can be optimally induced by, and combined with, explicit incentives. This project will provide useful insights on important issues such as the design of pay-for-performance scheme, task assignment, allocation of authority, and the role and value of communication. The preliminary research suggests that the optimal incentive scheme displays many observed features of team arrangements. Specifically, it predicts that relationships with long life spans and mutual accountability are likely to be characterized by low-powered, group incentives and by a high degree of delegation of authority, whereas relationships with short life spans or no mutual accountability are characterized by high-powered, competitive incentive schemes such as relative performance evaluation and tournaments and by a high degree of centralized control and supervision. These findings show a great deal of promise for a theory that will contribute not only to the development of the principal-agent literature but also to the understanding of general incentive issues arising in dynamic agency relationships. The project has direct applications in identifying the benefit of team-based organizations but it will also shed light on other institutions such as group-based lending programs and Japanese subcontracting relationships.

大多数现有的激励理论都描述了一种只持续一次交易的关系。除了最近的几篇文章外，从这些静态模型中出现的观点促进了对员工个人业绩衡量敏感的激励计划，并通过锦标赛或相对业绩评估鼓励员工之间的竞争。鉴于大多数真实的世界组织都有很长的、往往是无限期的寿命，这些模型的静态性质不仅是不现实的，而且它们的预测似乎与许多（长期）代理关系不一致。 对许多雇员的激励往往是无声的，公司越来越依赖“自我管理的团队”，通过相互问责、集体激励和授权，鼓励其成员之间的合作关系。 虽然没有确凿的证据证明其好处，但许多著名公司将其生产力的提高和高业绩记录归功于工作队的成功运作。 最近的几位作者，如Holmstrom，Milgrom和Itoh证明了通过基于团队的激励措施诱导工人之间合作的好处。然而，这些论文的静态性质无法解释代理人之间如何实现合作。本项目通过关注代理关系的重复性来弥补这一局限性。这样做不仅使我们能够将代理人之间的合作解释为自我执行行为，而且还可以对内部组织的各个方面进行更丰富，相互关联的预测。在拟议的模式，在静态模式中缺乏的新元素，是一个'隐性激励'正在创建的可能性。 代理人可以被诱导，以监测和惩罚对方的偷懒，适当的激励时，明确的激励设计的校长。 本研究的目的是探讨隐性激励如何被显性激励最佳地诱导，并与显性激励相结合。 这个项目将对一些重要问题提供有益的见解，如按业绩计薪方案的设计、任务分配、权力分配以及沟通的作用和价值。 初步研究表明，最优激励方案显示了许多观察到的团队安排的特点。 具体而言，它预测，与寿命长，相互问责的关系可能是低功率，群体激励和高度的权力下放，而与寿命短或没有相互问责的关系的特点是高功率，竞争性的激励计划，如相对业绩评价和比赛，并通过高度的集中控制和监督。 这些研究结果显示了很大的承诺，不仅有助于发展的委托代理文学，但也了解一般的激励问题所产生的动态代理关系的理论。该项目直接应用于确定以团队为基础的组织的好处，但它也将揭示其他机构，如以团体为基础的贷款计划和日本分包关系。