Do new brooms sweep clean? When and why dismissing a manager increases the subordinates’ performance

If a manager stays in office for a long time he will have learned much about his subordinates. Thus competition among them will be weak as the manager has made up his mind who is suited best for which position. With a new manager the “race” for favorable tasks is restarted leading subordinates to exert higher effort. But for the firm-owner the trade-off arises that with a new manager effort is larger but the quality of task allocation is worse since information is lost. The optimal dismissal policy will be nonmonotonic in the expected heterogeneity of the subordinates’ abilities.     

基于彼得原理的领导者特质探析——成功领导者特质的人物分析法研究

彼得原理是关于组织中不胜任领导或管理者的理论,后来帕金森对它加以发展,提出了帕金森定律.通过对彼得原理和帕金森定律的分析可看出,它们所说的不称职的领导者或管理者具有定位不准确、不敢也不愿承认自己的不胜任或能力差甚至无能、喜欢用比自己还无能的人、不敢承认自己会出错或易犯错误、不接纳他人尤其是下属意见、重程序或形式而不重目标等.若反过来理解和推论,成功领导者应具备恰当定位能力、自知之明(认识到并勇于承认自己的不足)的能力与勇气、认错与纠错能力和勇气、向下属认错和道歉的胆识、积极接纳他人意见、注重目标而不重视程式或形式等素质.这说明,对领导者称职与否的分析是弄清成功领导者或管理者特质的重要途径,人物分析法是揭示成功者特质的重要方法     

Superior firm performance under conditional communication between top hierarchy and the subordinates

The choice of communication protocol in hierarchically structured firms is critical to business success. A new conditional communication structure is proposed where the subordinates are allowed to communicate with the principal only when the unit performs poorly. Under this protocol, the bad manager is not afraid of whistleblowing by a superior subordinate, because by making a good recruitment he ensures that his unit generally performs well. The good manager will also be given a voice when his unit does not perform well to clarify the underlying causes, and thus saves inefficient firing by the principal. Using a game-theoretic analysis, we show that this is a clear improvement over the “chain of command” style management where there is no communication between the top and bottom layers and managers are always fired following bad performance. Conditional communication can thus be adopted by firms to improve the overall profitability.     

Is the more able manager always safer from takeover?

It's commonly believed that managers with higher ability would be less likely to be taken over. We set out a model, which is built on Zwiebel (1996), to show that there is no monotonic relationship between manager's ability and the probability of being taken over. A manager with relatively high ability would be taken over since this manager cannot commit to renegotiating debt contract with the creditor after taking on a bad project; anticipating this, the raider would take over the firm and remove the high-ability manager in the first place.     

A Theory of Trade Secrets in Firms*

This article provides a simple theoretical model of trade secrets in hierarchical firms. A crucial assumption is that each manager has access to trade secrets pertaining to his own hierarchical level as well as to all lower levels. The article explores some implications of this assumption for optimal degree of trade secrets accumulation and protection as well as for the wage structure in firms. In addition, the model implies that managers may have an incentive to overpay their subordinates and protect their firms’ trade secrets too much.     

STRATEGIC DELEGATION UNDER UNIONISED DUOPOLY: WHO WILL BARGAIN WITH UNIONS?

This paper investigates the choice of a firm's delegate (either the owner or the manager) bargaining wages and employment with a union under a unionised duopoly. We show that if an owner delegates the task of bargaining to a manager, the owner always compensates the manager for profits by penalising sales, regardless of whether the rival owner delegates or not. Moreover, we show that an owner's decision to delegate the task of bargaining to a manager depends on the incremental benefit of delegating and the cost of hiring a manager. The asymmetric outcome (wherein one owner delegates but the other does not) can occur if there is a sufficiently large disparity of hiring costs between the owners. Finally, we show that the union in an owner‐managed firm always earns more than the union in a managerial firm.     

Inefficient Investment,Information Asymmetry,and Competition for Managers

We investigate the possible inefficiency of investment when the manager has better information than the principal. We assume that projects can be grouped into two categories based on their information characteristics of soft and hard information. We consider a case in which the manager faces competition for appointment at the end of term. We consider several cases in which the competitor's ability is known, or proxied by the performance of other managers, or is uncertain. We find that hard information projects are preferred to soft information projects and that the efficiency in project selection critically depends on the competitor's ability. Interestingly, information asymmetry may be socially beneficial, because it can provide the manager with incentives to select high‐quality hard‐information projects. Welfare improvement can be made by a budget change that is in the opposite direction to the optimum. Several empirical implications of the theory are discussed.     

Financial innovations and managerial incentive contracting

Abstract.  The top executives' demands for financial instruments that enable them to hedge the risk exposure in their compensation has increased drastically in the last decade. We analyse the implications of a manager's hedging ability for effort incentives. We show that if the manager's hedging opportunity is limited to a known fixed number of trading rounds with risk‐neutral third parties, then the equilibrium effort is not affected at all. If the manager has the opportunity to hedge without committing to a last trading round, however, she hedges completely and no effort incentives can be sustained. Therefore, limiting the manager's opportunity to hedge to a fixed known number of trading rounds is crucial for sustaining incentives. JEL classification: G30, G32     

Liquidity and Liquidation

The manager of a firm that is selling an illiquid asset has discretion as to the sale price: if he chooses a high (low) selling price, early sale is unlikely (likely). If the manager has the option to default on the debt that is collateralized by the illiquid asset, the optimal selling price depends on whether the manager acts in the interests of owners or creditors. We model the former case. In equilibrium the owner will always offer the illiquid asset for sale at a strictly higher price than he paid, and will default if he fails to sell. As a result, upon successful sales the illiquid asset changes hands at successively higher prices. We also consider a generalization of the model which permits sellers to finance sales using either debt or preferred stock, or both. This allows derivation of an optimal capital structure. We are indebted to seminar participants at the University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Santa Barbara; Utah State University; University of Miami; Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. We have received helpful comments from Tom Cooley.     

不同职业路径下基金经理变更对基金业绩的影响

本文对2003—2013年基金经理更换事件采用事件分析和面板数据回归进行研究。研究发现基金经理更换后基金业绩得到显著提升,此结论在牛市更显著。当基金历史业绩较好时更换基金经理对业绩没有影响;而当历史业绩较差时更换基金经理则会显著提升业绩。从职业发展路径来看,基金管理经验能有效提升基金经理的投资能力;之前具备资管经验的继任基金经理能够显著提高业绩;并且管理经验来自同一基金公司的继任基金经理更能改善业绩。     

浅析职业经理人战略性管理

职业经理人是企业管理高度专业化和职业化的产物,已逐渐成为现代企业知识资本、信息资本、智力资本的重要载体和具有战略价值的企业人力资本。应从降低企业内部和外部交易成本,国际化竞争、满足利益相关群体需要及创造高绩效工作系统等方面实施职业经理人战略性管理,从而不断提升企业核心竞争力。     

Dependency traps in self‐targeting food aid programs

We present an economy of farmers where food aid is warranted due to poverty traps triggered by nonconvex production sets. We model a food‐aid intervention as a dynamic game between a food‐aid manager and the farmers in a context of asymmetrical information. The food‐aid manager is motivated by a relief objective and targets farmers suffering the poverty trap. The food‐aid manager uses a self‐targeting mechanism by providing the aid through a food wage in exchange for participation in the intervention's activities. Guided by the relief objective and targeting constraint, he fixes the food wage equal to the reservation wage of the farmers not suffering the poverty trap. Dependency traps will then happen every time there is a considerable technological and nutritional gap between farmers who are in and out of the poverty trap. When there is a gap, poor farmers earn more working for the reservation wage of the well‐off farmers than by working in their own farm. Dependency can be overcome only if the food‐aid program allows farmers to upgrade their productive technologies and catch up with those farmers who are out of the poverty trap.     

Technology adoption under hidden information

We consider a firm where workers have pre-contractual private information regarding their cost of production. Before contracting takes place, the owner of the firm can adopt a new technology that reduces production costs for each type of worker. We show that technology adoption may have an adverse rent effect that counteracts the cost-reducing effect. This is the case whenever the new technology reduces the costs of more efficient types more strongly. Nevertheless, if the owner contracts directly with a worker (two-tier hierarchy), the cost-reducing effect always dominates. By contrast, if the firm has more hierarchical tiers such that contracting with the worker is delegated to a manager, the rent effect may prevail. Then, the owner does not adopt the new technology, even if it is costlessly available.     

Strategic delegation under quality competition

This paper examines strategic manipulations of incentive contracts in a model where firms compete in quality as well as in price. Compensation schemes for managers are based on a linear combination of profits and sales. For a given level of quality, a firm desires to reduce the manager's compensation when product sales increase; this serves as the firm's commitment to raise prices. Nevertheless, in general, a manager has a stronger incentive to produce goods of higher quality if he is compensated according to sales. Therefore, a compensation scheme that penalizes a manager when sales increase may result in products that are inferior to those of its rival. We show that, depending on the nature of quality, a positive weight on sales may be desirable when firms compete in quality and price. Welfare implications are also explored.     

The impact of management incentives in intergroup contests

In intergroup contests a manager advises and motivates her group’s members. Her rewards often depend on the subsequent contest expenditure of the members. I test whether such incentives undermine the credibility and effectiveness of a manager’s efforts. In the different experimental treatments the managers either benefit from very high or low expenditure or get a predetermined payment. The results show that different management incentives shape the expenditure of the group members even if managers have an advisory role only. However, group members follow recommendations more closely if management compensation is not linked to contest expenditures.     

Agency Contracts,Noncommitment Timing Strategies and Real Options

Given that an owner lacks the ability to commit to his or her timing decisions under a manager's hidden action, we consider the optimal design of the contract and the owner's optimal timing decisions. Using a real options approach, we show that, compared with the full commitment case, a higher (lower)‐quality project is launched later than (at the same time as) the first‐best case, whereas the replacement of the manager is (is not necessarily) made later if the hidden‐action problem is severe enough (is not severe enough). Severance pay may serve to minimize the compensation for the manager's loss of corporate control.     

The Control of Invasive Species on Private Property with Neighbor-to-Neighbor Spillovers

Invasive pests cross property boundaries. Property managers may have private incentives to control invasive species despite not having sufficient incentive to fully internalize the external costs of their role in spreading the invasion. Each property manager has a right to future use of his own property, but his property may abut others’ properties enabling spread of an invasive species. The incentives for a foresighted property manager to control invasive species have received little attention. We consider the efforts of a foresighted property manager who has rights to future use of a property and has the ability to engage in repeated, discrete control activities. We find that higher rates of dispersal, associated with proximity to neighboring properties, reduce the private incentives for control. Controlling species at one location provides incentives to control at a neighboring location. Control at neighboring locations are strategic complements and coupled with spatial heterogeneity lead to a weaker-link public good problem, in which each property owner is unable to fully appropriate the benefits of his own control activity. Future-use rights and private costs suggest that there is scope for a series of Coase-like exchanges to internalize much of the costs associated with species invasion. Pigouvian taxes on invasive species potentially have qualitatively perverse behavioral effects. A tax with a strong income effect (e.g., failure of effective revenue recycling) can reduce the value of property assets and diminish the incentive to manage insects on one’s own property.     

DO MANAGERS MATTER: EVIDENCE FROM E‐SPORTS

Growing importance of human resources places the role of managers at the core of company efficiency. However, there are studies that demonstrate the efficiency of teams without a manager, so‐called self‐managed teams, is higher comparing with managed teams. Thus, despite the focus on managerial efficiency in the economic literature, the issue of whether a team needs a manager is far from settled. In this paper, we use a quasi‐experimental setting from e‐Sports (competitive video gaming) to understand whether the hiring a manager is of benefit to team performance. The empirical part of the study is based on endogenous switching regression model. This method allows investigating what performance of self‐managed team would be if it will have a manager and vice versa. The dataset includes the information of prize money and features of top e‐Sports teams in Counter‐Strike: Global Offensive (e‐Sports discipline) from 2013 to 2017. The main finding of this study is that managed teams perform better than self‐managed ones but this is not due to the manager. (JEL Z2, M54, L25)     

总经理更换与高管团队的稳定性研究--来自中国上市公司的经验证据

文章从业绩相关理论、锦标赛理论和专用化人力资本理论出发,对总经理更换后的高管团队稳定性进行了理论分析和实证检验。经验证据表明,总经理更换提高了高管离职的概率,但降低了企业绩效对高管离职的影响;总经理被迫离职后的年轻高管有较高的离职概率;高管与离任总经理的专用化人力资本越高,总经理更换后高管离职概率越高,而与继任总经理的专用化人力资本则可使高管离职概率有一定程度的降低。实证结果支持锦标赛理论和专用化人力资本理论,但业绩相关理论没有得到支持。     

A model of project evaluation with limited attention

Summary This paper characterizes the optimal policy for a model in which manager may adopt an endogenous number of projects but has only limited resources to devote to their evaluation and maintenance. In any period, the manager may discard any subset of existing projects but may evaluate only one existing or one new project which is then either discarded or restored. Both its current return and the probability with which a project may be restored depends only on the number of periods since its last evaluated. For a manager whose objective is to maximize the sum of discounted returns, the optimal policy takes one of two forms. A discard policy specifies that the manager evaluate a new project in each period and discard current projects at some critical age. An age inspection policy specifies that the manager evaluate a new project only if all current projects are sufficiently young.Support from the C. V. Starr Center for Applied Economics and the Research Resource Committee of the Rutgers Graduate School of Management is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Roy Radner for valuable assistance in the early stages of the work.