Team Incentives and Organizational Form

Conventional wisdom regarding nonprofit firms is that the absence of a profit motive renders them inefficient. However, the costs and product quality realized by profit-taking firms is determined by how well those firms deal with a variety of internal incentive and information problems, and this should be equally true for nonprofits. This article analyzes the team incentive problem in nonprofit organizations. Holmstrom (1982) showed that the introduction of a budget-breaker into a team permitted the creation of incentives to provide efficient effort when it is otherwise impossible. A similar result obtains for a nonprofit team, but the role of principal differs from that found in profit-taking teams. It is shown that any of: donors, government regulators, or Trustees can fulfill this role in a nonprofit team. One implication of this is shown to be that nonprofit firms may indeed pay employees less than otherwise identical employees earn in identical jobs in profit-taking firms.     

Incentives to Form Customs Unions and Quotas

This paper extends the well known Kemp–Wang proposition regarding customs unions and tariffs to the case of import quotas. It is shown that a customs union in the presence of import quotas will leave each country, whether a member of the customs union or not, not worse off than before the formation of the customs union. The partial-equilibrium approach is used in this study.     

组织激励与知识员工的信息产出

本文以知识属性为组织激励效果的调节变量,即当个体对知识属性的认知不同时,外生激励促进个体产生知识转移的内生动机的效果不同。以江苏省两家大型商业银行信贷部门员工为对象的实证研究（N=307）支持了本文的假设。本文为冯帆、廖飞和杨忠（2007）的理论模型提供了实证依据。     

不对称信息、双边激励与最佳特许经营合约

特许经营当中存在委托代理问题,当市场需求受到双方广告努力水平的影响时,便有可能出现特许方和加盟商的双边道德风险.本文基于委托代理理论,在假设受许人具有私人成本信息的情况下,分析特许权使用费率的最优特许合约特征.研究表明,在完全信息条件下,最优的特许合约意味着双方收益的比取决于他们各自的广告有效性,一方收益随着对方广告有效性的提高而增加;当受许人存在私人成本信息时,最优特许合约使得广告有效性更高的一方获得较高收益.     

媒体压力、治理激励与政府会计信息披露

本文围绕政府会计信息披露的媒体驱动机制展开分析,利用省级地方政府的面板数据实证检验媒体报道产生的舆论压力对政府会计信息披露的作用机制以及作用效果,检验结果表明:媒体压力对政府会计信息披露具有驱动作用,而治理激励抑制了该驱动作用。相对而言,在治理激励弱的地区,媒体压力对政府会计信息披露的驱动作用更加显著。进一步研究发现:媒体报道产生的舆论压力的作用效果需要良好的法律制度环境和基础设施建设作为保证,一定程度上,建立法律制度和基础设施建设的保障机制,有利于强化媒体监督功能,改善治理激励的抑制作用。     

管理的视角:组织资本及其投资

作为企业的一种独特生产资源,组织资本被视为影响公司绩效和增长的最重要因素之一.但它的无形特征以及对人的依赖性,使得这个经济学概念非常抽象,难以被清晰描述理解,这直接阻碍了将组织资本这一概念用于指导管理实践.本文试图建立一个分析框架,引入组织的记忆这一管理学的概念,来帮助研究者和管理者们从管理视角理解企业所拥有的组织资本这一重要资产,进而理解对组织资本的投资.     

Information, Incentives, and Option Value: The Silicon Valley Model

This paper analyzes the Silicon Valley model as a novel economic institution in the domain of technological product system innovation. We analyze the informational relationship as well as governance relationships between venture capitalists and a cluster of entrepreneurial firms. The informational conditions that make the Silicon Valley model efficient are identified, leading to an understanding of the significance of standardized interfaces, modularization, and information encapsulation. We then examine the governance/incentive aspect by integrating the models of Aoki (Towards a Comparative Institutional Analysis, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001) and Baldwin and Clark (Design Rules—Vol. 1: The Power of Modularity, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). The paper concludes by evaluating the applicability of the model to other localities and industries. J. Comp. Econ., December 2002, 30(4), pp. 759–786. Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, and RIETI, 1-3-1 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0013, Japan; and Faculty of Economics, Toyo University, 5-28-20 Hakusan, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112-8606, Japan. © 2002 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D21, L23, O32, P51, P52.     

Organizational Form and Expense Preference: Spanish Experience

This article investigates the effect of alternative ownership structures, stock versus mutual, on the cost of production of Spanish depository institutions. By introducing a stochastic frontier analysis in estimating the best–practiced expense–preference behaviour, the empirical approach adjusts for the possibility that the two sectors of the banking industry employ different production technologies and finds evidence that is consistent with expense–preference behaviour by the mutual savings banks.     

信息、承诺与激励——理解中国农业生产激励变迁中的国家角色

平均化的分配方式和退出权的剥夺导致人民公社内部的作物生产激励不足。但由国家管制政策引起的作物生产激励问题经常被研究者所忽略。文章发展了信息分权基础上的国家承诺分析框架,由于工业化目标,国家通过建立人民公社以降低治理成本,其中,人民公社承担了收集、处理作物种植信息并提取相应农业剩余的职能,从而导致人民公社面临严重的外部激励问题。20世纪70年代末期,财政困境促使国家放松对农业部门的组织化治理,允许以家户为单位的作物生产方法。这事实上放松了对作物生产的信息控制,由信息分权引起的国家承诺具有可信性,有效地增加了农民权利的安全性及其生产激励,构成农业部门生产效率改善的重要源泉。     

Organizational Form Outside the Principal–agent Paradigm

This paper provides a review of theories of hierarchies in organizations where the rationale for hierarchical organization derives from agents’ limited capacities for acquiring and communicating information. In these circumstances, hierarchical organization of agents may serve to reduce the amount of time necessary for completion of production tasks, or to improve the quality of information for decision-making on how to undertake production tasks. An informal discussion of theories of hierarchy is provided as well as a formal presentation of key models and results. Limitations of existing approaches are considered.     

Electronic Information Systems and Organizational Boundaries

This paper models the effects of increasing utilization of information technology on organizational boundaries. The effects of information systems on structure are analysed by integrating the transaction cost and knowledge-based views of the firm. A model of structural choice is developed from the combination of these viewpoints. From this model, we can develop propositions regarding the relation between information technology and changes in organizational structure. The model suggests that the effect of increasing utilization of information technology is to drive firms through a repeated three-stage lifecycle that alternately drives firms toward market and hierarchical structures, resulting in heterogeneous network boundaries.     

信息技术与军队组织结构

信息技术的飞速发展及其在军事上的应用,引起了新一轮的军事革命。首先详细阐述了信息技术在军事上的应用及其对军队组织结构所产生的影响,针对我国军队现状,根据未来信息化战争的需要,为我国军队未来组织结构的调整提出了设想。     

差异化需求、信息传递结构与资源依赖中的组织间合作

资源依赖理论在解释组织间关系时关注组织间的双边权力,当其被置于组织网络结构中时,经典的权力机制是否还具有解释力?本文以在线教育组织为案例,运用网络分析方法探讨组织网络结构对组织间资源依赖关系的影响。研究发现,在一个由利益相关者共同参与的组织网络中,用户通过表达差异化需求,组织通过改变信息沟通结构,实现了组织间的目标协同、信息共享和信任增强,突破了经典资源依赖理论的权力机制,形成了资源利益基础上的合作机制。     

非对称性信息激励经济理论

非对称信息现象广泛存在于现实经济生活中,信息经济学研究内容之一是怎样有效制定出能处理非对称信息条件下,不同激励和控制问题的契约和制度.其基本结论是任何一种制度安排或政策,只有满足个人的"激励相容约束"才能行之有效.在非对称性信息条件下的激励理论研究领域,詹姆斯·米尔利斯和威廉·维克里作出了突出贡献.本文概述了两位经济学家的主要研究成果.     

信息社会的组织行为

随着各种信息技术突飞猛进,以互联网为代表的 IT产业得到蓬勃发展,从事传统活动的组织正在与现代信息技术融合。在信息社会中,信息量极大增加的同时,信息的传递也空前地快捷,这些反映到组织中,对组织行为产生了多方面和深入的影响,对组织的管理提出了全新的要求和挑战。本文将对信息时代的组织价值观、组织变革以及激励做一些探讨。 　　一、价值观 　　价值观是个人或社会对某种特定的行为方式或存在的终极状态比对同其对立或相反的行为方式或存在的终极状态更喜欢的一种持久信念,它是组织文化、伦理观的核心部分。从组织行为学…     

Patent Protection and R&D Incentives Under Incomplete Information

When tournament effect is negative, under complete information, whether patent protection increases the incentive for R&D is ambiguous. It depends on the extent of spillover of the new technology. In particular if that amount is less than a threshold value then patent protection increases the incentive for R&D, otherwise it does not. This note considers incomplete information framework where the spillover parameter is private information. In this framework it is shown that there are situations where patent protection unambiguously increases incentive for R&D. This happens if the distribution function of the spillover parameter is sufficiently skewed and the cost of doing research is sufficiently high even when tournament effect is negative.

     

Incentives,information, and organizational design

NÖG Lecture delivered to the annual meeting of the Austrian Economic Society, Vienna, September 29, 1988. Financial support from the Olin Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Hoover Institution is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is partly based on joint work undertaken with Raaj K. Sah, to whom I am most indebted. I have also benefitted greatly from conversations with Joseph Farrell. Research assistance of Serge Marquié and Rohit Rahi is gratefully acknowledged.     

Wealth Effects, Incentives, and Productivity

Comparative static effects of varying the wealth level of a risk-averse agent in a moral hazard setting with limited liability constraints are investigated. There are two principal opposing effects of increasing wealth: the incentive effect, which allows stronger punishments for poor performance, thereby encouraging higher effort; and the preference effect, which reduces the agent's effort incentives owing to income effects in the demand for leisure. It is shown that optimal effort levels are initially constant, subsequently increasing and eventually decreasing in wealth. Hence agents with intermediate wealth levels are the most productive.