Endogenous Effort Norms in Hierarchical Firms

__Abstract__ This paper studies how a three-layer hierarchical firm (principal-supervisor-agent) optimally creates effort norms for its employees. The key assumption is that effort norms are affected by the example of superiors. In equilibrium, norms are eroded as one moves down the hierarchy. The reason is that, because exerting effort is costly, the supervisor only partially complies with the principal's example, and thereby transmits a lower norm to the agent. The principal optimally responds to norm erosion by setting a higher example to begin with. In equilibrium, norm erosion gives rise to three inefficiencies: the principal works too hard, the supervisor's norm is too high, and the agent's norm is too low. To reduce these inefficiencies, firms should keep the extent of hierarchy to a minimum, promote employees with the strongest sensitivity to social norms, and distort man agerial spans of control

Social Relations and Relational Incentives

This paper studies how social relationships between managers and employees affect relational incentive contracts. To this end we develop a simple dynamic principal-agent model where both players may have feelings of altruism or spite toward each other. The contract may contain two types of incentives for the agent to work hard: a bonus and a threat of dismissal. We find that good social relationships undermine the credibility of a threat of dismissal but strengthen the credibility of a bonus. Among others, these two mechanisms imply that better social relationships sometimes lead to higher bonuses, while worse social relationships may increase productivity and players' utility in equilibrium

Altruism, Conformism, and Incentives in the Workplace

Performance pay can motivate employees, but money is not the only motivation in the workplace. Altruism, which means that someone enjoys the well-being of someone else, can also provide a powerful motivation. The first part of this thesis studies theoretically how altruism between an employee and his superior affects the optimal use of monetary incentives. Among others, the analysis reveals how altruism influences the credibility of monetary incentive schemes, and how altruistic managers can be prevented from being lenient in evaluating employee performance. The second part of this thesis focuses on motivation stemming from the desire to conform to social norms. I develop a theoretical model in which it is assumed that norms for employees are affected by the example of superiors. The analysis sheds light on how superiors take the norm-setting aspect of their behavior into account, and derives implications for the optimal design of organizations

Leniency Bias in Long-Term Workplace Relationships

markdownabstract__Abstract__ This paper studies how firms can efficiently incentivize supervisors to truthfully report employee performance. To this end, I develop a dynamic principal-supervisor-agent model. The supervisor is either selfish or altruistic towards the agent, which is observable to the agent but not to the principal. The analysis yields two key results. First, supervisor altruism sometimes provides a net incentive to report performance truthfully, rather than to bias evaluations upward. The intuition is that an altruistic supervisor values his job because of his good relationship with the agent, and puts his job at risk by overrating the agent's performance. Second, I show that by screening for one supervisor type, firms can incentivize the supervisor to truthfully report performance at the lowest possible costs. For this reason, screening may be optimal, even though it reduces the probability that vacancies are filled