Competitive Pressure, Incentives and Managerial Rewards

The paper examines the equilibrium relationship between managerial incentives and product market competition in imperfectly competitive industries. In a simple managerial economy, where owners simultaneously choose reward schemes and managers are privately informed on firms. production technologies, it is showed that a competing-contracts effect, at play under high powered incentive schemes (contracts based on firms’ profits), may induce competitive pressure to elicit managerial effort. An inverted-U shaped relationship between product market competition, managerial effort and agency costs thus obtains when contracts are based on firms’ profits. Remarkably, whenever competition is strong enough, low powered incentive schemes (contracts based on production costs) may survive in equilibrium with detrimental effects on welfare.competing contracts, cost-target, managerial .rms, pro.t-target, product market competition, vertical hierarchies, X-inefficiency

Engineering Bureaucracy: The Genesis of Formal Policies, Positions, and Structures in High-Technology Firms

[Excerpt] This article examines the impact of organizational founding conditions on several facets of bureaucratization—managerial intensity, the proliferation of specialized managerial and administrative roles, and formalization of employment relations. Analyzing information on a sample of technology start-ups in California\u27s Silicon Valley, we characterize the organizational models or blueprints espoused by founders in creating new enterprises. We find that those models and the social composition of the labor force at the time of founding had enduring effects on growth in managerial intensity (i.e., reliance on managerial and administrative specialists) over time. Our analyses thus provide compelling evidence of path dependence in the evolution of bureaucracy—even in a context in which firms face intense selection pressures—and underscore the importance of the logics of organizing that founders bring to new enterprises. We find less evidence that founding models exert persistent effects on the formalization of employment relations or on the proliferation of specialized senior management titles. Rather, consistent with neo-institutional perspectives on organizations, those superficial facets of bureaucracy appear to be shaped by the need to satisfy external gatekeepers (venture capitalists and the constituents of public corporations), as well as by exigencies of organizational scale, growth, and aging. We discuss some implications of these results for efforts to understand the varieties, determinants, and consequences of bureaucracy

Portraying managerial dynamic capabilities : a case study in the fast-moving consumer goods industry

This paper presents a case study describing the managerial dynamic capabilities of a firm in the highly competitive fast-moving consumer goods industry and their effects in the performance of the firm and the industry. Managerial dynamic capabilities are processes of managerial decision-making, extending throughout the firm, to determine which particular resources managers identify as strategically important and how they build them. The case study, which was developed with a management team during a period of one year, involved a detailed analysis of the resources perceived strategically relevant and the operating policies aimed at maintaining an adequate balance of the set of key resources. In other words, this paper describes what Winter (2003) defines as 'how we earn our living now' or 'zero-level' capabilities

Managerial versus Production Wages: Offshoring, Country Size and Endowments

In this paper, we explore the role of trade in differentiated final goods as well offshoring of tasks for inequality both within and between countries. We emphasize the distinction between managerial and production labor. Production labor is assumed to be a variable input composed of tradable tasks, while managerial labor is a fixed, non-tradable input. We use a 2-country model recently developed by Grossman & Rossi-Hansberg (2010b) that highlights trade in production task, driven by Marshallian economies of scale. We analyze country size and relative endowment effects on the managerial wage premium as well as on international inequality measured in income per head. We compare these effects in a world where trade is restricted to differentiated final goods with a world with trade in both final goods and production tasks.offshoring, economies of scale, income distribution, international inequality

The Effects of Supervisor-Subordinate Genders on Subordinates’ Involvement Across Managerial Functions

One of the renowned agendas’ of the management study around the globe encircles the gender biasness or non-biasness in performing the basic managerial functions. Pertaining to the factual studies, mixed views have been brought to light that whether male supervisors have a good relationship with male subordinates or female subordinates and whether female supervisors have good relationship with female subordinates or male subordinates. It is often assumed that cross gender supervisor subordinate relationships are better than same gender supervisor subordinate relationships. The involvement of subordinates in the four managerial functions namely planning, organizing, controlling and motivating are investigated to conclude the effects of gender on subordinate involvement in management functions by the supervisors. A sample of 1000 respondents were specifically chosen from banking sector to identify if gender of supervisor and subordinate has any effect on subordinates’ involvement across managerial functions. To achieve this, firstly, mean of male supervisor with same and cross gender subordinates is compared on the basis of their involvement in managerial functions through applying the split analysis. Results revealed that male supervisors involve male subordinates more in managerial functions than female subordinates. As for female supervisors they have the same level of involvement of both the genders across managerial functions but somehow these involvements are more towards the male subordinates.Supervisor, Subordinate, Gender, Managerial functions

It's Not Just the ATMs: Technology, Firm Strategies, Jobs, and Earnings in Retail Banking

The authors examine trends in job content and earnings in selected jobs in two American banks. Firm restructuring and technological changes resulted in higher earnings for college-educated workers. The banks followed different strategies in implementing these changes for lower-skill jobs, with different effects on bank tellers in particular. The authors conclude that technology enables workplace reform but does not determine its effect on jobs and earnings; these effects are contingent on managerial strategies. This focus on organizational processes and managerial strategy provides a complementary approach to accounts of growing inequality that center solely on the role of individual skills and technological change.

Firm performance and managerial turnover: the case of Ukraine

The paper studies whether and how CEO turnover in Ukrainian firms is related to their performance. Based on a novel dataset covering Ukrainian joint stock companies in 2002-2006, the paper finds statistically significant negative association between the past performance of firms measured by return on sales and return on assets, and the likelihood of managerial turnover. While the strength of the turnover-performance relationship does not seem to depend on factors such as managerial ownership and supervisory board size, we do find significant entrenchments effects associated with ownership by managers. Overall, our analysis suggests that corporate governance in Ukraine operates with a certain degree of efficiency, despite the well-known lacunas in the country’s institutional environment