Agency Theoretic Perspective Research Articles

Absorbed in deceit: modeling intention-driven self-deception with agential layering

ABSTRACT The paradoxical nature of intentional self-deception has led many philosophers to view self-deception as predominantly non-intentional. I propose that approaching self-deception from an agency-theoretic perspective allows us to rescue the idea that self-deception can at least be driven by intention. By modeling the ‘acting as if’ method of self-deception with agential layering, developed by Nguyen [2020. Games: Agency as Art. New York: Oxford University Press], I argue that intention-driven self-deception is no more mysterious than other activities that involve self-effacing ends: ends we must pursue indirectly. That is, self-deception can occur when agents pursue the self-effacing end of forming what they take to be an epistemically unjustified belief by submerging themselves in a layer of agency in which they can act as if they already hold that belief. By intentionally adopting this pretense and shaping their agency around it, they forget that their agency is layered at all, and may thereby form a full-fledged belief. This model avoids objections to views that treat self-deception itself as intentional and does so while appealing only to resources already used to explain our everyday activities. I then apply my model to a core case of bad faith from Sartre to show that intention-driven self-deception can clarify how we are responsible for inauthenticity.

Affirmative action and team performance: An agency theoretic perspective

This study investigates how affirmative action affects team performance by taking an analytic approach. Given that affirmative action discerns two subgroups within a team, which are a group of beneficiaries (BA) and a group of non‐beneficiaries (NA) from affirmative action, we formulate a formal model to specify how these subgroups respond to the affirmative action under an employment contract. With this formal model, we propose that the interaction between the BA's capacity and the NA's leveraging action is essential for team performance. This helps expand our knowledge as to how organizations can strategize affirmative action to enhance team performance.

Deadlines in Product Development

Deadlines are common in product development and are often felt to be too harsh—many development efforts are still worth continuing at the time of mandated termination. We examine the value of deadlines from the agency-theoretic perspective. We consider a firm that pays an agent to lead product development activities. The chance of success depends on the viability of the project and the effort of the agent. As the project proceeds without success, doubts grow as to whether the project is viable. To motivate continued effort, the firm must promise the agent a generous reward if success is achieved during the late stage of development. However, rewarding late success undermines effort incentives in the early stage. The firm may find it more profitable to impose a hard, early deadline to eliminate the agent’s dynamic incentive to procrastinate. We derive conditions under which the firm should impose such deadlines. This paper was accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta, marketing.

Governance and long-term operating performance of family and non-family firms in Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the long-term operating performance of family and non-family firms from the agency theoretic perspective. The analysis is focused on investigating the impact of family ownership on principal–agent conflicts of interest. Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines the relationship between firm operating performance and family ownership for a large sample of 677 Australian-listed companies. The paper uses the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) estimator model developed by Arellano and Bond (1991) and used by other studies in finance (Baltagi, 2012; Bond, 2002; Mohamed et al., 2008). Findings – The empirical results show that firms with ownership concentration has a better operating performance due to the alignment of owner-management interests. This study also finds that family-listed companies have higher survival rates and perform better than non-family companies. Findings support the hypothesis that agency costs arise as a result of privileged access of information and self-interest behaviour of managers (outsiders) in firms with dispersed ownership structures. Originality/value – Earlier studies have only focused on short-term perspectives, particularly investigating small and medium types of Australian family businesses from narrow aspects, such as productivity, business behaviour, capital structure and leverage. Therefore, this paper has conducted a comparative examination of family and non-family firms listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) to identify the impact of agency costs on their financial performance.

Managing risk in mergers and acquisitions activity: beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’ management

Purpose– This paper aims to assess the impact of the presence/absence of risk management practices on the risk of merger and acquisition (M&A) failure.Design/methodology/approach– An agency theoretic perspective is adopted, along with a mixed-methods approach to study managerial complexity beyond simply “good” and “bad”. The focus is on an agency conflicts.Findings– The authors first present an integrated framework that classifies managerial behaviour and risk management, where M&A bids can become vehicles for maximising managerial benefits rather than shareholder value. The authors proceed to consider M&A activity that benefits both managers and shareholders in the presence of risk management strategies.Research limitations/implications– The paper highlights the benefits of multiple paradigms and research paths that address dimensions captured by an agency theoretic perspective.Practical implications– The authors regard this paper as having particular significance in that the global financial crisis has impacted M&A activities and objectives, shifting the employment and related risks faced by managers.Originality/value– The paper suggests future research paths to advance the understanding of the complex behaviour of managers involved in M&A activities that go beyond the classification of “good” and “bad” managers.

"Regulation, Rule-of-Law, and Norms:Separating the Institutions of Investor Protection"

Viewing the arche of good corporate governance as strong minority investor protection, this paper seeks to understand how the societal institutions influence whether firms orient their governance structure towards protecting minority investors. Prior work approaching corporate governance from an agency theoretic perspective tends to operationalize institutions too simplistically, imposing the assumption that laws and the rule-of-law impact firm- level investment in investor protection equally. Furthermore, these same studies ignore the role societal norms may play in firm-level governance. Using data from 21 developed countries, I find that de facto and de jure institutions uniquely impact a firm’s corporate governance through both direct effects and by moderating the impact of agency costs on a firm’s investment in investor protection.

Deadlines in Product Development

Deadlines are common in product development and are often felt to be too harsh - many development efforts are still worth continuing at the time of mandated termination. We examine the value of deadlines from the agency-theoretic perspective. We consider a firm that pays an agent to lead product development activities. The chance of success depends on the viability of the project and the effort of the agent. As the project proceeds without success, doubts grow as to whether the project is viable. To motivate continued effort, the firm must promise the agent a generous reward if success is achieved during the late stage of development. However, rewarding late success undermines effort incentives in the early stage. The firm may find it more profitable to impose a hard, early deadline to eliminate the agent's dynamic incentive to procrastinate. We derive conditions under which the firm should impose such deadlines.

The determinants of cash holdings in private family firms

AbstractWe present empirical evidence on traditional and family firm–specific determinants of cash holdings in the under‐researched context of private family firms. We examine, from an agency theoretic perspective, how and to what extent the relation between family firm management and cash holdings is moderated by the ownership structure. Results reveal that descendant CEOs appear to maintain higher cash holdings than founder CEOs. This effect seems to be stronger if there is a low ownership dispersion. Moreover, outside CEOs maintain higher cash holdings than family CEOs if the family firm is owned by a single owner.

Do banks use credit default swaps to hedge or speculate? An agency theoretic perspective

The global financial crisis (GFC) has drawn attention to the increased risk taking of financial institutions, in particular risk taking by banks. Some observers have also suggested that credit default swaps (CDS) have not only contributed to the GFC but to some extent have also exacerbated it. Moreover, it would seem that in many cases the main motivation for banks in using CDS is for trading purposes (Fitch Ratings, 2007, 2010). Given that banks are among the most important sources of finance, and are fraught with extensive public exposure through deposits, risk taking in banks is an important consideration for both regulators and the general public. This paper explores an agency theoretic perspective in analysing the potential motivations for risk taking vs. risk aversion decisions within banks. The paper asserts that the use of CDS for speculative/trading purpose indicates a risk taking motive, whereas the use of CDS for hedging purposes suggests that the overriding motivation is risk aversion. We argue that these dichotomous themes can explain banking strategy in the use of CDS and in turn can also explain the rationale for the phenomenal growth in CDS up until the onset of the GFC.

Delegation of pricing authority to the sales force: An agency-theoretic perspective of its determinants and impact on performance

In industrial selling situations, the questions of what factors drive pricing authority delegation to salespeople and under what conditions price delegation is beneficial for the firm are often asked. To advance knowledge in this area, we (1) develop and empirically test a framework of important drivers of price delegation based on agency-theoretic research and (2) investigate the impact of price delegation on firm performance, taking into account agency theory variables as potential moderators. The study is based on data from a sample of 181 companies from the industrial machinery and electrical engineering industry in Germany. The results indicate that the degree of pricing delegation increases as information asymmetry between the salesperson and sales manager increases and as it becomes more difficult to monitor salespeople's efforts. Conversely, risk-aversion of salespeople is negatively related to the degree of price delegation. Furthermore, we find a positive effect of price delegation on firm performance, which is amplified when market-related uncertainty is high and when salespeople possess better customer-related information than their managers. Hence, our results clearly show that rigid, “one price fits all” policies are inappropriate in many B2B market situations. Instead, sales managers should grant their salespeople sufficient leeway to adapt prices to changing customer requirements and market conditions, especially in firms that operate in highly uncertain selling environments.

Financial development and asset valuation: The special case of real estate

This paper studies the impact of financial development on asset valuation. We model the agency theoretic perspective of risk-averse investors and financiers in a general equilibrium setting under the framework of rational expectations (i.e., symmetric information). We focus on real estate, as it constitutes a special case of complete market contracting where adverse selection and moral hazard are easily mitigated. Our results illustrate an increase in pareto-efficiency, as financial architecture advances from: (i) banks to capital markets; and (ii) plain vanilla debt to an innovative one with participation clauses. This is attributed to the reduction in agency costs and cross-sectional risk-sharing, leading to an increase in the value of property. Our results predict that an optimal financial system will orient itself towards efficient financial contracts, irrespective of its source of origination. We also rationalize the co-existence of banks and capital markets, and generalize our results under a set of restrictive conditions.

Financial Development and Asset Valuation: The Special Case of Real Estate

This paper investigates the impact of financial development on asset valuation. We model the agency theoretic perspective of risk averse investors and financiers in a general equilibrium framework using the principle of rational expectations. We focus on real estate, as it constitutes a special case of complete market contracting where adverse selection and moral hazard are easily mitigated. Our results illustrate an increase in pareto-efficiency, as financial architecture advances from (i) banks to capital markets; and (ii) plain vanilla debt to innovative one with participation clauses. This is attributed to the reduction in agency costs and cross-sectional risk-sharing, leading to an increase in the value of property. Our results predict that an optimal financial system will orient itself towards efficient financial contracts, irrespective of its source of origination. We also rationalize the co-existence of banks and capital markets, and generalize our results to the corporate sector of the economy under a set of restrictive conditions.

Monitoring and incentives in a supply chain: an agency-theoretic perspective

Monitoring and incentives in a supply chain: a agency-theoretic perspective : A principal-agent relationship can be established up for a supply chain, in which the supplier acts as the principal while the manufacturer acts as the agent. This study uses the principal-agent model to explore the relationships between multiple suppliers and a single manufacturer. A mechanism of incentives is introduced in the model, which encourage themanufacturer to make more effort to reach the expectations of suppliers; thus, they maximize profits in the supply chain. Comparisons and analyses have been made on both united- and separate-designed compensation mechanisms of multiple suppliers (principals) to a single manufacturer (agent) and on both multi- and single-incentive policies in this study. Fruitful results were found that will be helpful for building the partnership between supplier and manufacturer.

Audit committee activity and agency costs

Menon and Williams indicate that many United States (US) over-the-counter (OTC) firms which form audit committees appear not to rely on them (cf. Menon, K., Williams, J.D. 1994. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 13(2), 121–139). Reliance on audit committees appears to depend upon board composition, while audit committee activity is associated with firm size. In this paper, we compare the US experience and evidence on audit committees and monitoring with the position in the United Kingdom (UK), where there has been a steady growth in the number of major companies voluntarily forming audit committees over the last 15 years (Collier, P.A. 1996. Accounting, Business and Financial History 6(2), 121–140). We contend that the dataset is best analyzed using the Heckman procedure (cf. Heckman, J.A. 1979. Econometrica 47(1), 153–161) which captures the two stages of the decision on audit committee activity. Our results show little support from the UK data for the findings of Menon and Williams (cf. Menon and Williams, 1994. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 13(2), 121–139). However, consistent with their agency theoretic perspective of monitoring, we found that high quality (Big Six) auditors, and to some degree leverage have a positive relationship with audit committee activity. Contrary to an agency theoretic expectation, we found that audit committee activity is reduced in firms that combine the role of chairman and chief executive. On the basis of this result we explored the impact of insiders (executive directors) and found that their presence on an audit committee had a significant negative impact on audit committee activity. This result suggests that the emphasis placed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (Staff Report on Corporate Accountability, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980, p. 491) and the Cadbury Committee (Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance. 1992. Report of the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance. Gee, London) on the independence of audit committee members may be well founded. The reduction in audit committee activity that arises from the combination of the role of chairman and chief executive officer, and the presence of insiders on the audit committee, has important policy implications. Indeed, in the UK, both practices are the subject of recommendations in the Hampel Committee report Hampel Committee 1998. Committee on Corporate Governance. Gee, London.

Monitoring and Incentives in Sales Organizations: An Agency-Theoretic Perspective

Our primary objective in this paper is to analyze a framework that simultaneously examines the role of both monitoring and incentives in the design of sales force control systems. Previous research has focused exclusively on the role of incentives in directing salesforce effort. We build on the structure provided by the past work and analyze an agency-thoeretic model in which a salesperson generates wealth for the firm by expending effort across two dimensions, namely, internal and external. We assume that effort in the internal dimension can be monitored relatively cheaply whereas effort in the external dimension can be monitored only at infinite cost. We then analyze the following two scenarios: (i) a pure incentives world wherein both effort dimensions are governed through the use of incentive pay, and (ii) a monitoring and incentives world wherein the internal dimension is monitored and the external dimension is governed through the use of incentive pay. In addition to modeling the notion of partial monitoring in this manner, we also explicitly allow the firm to choose the level of risk aversion desired in its salesperson. Of course, salespeople who are relatively risk-tolerant command higher reservation wages; consequently, such salespeople are likely to be valuable only to those firms that emphasize incentive pay in their control systems. Our analysis across the two scenarios helps us to demonstrate the implications and value of introducing monitoring into the control structure. Specifically, we find that monitoring allows the firm to decrease the weight placed on incentives and hire a relatively risk-averse salesperson from the salesforce labor market. These actions, in turn, permit the firm to reduce the risk premium and the reservation wage offered to the salesperson. In direct contrast to these monetary savings, however, we find that an adverse side effect of monitoring is that it induces salespeople to overemphasize the effort devoted to the monitored dimension while underemphasizing the effort devoted to the nonmonitored dimension. This adverse effect of monitoring notwithstanding, we find that the overall benefit of increased monitoring is that it allows the firm to lower the amount of total compensation paid to the salesperson. These analytical findings are consistent with the prescriptions found in the popular business press where it is often stated that compensation plans that emphasize incentive pay are characterized by independence in managing activities (lack of monitoring) as well as high income potential. These findings are also consistent with the popular wisdom that incentive-laden compensation plans are generally more appropriate for individuals who are risk takers and entrepreneurial in nature. We also delineate the conditions where monitoring can improve on the profits obtained in a pure incentives world. Specifically, we find that monitoring can prove to be most valuable when the importance of internal activities is high and the level of incentives is low. Finally, we conclude by conducting a sensitivity analysis to examine the robustness of our results to the specifications we utilize in our modeling efforts. Overall, we view the main contribution of our research efforts as one of explicitly delineating the tradeoffs associated with the use of monitoring and incentives in the design of salesforce control systems. As such, our paper should be of interest to academics and practitioners interested in the design of salesforce control systems.

Quota-Based Compensation Plans for Multiterritory Heterogeneous Salesforces

We compare quota-based salesforce compensation plans with the BLSS plan, i.e., the optimal curvilinear agency-theory-based compensation plans proposed in Basu, Lal, Srinivasan and Staelin (Basu, A. K., R. Lal, V. Srinivasan, R. Staelin. 1985. Salesforce compensation plans: An agency theoretic perspective. Marketing Sci. 4(Fall) 267–291.). A quota plan pays a fixed salary which is supplemented by commission income that is a prespecified fraction of the dollar sales that exceed the quota. For a salesforce comprised of multiple salespersons/territories, we consider a basic quota plan where the commission rate and salary remain the same across salespersons; however, quotas vary across salespersons/territories. Compared to the BLSS plan that is individually tailored to each salesperson/territory, the basic quota plan's total nonoptimality in profit has two components: (i) a shapeinduced nonoptimality arising from the fact that the quota-based plan does not have the same optimal shape as the curvilinear BLSS plan, and (ii) a heterogeneity-induced nonoptimality arising from the fact that the salary and commission rate in the basic quota plan are constrained to be the same across the salesforce. Our numerical experiments indicate that the total nonoptimality is merely about 1% for the parametric scenarios studied. The basic quota plan is simpler to implement than the BLSS plan. Furthermore, changes in business conditions in a territory, or the transfer of a salesperson from one territory to another, can be accommodated by changing only the quota, without having to change the salary and the commission rate structure. Such advantages, together with our result that the nonoptimality is slight, suggest that quota-based plans offer considerable potential as a salesforce compensation scheme.

An examination of regulatory regime and public utility underwriting costs from an agency perspective

We examine from an agency-theoretic perspective the flotation costs incurred by public utilities, contending that the conflicts of interests among managers, owners, utility commissions, and consumers would be manifested in a negative relationship between the regulatory climate and flotation costs. Several hypotheses are tested using a sample of 538 seasoned equity issues of public utilities during the period 1973 through 1980. Contrary to our expectations, however, we find that the stringency (strictness) of regulatory climate is positively related to flotation costs. We offer some plausible explanations for the counter-intuitive results.

Salesforce Compensation Plans in Environments with Asymmetric Information

In this paper, we present a theory of salesforce compensation plans to provide insights into why it may be advantageous for a profit maximizing firm to offer members of its salesforce the opportunity to choose from a menu of compensation plans. Although such contractual arrangements are not commonly used in the industry, they have been introduced and implemented by firms such as IBM and St. Regis Paper. As in our previous work on salesforce compensation plans (Basu, Lal, Srinivasan, and Staelin [Basu, A. K., R. Lal, V. Srinivasan, R. Staelin. 1985. Salesforce compensation plans: An agency theoretic perspective. Marketing Sci. 4 (Fall) 267–291.]) we use an agency-theory framework. In this paper, we relax the assumptions of information symmetry and salesforce homogeneity and show the conditions under which it is optimal to offer a menu of compensation plans. We also show that even when these assumptions are relaxed there are situations where offering a single plan characterized by Basu, Lal, Srinivasan, and Staelin (Basu, A. K., R. Lal, V. Srinivasan, R. Staelin. 1985. Salesforce compensation plans: An agency theoretic perspective. Marketing Sci. 4 (Fall) 267–291.) is still optimal. Insights gained from the analyses are discussed in the context of an existing compensation scheme.