IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mse/cesdoc/12084.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Supervision in Firms

Author

Abstract

To control, evaluate, and motivate their agents, firms employ supervisors. As shown by empirical investigations, biased evaluation by supervisors linked to collusion is a persistent feature of firms. This paper studies how deceptive supervision affects agency relationships. We consider a three-level firm where a supervisor is in charge of producing a verifiable report on an agent's output. Depending on the output he has observed, the supervisor may either collude with the agent or with the principal, and make an uniformative report. We show that the proliferation of collusive activities in firms: modifies the configuration of the optimal preventive policy, may increase the expected cost of preventing each type collusion, is beneficial to the supervisor and detrimental to the agent, and is not always harmful

Suggested Citation

  • Kouroche Vafaï, 2012. "Supervision in Firms," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 12084, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:12084
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2012/12084.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Murphy, Kevin M & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1993. "Why Is Rent-Seeking So Costly to Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 409-414, May.
    2. Arup Bose & Debashis Pal & David E. M. Sappington, 2010. "Equal Pay for Unequal Work: Limiting Sabotage in Teams," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 25-53, March.
    3. N/A, 1974. "Appraisal," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 67(1), pages 3-7, February.
    4. Lazear, Edward P, 1989. "Pay Equality and Industrial Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 561-580, June.
    5. Antle, R, 1984. "Auditor Independence," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 1-20.
    6. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Hierarchies and Bureaucracies: On the Role of Collusion in Organizations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 181-214, Fall.
    7. Emilson C. D. Silva & Charles M. Kahn & Xie Zhu, 2007. "Crime and Punishment and Corruption: Who Needs “Untouchables?”," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(1), pages 69-87, February.
    8. Vafai, Kouroche, 2002. "Preventing abuse of authority in hierarchies," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(8), pages 1143-1166, October.
    9. Dow, Gregory K., 1987. "The function of authority in transaction cost economics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 13-38, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kouroche Vafaï, 2012. "Supervision in Firms," Post-Print halshs-00768900, HAL.
    2. Kouroche Vafaï, 2012. "Supervision in Firms," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00768900, HAL.
    3. Anja Schöttner & Veikko Thiele, 2010. "Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 699-731, September.
    4. Angelo Baglioni & Luca Colombo, 2009. "Managers’ Compensation And Misreporting: A Costly State Verification Approach," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(2), pages 278-289, April.
    5. Mui, Vai-Lam, 1995. "The economics of envy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 311-336, May.
    6. Kouroche Vafaï, 1999. "A Theory of Abuse of Authority in Hierarchies," CIRANO Working Papers 99s-07, CIRANO.
    7. Carlo Bellavite Pellegrini & Raul Caruso & Marco Di Domizio, 2021. "Relative wages, payroll structure and performance in soccer. Evidence from Italian Serie A (2007-2019)," DISCE - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Politica Economica dipe0015, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    8. Arrunada, Benito & Paz-Ares, Candido, 1997. "Mandatory rotation of company auditors: A critical examination," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 31-61, March.
    9. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Gratton, Gabriele, 2015. "The sound of silence: Political accountability and libel law," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 266-279.
    11. Jaesoo Kim & Dongsoo Shin, 2023. "Vertical Relationships with Hidden Interactions," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-21, October.
    12. Lamar Pierce & Michael W. Toffel, 2013. "The Role of Organizational Scope and Governance in Strengthening Private Monitoring," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(5), pages 1558-1584, October.
    13. Subhasish Chowdhury & Oliver Gürtler, 2015. "Sabotage in contests: a survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 135-155, July.
    14. Gabriele Gratton, 2013. "The Sound of Silence: Anti-Defamation Law and Political Corruption," Discussion Papers 2012-21A, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    15. Marco Di Domizio & Carlo Bellavite Pellegrini & Raul Caruso, 2022. "Payroll dispersion and performance in soccer: A seasonal perspective analysis for Italian Serie A (2007–2021)," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(3), pages 513-525, July.
    16. Martin, Pardupa, 2007. "Cooperation or rivalry? Employee’s effort and appropriate knowledge distribution as key elements for maximizing the profit of the firm," MPRA Paper 26428, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Kouroche Vafaï, 2012. "Information in Hierarchies," Post-Print halshs-00768904, HAL.
    18. Ganuza, Juan Jose & Gomez, Fernando, 2007. "Should we trust the gatekeepers?: Auditors' and lawyers' liability for clients' misconduct," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 96-109, March.
    19. Mark Schelker, 2009. "Auditor Terms and Term Limits in the Public Sector: Evidence from the US States," CREMA Working Paper Series 2009-19, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    20. Deepak Srivastav & Puram Praveen & Rudra Sensarma & Anand Gurumurthy, 2021. "Does salary dispersion affect team performance in cricket? Evidence from the Indian Premier League," Working papers 441, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode.
    21. Thomas Hellmann & Noam Wasserman, 2017. "The First Deal: The Division of Founder Equity in New Ventures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(8), pages 2647-2666, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Firm; group decision; control; biased supervision;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D20 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - General
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General
    • M50 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:12084. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucie Label (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cenp1fr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.