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The impact of operational decisions on the design of salesforce incentives

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  • Soroush Saghafian
  • Xiuli Chao

Abstract

When facing high levels of overstock inventories, firms often push their salesforce to work harder than usual to attract more demand, and one way to achieve that is to offer attractive incentives. However, most research on the optimal design of salesforce incentives ignores this dependency and assumes that operational decisions of production/inventory management are separable from design of salesforce incentives. We investigate this dependency in the problem of joint salesforce incentive design and inventory/production control. We develop a dynamic Principal‐Agent model with both Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in which the principal is strategic and risk‐neutral but the agent is myopic and risk‐averse. We find the optimal joint incentive design and inventory control strategy, and demonstrate the impact of operational decisions on the design of a compensation package. The optimal strategy is characterized by a menu of inventory‐dependent salesforce compensation contracts. We show that the optimal compensation package depends highly on the operational decisions; when inventory levels are high, (a) the firm offers a more attractive contract and (b) the contract is effective in inducing the salesforce to work harder than usual. In contrast, when inventory levels are low, the firm can offer a less attractive compensation package, but still expect the salesforce to work hard enough. In addition, we show that although the inventory/production management and the design of salesforce compensation package are highly correlated, information acquisition through contract design allows the firm to implement traditional inventory control policies: a market‐based state‐dependent policy (with a constant base‐stock level when the inventory is low) that makes use of the extracted market condition from the agent is optimal. This work appears to be the first article on operations that addresses the important interplay between inventory/production control and salesforce compensation decisions in a dynamic setting. Our findings shed light on the effective integration of these two significant aspects for the successful operation of a firm. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 320–340, 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Soroush Saghafian & Xiuli Chao, 2014. "The impact of operational decisions on the design of salesforce incentives," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 61(4), pages 320-340, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:navres:v:61:y:2014:i:4:p:320-340
    DOI: 10.1002/nav.21585
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    Cited by:

    1. Zhaolin Li & Samuel N. Kirshner, 2021. "Salesforce Compensation and Two‐Sided Ambiguity: Robust Moral Hazard with Moment Information," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(9), pages 2944-2961, September.
    2. Arzum Akkaş & Nachiketa Sahoo, 2020. "Reducing Product Expiration by Aligning Salesforce Incentives: A Data‐driven Approach," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(8), pages 1992-2009, August.
    3. Osman Alp & Alper Şen, 2021. "Delegation of Stocking Decisions Under Asymmetric Demand Information," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 55-69, 1-2.
    4. Ji‐Hung Choi & Hannah Oh & John Bae & Sang‐Joon Kim, 2021. "Affirmative action and team performance: An agency theoretic perspective," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(5), pages 1183-1193, July.

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