Overview
The principal's interests are expected to be pursued by the agent; however, when the interests of the agent and principal differ, a dilemma arises. The agent possesses resources such as time, information, and expertise that the principal lacks. At the same time, the principal does not have control over the agent's ability to act in the agent's own best interests. In this situation, the theory posits that the agent's activities are diverted from following the principal's interests and drive the agent to maximize the agent's interests instead. The principal and agent theory emerged in the 1970s from the combined disciplines of economics and institutional theory. There is some contention as to who originated the theory, with theorists Stephen Ross and Barry Mitnick both claiming authorship. Ross is said to have originally described the dilemma in terms of a person choosing a flavor of ice-cream for someone whose tastes they do not know (''Ibid''). The most cited reference to the theory, however, comes from Michael C. Jensen and William Meckling. The theory has come to extend well beyond economics or institutional studies to all contexts of information asymmetry,Employment contract
In the context of the employment contract, individual contracts form a major method of restructuring incentives, by connecting as closely as optimal the information available about employee performance, and the compensation for that performance. Because of differences in the quantity and quality of information available about the performance of individual employees, the ability of employees to bear risk, and the ability of employees to manipulate evaluation methods, the structural details of individual contracts vary widely, including such mechanisms as "piece rates, hareoptions, discretionary bonuses, promotions, profit sharing, efficiency wages, deferred compensation, and so on." Typically, these mechanisms are used in the context of different types of employment: salesmen often receive some or all of their remuneration as commission, production workers are usually paid an hourly wage, while office workers are typically paid monthly or semimonthly (and if paid overtime, typically at a higher rate than the hourly rate implied by the salary). The way in which these mechanisms are used is different in the two parts of the economy which Doeringer and Piore called the "primary" and "secondary" sectors (see also dual labour market). The secondary sector is characterised by short-term employment relationships, little or no prospect of internal promotion, and the determination of wages primarily by market forces. In terms of occupations, it consists primarily of low or unskilled jobs, whether they are blue-collar (manual-labour), white-collar (e.g., filing clerks), or service jobs (e.g., waiters). These jobs are linked by the fact that they are characterized by "low skill levels, low earnings, easy entry, job impermanence, and low returns to education or experience." In a number of service jobs, such as food service, golf caddying, and valet parking jobs, workers in some countries are paid mostly or entirely with tips. The use of tipping is a strategy on the part of the owners or managers to align the interests of the service workers with those of the owners or managers; the service workers have an incentive to provide good customer service (thus benefiting the company's business), because this makes it more likely that they will get a good tip. The issue of tipping is sometimes discussed in connection with the principal–agent theory. "Examples of principals and agents include bosses and employees ... nddiners and waiters." "The "principal–agent problem", as it is known in economics, crops up any time agents aren't inclined to do what principals want them to do. To sway them agents) principals have to make it worth the agents' while ... n the restaurant context,the better the diner's experience, the bigger the waiter's tip." "In the ... language of the economist, the tip serves as a way to reduce what is known as the classic "principal–agent" problem." According to "Videbeck, a researcher at the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation ' theory, tipping can lead to an efficient match between workers' attitudes to service and the jobs they perform. It is a means to make people work hard. Friendly waiters will go that extra mile, earn their tip, and earn a relatively high income... n the other hand,if tipless wages are sufficiently low, then grumpy waiters might actually choose to leave the industry and take jobs that would better suit their personalities.'" As a solution to the principal–agent problem, though, tipping is not perfect. In the hopes of getting a larger tip, a server, for example, may be inclined to give a customer an extra large glass of wine or a second scoop of ice cream. While these larger servings make the customer happy and increase the likelihood of the server getting a good tip, they cut into the profit margin of the restaurant. In addition, a server may dote on generous tippers while ignoring other customers, and in rare cases harangue bad tippers.Non-financial compensation
Part of this variation in incentive structures and supervisory mechanisms may be attributable to variation in the level of intrinsic psychological satisfaction to be had from different types of work. Sociologists and psychologists frequently argue that individuals take a certain degree of pride in their work, and that introducing performance-related pay can destroy this "psycho-social compensation", because the exchange relation between employer and employee becomes much more narrowly economic, destroying most or all of the potential for social exchange. Evidence for this is inconclusive—Deci (1971), and Lepper, Greene and Nisbett (1973) find support for this argument; Staw (1989) suggests other interpretations of the findings. Incentive structures as mentioned above can be provided through non-monetary recognition such as acknowledgements and compliments on an employee (agent) in place of employment. Research conducted by Crifo and Diaye (2004) mentioned that agents who receive compensations such as praises, acknowledgement and recognition help to define intrinsic motivations that increase performance output from the agents thus benefiting the principal. Furthermore, the studies provided a conclusive remark that intrinsic motivation can be increased by utilising the use of non-monetary compensations that provide acknowledgement for the agent. These higher rewards, can provide a principal with the adequate methodologies to improve the effort inputs of the agent when looking at the principal agent theory through an employer vs employee level of conduct.Team production
On a related note, Drago and Garvey (1997) use Australian survey data to show that when agents are placed on individual pay-for-performance schemes, they are less likely to help their coworkers. This negative effect is particularly important in those jobs that involve strong elements of "team production" ( Alchian and Demsetz 1972), where output reflects the contribution of many individuals, and individual contributions cannot be easily identified, and compensation is therefore based largely on the output of the team. In other words, pay-for-performance increases the incentives to free-ride, as there are large positive externalities to the efforts of an individual team member, and low returns to the individual (Holmström 1982, McLaughlin 1994). The negative incentive effects implied are confirmed by some empirical studies, (e.g., Newhouse, 1973) for shared medical practices; costs rise and doctors work fewer hours as more revenue is shared. Leibowitz and Tollison (1980) find that larger law partnerships typically result in worse cost containment. As a counter, peer pressure can potentially solve the problem (Kandel and Lazear 1992), but this depends on peer monitoring being relatively costless to the individuals doing the monitoring/censuring in any particular instance (unless one brings in social considerations of norms and group identity and so on). Studies suggest that profit-sharing, for example, typically raises productivity by 3–5% (Jones and Kato 1995, Knez and Simester 2001), although there are some selection issues (Prendergast).Empirical evidence
There is however considerableContract design
Milgrom and Roberts (1992) identify four principles of contract design: When perfect information is not available, Holmström (1979) developed the Informativeness Principle to solve this problem. This essentially states that any measure of performance that (on the margin) reveals information about the effort level chosen by the agent should be included in the compensation contract. This includes, for example, Relative Performance Evaluation—measurement relative to other, similar agents, so as to filter out some common background noise factors, such as fluctuations in demand. By removing some exogenous sources of randomness in the agent's income, a greater proportion of the fluctuation in the agent's income falls under their control, increasing their ability to bear risk. If taken advantage of, by greater use of piece rates, this should improve incentives. (In terms of the simple linear model below, this means that increasing ''x'' produces an increase in ''b''.) However, setting incentives as intense as possible is not necessarily optimal from the point of view of the employer. The Incentive-Intensity Principle states that the optimal intensity of incentives depends on four factors: the incremental profits created by additional effort, the precision with which the desired activities are assessed, the agent's risk tolerance, and the agent's responsiveness to incentives. According to Prendergast (1999, 8), "the primary constraint on erformance-related payis that tsprovision imposes additional risk on workers ..." A typical result of the early principal–agent literature was that piece rates tend to 100% (of the compensation package) as the worker becomes more able to handle risk, as this ensures that workers fully internalize the consequences of their costly actions. In incentive terms, where we conceive of workers as self-interested rational individuals who provide costly effort (in the most general sense of the worker's input to the firm's production function), the more compensation varies with effort, the better the incentives for the worker to produce. The third principle—the Monitoring Intensity Principle—is complementary to the second, in that situations in which the optimal intensity of incentives is high corresponds highly to situations in which the optimal level of monitoring is also high. Thus employers effectively choose from a "menu" of monitoring/incentive intensities. This is because monitoring is a costly means of reducing the variance of employee performance, which makes more difference to profits in the kinds of situations where it is also optimal to make incentives intense. The fourth principle is the Equal Compensation Principle, which essentially states that activities equally valued by the employer should be equally valuable (in terms of compensation, including non-financial aspects such as pleasantness of the workplace) to the employee. This relates to the problem that employees may be engaged in several activities, and if some of these are not monitored or are monitored less heavily, these will be neglected, as activities with higher marginal returns to the employee are favoured. This can be thought of as a kind of "Linear model
The four principles can be summarized in terms of the simplest (linear) model of incentive compensation: where ''w'' (wage) is equal to ''a'' (the base salary) plus ''b'' (the intensity of incentives provided to the employee) times the sum of three terms: ''e'' (unobserved employee effort) plus ''x'' (unobserved exogenous effects on outcomes) plus the product of ''g'' (the weight given to observed exogenous effects on outcomes) and ''y'' (observed exogenous effects on outcomes). ''b'' is the slope of the relationship between compensation and outcomes. The above discussion on explicit measures assumed that contracts would create the linear incentive structures summarised in the model above. But while the combination of normal errors and the absence of income effects yields linear contracts, many observed contracts are nonlinear. To some extent this is due to income effects as workers rise up a tournament/hierarchy: "Quite simply, it may take more money to induce effort from the rich than from the less well off." (Prendergast 1999, 50). Similarly, the threat of being fired creates a nonlinearity in wages earned versus performance. Moreover, many empirical studies illustrate inefficient behaviour arising from nonlinear objective performance measures, or measures over the course of a long period (e.g., a year), which create nonlinearities in time due to discounting behaviour. This inefficient behaviour arises because incentive structures are varying: for example, when a worker has already exceeded a quota or has no hope of reaching it, versus being close to reaching it—e.g., Healy (1985), Oyer (1997), Leventis (1997). Leventis shows that New York surgeons, penalised for exceeding a certain mortality rate, take less risky cases as they approach the threshold. Courty and Marshke (1997) provide evidence on incentive contracts offered to agencies, which receive bonuses on reaching a quota of graduated trainees within a year. This causes them to 'rush-graduate' trainees in order to make the quota.Options framework
In certain cases agency problems may be analysed by applying the techniques developed for financial options, as applied via aPerformance evaluation
Objective
The major problem in measuring employee performance in cases where it is difficult to draw a straightforward connection between performance and profitability is the setting of a standard by which to judge the performance. One method of setting an absolute objective performance standard—rarely used because it is costly and only appropriate for simple repetitive tasks—is time-and-motion studies, which study in detail how fast it is possible to do a certain task. These have been used constructively in the past, particularly in manufacturing. More generally, however, even within the field of objective performance evaluation, some form of relative performance evaluation must be used. Typically this takes the form of comparing the performance of a worker to that of his peers in the firm or industry, perhaps taking account of different exogenous circumstances affecting that. The reason that employees are often paid according to hours of work rather than by direct measurement of results is that it is often more efficient to use indirect systems of controlling the quantity and quality of effort, due to a variety of informational and other issues (e.g., turnover costs, which determine the optimal minimum length of relationship between firm and employee). This means that methods such as deferred compensation and structures such as tournaments are often more suitable to create the incentives for employees to contribute what they can to output over longer periods (years rather than hours). These represent "pay-for-performance" systems in a looser, more extended sense, as workers who consistently work harder and better are more likely to be promoted (and usually paid more), compared to the narrow definition of "pay-for-performance", such as piece rates. This discussion has been conducted almost entirely for self-interested rational individuals. In practice, however, the incentive mechanisms which successful firms use take account of the socio-cultural context they are embedded in ( Fukuyama 1995, Granovetter 1985), in order not to destroy theSubjective
Subjective performance evaluation allows the use of a subtler, more balanced assessment of employee performance, and is typically used for more complex jobs where comprehensive objective measures are difficult to specify and/or measure. Whilst often the only feasible method, the attendant problems with subjective performance evaluation have resulted in a variety of incentive structures and supervisory schemes. One problem, for example, is that supervisors may under-report performance in order to save on wages, if they are in some way residual claimants, or perhaps rewarded on the basis of cost savings. This tendency is of course to some extent offset by the danger of retaliation and/or demotivation of the employee, if the supervisor is responsible for that employee's output. Another problem relates to what is known as the "compression of ratings". Two related influences—centrality bias, and leniency bias—have been documented (Landy and Farr 1980, Murphy and Cleveland 1991). The former results from supervisors being reluctant to distinguish critically between workers (perhaps for fear of destroying team spirit), while the latter derives from supervisors being averse to offering poor ratings to subordinates, especially where these ratings are used to determine pay, not least because bad evaluations may be demotivating rather than motivating. However, these biases introduce noise into the relationship between pay and effort, reducing the incentive effect of performance-related pay. Milkovich and Wigdor (1991) suggest that this is the reason for the common separation of evaluations and pay, with evaluations primarily used to allocate training. Finally, while the problem of compression of ratings originates on the supervisor-side, related effects occur when workers actively attempt to influence the appraisals supervisors give, either by influencing the performance information going to the supervisor: multitasking (focussing on the more visibly productive activities—Paul 1992), or by working "too hard" to signal worker quality or create a good impression (Holmström 1982); or by influencing the evaluation of it, e.g., by "currying influence" (Milgrom and Roberts 1988) or by outright bribery (Tirole 1992).Incentive structures
Tournaments
Much of the discussion here has been in terms of individual pay-for-performance contracts; but many large firms use internal labour markets (Doeringer and Piore 1971, Rosen 1982) as a solution to some of the problems outlined. Here, there is "pay-for-performance" in a looser sense over a longer time period. There is little variation in pay within grades, and pay increases come with changes in job or job title (Gibbs and Hendricks 1996). The incentive effects of this structure are dealt with in what is known as " tournament theory" (Lazear and Rosen 1981, Green and Stokey (1983), see Rosen (1986) for multi-stage tournaments in hierarchies where it is explained why CEOs are paid many times more than other workers in the firm). See the superstar article for more information on the tournament theory. Workers are motivated to supply effort by the wage increase they would earn if they win a promotion. Some of the extended tournament models predict that relatively weaker agents, be they competing in a sports tournaments (Becker and Huselid 1992, inDeferred compensation
Tournaments represent one way of implementing the general principle of "deferred compensation", which is essentially an agreement between worker and firm to commit to each other. Under schemes of deferred compensation, workers are overpaid when old, at the cost of being underpaid when young. Salop and Salop (1976) argue that this derives from the need to attract workers more likely to stay at the firm for longer periods, since turnover is costly. Alternatively, delays in evaluating the performance of workers may lead to compensation being weighted to later periods, when better and poorer workers have to a greater extent been distinguished. (Workers may even prefer to have wages increasing over time, perhaps as a method of forced saving, or as an indicator of personal development. e.g., Loewenstein and Sicherman 1991, Frank and Hutchens 1993.) For example, Akerlof and Katz 1989: if older workers receive efficiency wages, younger workers may be prepared to work for less in order to receive those later. Overall, the evidence suggests the use of deferred compensation (e.g., Freeman and Medoff 1984, and Spilerman 1986—seniority provisions are often included in pay, promotion and retention decisions, irrespective of productivity.)Energy consumption
The "principal–agent problem" has also been discussed in the context of energy consumption by Jaffe and Stavins in 1994. They were attempting to catalog market and non-market barriers to energy efficiency adoption. In efficiency terms, a market failure arises when a technology which is both cost-effective and saves energy is not implemented. Jaffe and Stavins describe the common case of the landlord-tenant problem with energy issues as a principal–agent problem. " the potential adopter is not the party that pays the energy bill, then good information in the hands of the potential adopter may not be sufficient for optimal diffusion; adoption will only occur if the adopter can recover the investment from the party that enjoys the energy savings. Thus, if it is difficult for the possessor of information to convey it credibly to the party that benefits from reduced energy use, a principal/agent problem arises." The energy efficiency use of the principal agent terminology is in fact distinct from the usual one in several ways. In landlord/tenant or more generally equipment-purchaser/energy-bill-payer situations, it is often difficult to describe who would be the principal and who the agent. Is the agent the landlord and the principal the tenant, because the landlord is "hired" by the tenant through the payment of rent? As Murtishaw and Sathaye, 2006 point out, "In the residential sector, the conceptual definition of principal and agent must be stretched beyond a strictly literal definition." Another distinction is that the principal agent problem in energy efficiency does not require any information asymmetry: both the landlord and the tenant may be aware of the overall costs and benefits of energy-efficient investments, but as long as the landlord pays for the equipment and the tenant pays the energy bills, the investment in new, energy-efficient appliances will not be made. In this case, there is also little incentive for the tenant to make a capital efficiency investment with a usual payback time of several years, and which in the end will revert to the landlord as property. Since energy consumption is determined both by technology and by behavior, an opposite principal agent problem arises when the energy bills are paid by the landlord, leaving the tenant with no incentive to moderate her energy use. This is often the case for leased office space, for example. The energy efficiency principal agent problem applies in many cases to rented buildings and apartments, but arises in other circumstances, most often involving relatively high up-front costs for energy-efficient technology. Though it is challenging to assess exactly, the principal agent problem is considered to be a major barrier to the diffusion of efficient technologies. This can be addressed in part by promoting shared-savings performance-based contracts, where both parties benefit from the efficiency savings. The issues of market barriers to energy efficiency, and the principal agent problem in particular, are receiving renewed attention because of the importance of globalTrust relationships
The problem arises in client–attorney,Personnel management
When managing personnel in an organisational setting, the principal-agent problem surfaces when employees are hired to perform specific tasks and fulfil certain roles. In this environment, the goals of employee and employer may not be aligned. Often employees have the desire to further their own career or financial goals where employers often have the output interests of the organisation at the forefront of their actions and goals. Employees may reveal the principal-agent problem in their work by slacking off and not meeting targets or KPIs and Employers may reveal the principal-agent problem by implementing damaging policies or actions that make the working environment unsustainable.Bureaucracy and public administration
In the context of public administration, the principal–agent problem can be seen in such a way where public administration and bureaucrats are the agents and politicians and ministers are the principal authorities. Ministers in the government usually command by framing policies and direct the bureaucrats to implement the public policies. However, there can be various principal-agent problems in the scenario such as misaligned intentions, information asymmetry, adverse selection, shirking, and slippage. There are various situations where the ambitions and goals of the principals and agents may diverge. For example, politicians and the government may want public administration to implement a welfare policy program but the bureaucrats may have other interests as well such as rent-seeking. This results in a lack of implementation of public policies, hence the wastage of economic resources. This can also lead to the problem of shirking which is characterized as avoidance of performing a defined responsibility by the agent. The information asymmetry problem occurs in a scenario where one of the two people has more or less information than the other. In the context of public administration, bureaucrats have an information advantage over the government and ministers as the former work at the ground level and have more knowledge about the dynamic and changing situation. Due to this government may frame policies that are not based on complete information and therefore problems in the implementation of public policies may occur. This can also lead to the problem of slippage which is defined as a myth where the principal sees that agents are working according to the pre-defined responsibilities but that might not be the reality. The problem of adverse selection is related to the selection of agents to fulfill particular responsibilities but they might deviate from doing so. The prime cause behind this is the incomplete information available at the desk of selecting authorities (principal) about the agents they selected. For example, the Ministry of Road and Transport Highways hired a private company to complete one of its road projects, however, it was later found that the company assigned to complete road projects lacked technical know-how and had management issues. The principal-agent problem in the public sector arises when there is a disconnect between politicians and public servants and their goals and interests. Other reasons that this occurs is because of political interference, bureaucratic resistance and public accountability. Political interference happens when the politicians try and influence the decisions of public servants or bureaucrats to try and push their own interests which ultimately leads to policies being warped. Bureaucratic Resistance is when public servants are hesitant to implement the policies that have been proposed or agreed on, which ultimately causes policies to be implemented at a slow rate. Bureaucratic resistance may be due to lack of funding, resources or political support. Public accountability also plays a role in how the principal-agent theory impacts the public sector. When sworn in, politicians and public servants are responsible for ensure that they act in the interest of the public that they represent or work for, however, due to budget and resourcing issues as well as lack of transparency trust in the public sector often falls and a major disconnect grows.Economic theory
In economic theory, the principal-agent approach (also called agency theory) is part of the field ''Negotiation
In the negotiation problem, the principal commissions an agent to conduct negotiations on its behalf. The principal may delegate certain authority to the agent, including the ability to conclude negotiations and enter into binding contracts. The principal may consider and assign a utility to each issue in the negotiation. However, it is not always the case that the principal will explicitly inform the agent of what it considers to be the minimally acceptable terms, otherwise known as the reservation price. The successfulness of a negotiation will be determined by a range of factors. These include: the negotiation objective, the role of the negotiating parties, the nature of the relationship between the negotiating parties, the negotiating power of each party and the negotiation type. Where there are information asymmetries between the principal and agent, this can affect the outcome of the negotiation. As it is impossible for a manager to attend all upcoming negotiations of the company, it is common practice to assign internal or external negotiators to represent the negotiating company at the negotiation table. With the principal–agent problem, two areas of negotiation emerge: # negotiations between the agent and the actual negotiating partner (negotiations at the table) # internal negotiations, as between the agent and the principal (negotiations behind the table). The principal-agent problem can arises in representative negotiations where the interests of the principal and the agent are misaligned. The principal cannot directly observe the agent's efforts during the course of the negotiation. In such circumstances, this may lead to the agent employing negotiation tactics which are unfavourable to the principal, but which benefit the agent. Depending upon how the agent's reward is determined, the principal may be able to effectively retain control over the agent. If the agent receives a fixed fee, the agent may nonetheless act in a manner that is inconsistent with the principal's interests. The agent may adopt this strategy if they believe the negotiation is a one-shot game. The agent may adopt a different strategy if they account for reputational consequences of acting against the principal's interests. Similarly, if the negotiation is a repeated game, and the principal is aware of the results of the first iteration, the agent may opt to employ a different strategy which more closely aligns with the interests of the principal in order to ensure the principal will continue to contract with the agent in the following iterations. If the agent's reward is dependent upon the outcome of the negotiation, then this may help align the differing interests.In popular culture
* The Mamas & the Papas 1967 song Creeque Alley refers to the principal–agent problem in the lyric, "Broke, busted, disgusted; agents can't be trusted."See also
* Iron law of oligarchy * Managerial state * Professional–managerial class *References
Further reading
* * * Fleckinger, Pierre, David Martimort, and Nicolas Roux. 2024.External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Principal-Agent Problem Asymmetric information Market failure Organizational theory Management cybernetics