A Theory of Responsibility in Organizations

Canice J Prendergast

Journal of Labor Economics, 1995, vol. 13, issue 3, 387-400

Abstract: This article considers the implications of allowing a manager discretion over task assignment. If employees earn rents from carrying out tasks and the manager cannot 'sell' the jobs to her subordinates, she has an incentive to take on more tasks than is optimal and delegate too few to a subordinate. The author shows that, although firms can alleviate this incentive by offering output-contingent contracts, even with the optimal contract, (1) the manager carries out too many tasks, (2) she exerts too much effort on her own tasks, and (3) her subordinate exerts too little effort on his tasks. Copyright 1995 by University of Chicago Press.

Date: 1995
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/298379 full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. See http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JOLE for details.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlabec:v:13:y:1995:i:3:p:387-400

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().