In this paper I present a theory of the boundary of the firm that accounts for some important characteristics of real-world multidivisional firms: Operative decisions are in the hands of middle managers who are rewarded with incentive contracts based on the performance of their units; Managers' decisions are subject to approval and intervention by the top management of the firm; and managers are better informed regarding the affairs of their divisions than their superiors in the firm's hierarchy. In this setup, the integration of a producer of an intermediate input and its buyer as separate divisions within a single firm is unambiguously desirable, as long as the choice of trading partners can be credibly delegated to the divisions' managers. I show that this is satisfied not only under the assumption of full commitment by the general office of the firm, but also interestingly, if it has no commitment power at all. At the time of trade, the uninformed general office prefers to delegate the choice of trading partners to the divisions whose decision is ex-post optimal. An explanation of the boundaries of the firm emerges only if we assume that the general office retains some limited commitment power. The general office may then mandate internal trade in order to encourage the divisions to specialize towards one another before the trade. In the context examined, I show that the general office faces a 'time-consistency' problem. It tends to mandate internal trades in more instances than would have been optimal with full commitment, adversely affecting the levels of investment taken by the divisions' managers. Whenever such inconsistency arises, it may be optimal to have the trade conducted between independent, non-integrated parties.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics in its series Discussion Papers with number
03-13.
Length: Date of creation: 2003 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nya:albaec:03-13
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, BA 110 University at Albany State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 U.S.A. Phone: (518) 442-4735 Fax: (518) 442-4736
Order Information: Postal: Department of Economics, BA 110 University at Albany State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 U.S.A. Email: Web: http://www.albany.edu/econ/dp/index.html
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Nadav Levy).
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Did you know? You can import bibliographic info in various formats into you bibliographic tool, or just into your word processor. See under "publisher info" on each abstract page.