IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v24y2008i1p138-162.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relational Contracts, Multitasking, and Job Design

Author

Listed:
  • Anja Schöttner

Abstract

This article analyzes optimal job design in a repeated principal-agent relationship when there is only one contractible and imperfect performance measure for three tasks whose contribution to firm value is nonverifiable. The tasks can be assigned to either one or two agents. Assigning an additional task to an agent strengthens his relational contract. Therefore, broad task assignments are optimal when the performance measure strongly distorts incentives for the two-task job. This is more likely to be the case if these two tasks are substitutes. The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Anja Schöttner, 2008. "Relational Contracts, Multitasking, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 138-162, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:24:y:2008:i:1:p:138-162
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewm044
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sloof, Randolph & Sonnemans, Joep, 2011. "The interaction between explicit and relational incentives: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 573-594.
    2. Kragl, Jenny & Schöttner, Anja, 2011. "Wage Floors and Optimal Job Design," VfS Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis 48731, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Jenny Kragl & Anja Schöttner, 2014. "Wage Floors, Imperfect Performance Measures, And Optimal Job Design," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55(2), pages 525-550, May.
    4. repec:dgr:uvatin:20110044 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Arijit Mukherjee & Luis Vasconcelos, 2011. "Optimal job design in the presence of implicit contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 42(1), pages 44-69, March.
    6. David Martimort & Aggey Semenov & Lars Stole, 2017. "A Theory of Contracts with Limited Enforcement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 816-852.
    7. Thomas Buser & Noemi Peter, 2012. "Multitasking," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 641-655, December.
    8. Corinne Langinier & Philippe Marcoul, 2019. "Subjective performance of patent examiners, implicit contracts, and self‐funded patent offices," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(3), pages 251-266, April.
    9. Görlich, Dennis, 2010. "Complementary tasks and the limits to the division of labour," Kiel Working Papers 1670, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    10. James M. Malcomson, 2012. "Relational Incentive Contracts [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    11. Gürtler, Marc & Gürtler, Oliver, 2014. "The interaction of explicit and implicit contracts: A signaling approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 135-146.
    12. Kragl, Jenny & Schmid, Julia, 2009. "The impact of envy on relational employment contracts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 766-779, November.
    13. Herbold, Daniel & Schumacher, Heiner, 2020. "The agency costs of on-the-job search," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 435-452.
    14. Ola Kvaløy & Trond E. Olsen, 2023. "Balanced Scorecards: A Relational Contract Approach," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 619-652, May.
    15. Ola Kvaløy & Trond E. Olsen, 2012. "The Rise of Individual Performance Pay," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 493-518, June.
    16. Barbara Schöndube-Pirchegger & Jens Robert Schöndube, 2015. "Full versus Partial Delegation in Multi-Task Agency," FEMM Working Papers 150017, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    17. Thomas Buser & Noemi Peter, 2011. "Multitasking: Productivity Effects and Gender Differences," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-044/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Seongwuk Moon, 2018. "Skill development, bargaining power, and a theory of job design," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 270-296, June.
    19. Kvaløy, Ola & Olsen, Trond E., 2023. "Relational incentive contracts for teams of multitasking agents," Discussion Papers 2023/10, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science, revised 30 Jun 2023.
    20. Shandana Shoaib & Yehuda Baruch, 2019. "Deviant Behavior in a Moderated-Mediation Framework of Incentives, Organizational Justice Perception, and Reward Expectancy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 617-633, July.
    21. Thiele, Veikko, 2010. "Task-specific abilities in multi-task principal-agent relationships," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 690-698, August.
    22. Charlene M. Kalenkoski & Gigi Foster, 2015. "Measuring the relative productivity of multitasking to sole-tasking in household production: experimental evidence," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(18), pages 1847-1862, April.
    23. Goldlücke, Susanne & Kranz, Sebastian, 2012. "Delegation, monitoring, and relational contracts," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 405-407.

    More about this item

    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:oup:jleorg:v:24:y:2008:i:1:p:138-162. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    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.