Prior research documents performance improvements following the implementation of pay-for-performance (PFP) bonus plans. However, bonus plans typically pay for performance relative to a goal, and the manager whose performance is to be evaluated often participates in setting the goal. In these...

Transaction cost economics predicts that investments in management control will enable risky interfirm transactions. Risk is rarely eliminated, because firms trade off costs of management control and expected costs of control loss (together, the “cost of control”). The resultant solution...

Firms typically use a ‘one-size-fits-all' (OSFA) compensation contract that specifies a common formulaic relation between performance and compensation (i.e., a performance bonus) for nonexecutive managers in similar jobs. However, a contract that is appropriate on average, may be suboptimal...

Coase (1937) first explained the existence of firms and the boundaries between them as an emergent solution to minimizing the costs of accessing markets -- what Williamson (1975) later termed ‘transaction costs.' Over time, innovations in management control and changes to legal structures have...