家族企业委托代理关系研究-山西票号与中世纪意大利家族企业的分析与比较

Research on Principal-Agent Relationship in Family Firms:A Comparative Study of the Shanxi Banks and Medieval Italian Family Firms

家族企业委托代理问题越来越成为阻碍企业发展的因素。山西票号所有权与经营权的彻底分离给了代理人足够的信任和决策空间,以身股平等参与分红为特征的激励机制和以集体主义惩戒为特征的约束机制,既有效地激励了代理人,又以较小的成本约束了代理人。通过选取在治理结构与委托代理制度上与山西票号存在较大相似性的中世纪意大利家族企业进行比较,可以看出两者在委托代理制度上的一些特点,以及在激励约束机制上的具体做法和制度进步。

The principal-agent problem in family firms has become a huddle for the development of family finns. This study analyzes the principal-agent relationship and the incentive and constraint mechanisms of the Shanxi banks （Shanxi Piaohao）. Through the analysis, we find that the separation of management and ownership in the Shanxi banks allows the agents to have sufficient trust and room for decision making which helps bring their management capability into full play. Meanwhile, the incentive mechanism featuring the labor stocks and the disciplinary mechanism characterized by collective punishment provides both the effective incentives to and the constraints on the agents with relatively lower costs. This paper then compares the Shanxi banks with some medieval Italian family firms which are similar in governance structure and principal-agent relationship. Our comparison reveals the characteristics of the principal-agent relationship in the family firms and identifies some specific practices and institutional improvements in incentive and constraint mechanisms.