企业最优控制边界研究:一个多层代理的视角

Research on Optimal Control Span of Enterprises based on Multi-agency perspective

科层制是企业的经典组织形式,企业的一个典型特征就是多层代理,本文研究了多层委托代理下的企业最优控制边界。传统的委托代理理论主要关注较简单的委托代理问题,忽略了企业存在多层委托代理的真实背景。另外,在传统的研究层级制的文献中,视代理人的能力是单一的,这也背离了代理人具备多种能力的真实背景。本文将传统的简单委托代理模型拓展为多层委托代理模型,将代理人的能力由一种拓展到三种:决策、激励、监督。代理人通过使用决策、监督、激励三种能力管理下属。在模型中创造性地使用了"变分法"求出了最优控制边界的数学表达式,并充分探讨了其经济学管理学意义,给出了管理上的政策建议。研究发现:在委托人净收益最大化的条件下,企业的最优控制边界随着生产率的提高而增加,随着代理人决策能力、监督能力的提高而增加,随着下属努力水平的提高而减少。

Hierarchy is a classic form of organization of enterprises, a typical feature of the enterprise is the multi- agency, this paper study the optimal control span of enterprise which is multi-agency. The traditional principal-agent theory focuses on relatively simple principal-agent problem, ignoring the existence of real multi-agency background of the enterprise. In addition, the traditional literatures of hierarchy, depending on the agent just has one ability, which depart from the real backgrounds that the agent has more than one ability. In the paper, the traditional simple principal-agent model is expanded to a multi-agent model, the agent＇s ability is expanded from one to three： decision making, incentive and supervision. We calculate the mathematical expression of optimal control span of the model and fully explore its significance in economics and management, then we give some policy recommendations. Our study finds： In the condition of maximizing net benefits of principal, optimal control span increases along with the increase of productivity, the increase of agent＇s ability of decision-making, the increase of agent＇s ability of supervision. Optimal control span decreases along with the increase of efforts of subordinate.