On Manufacturing/Marketing Incentives

Stereotypically, marketing is mainly concerned about satisfying customers and manufacturing is mainly interested in factory efficiency. Using the principal-agent (agency) paradigm, which assumes that the marketing and manufacturing managers of the firm will act in their self-interest, we seek incentive plans that will induce those managers to act so that the owner of the firm can attain as much as possible of the residual returns. One optimal incentive plan can be interpreted as follows: The owner subcontracts to pay the manufacturing manager a fixed rate for all capacity he delivers. Each marketing manager receives all of the returns from his product. In turn, all managers pay a fixed fee to the owner. Under this plan, the marketing managers will often complain about the stock level decisions, even though these levels are announced in advance. Under a revised plan, the owner can eliminate such complaints by delegating the stocking decisions to the respective marketing managers, without any loss. This plan is interpreted as requiring the owner to make a futures market for manufacturing capacity, paying the manufacturing manager the expected marginal value for each unit of capacity delivered, receiving the realized marginal value from the marketing managers, and losing money on average in the process.