No abstract

This paper addresses the question, what metrics should be used for performance evaluation and in particular how they should be weighted and combined in the presence of technologi--pal reacts to his agents' competitive preferences through a reallocation of incentive intensity. As a consequence, depending on the underlying sort of technological interdependency, various differarise and changes in the agents' basic types of wage compensation can occur. We further show that the principal does not want both of his agents to behave equally competitively. Instead, he

No abstract

It has long been recognized in the literature that the Lean and Six Sigma methodologies can complement each other fruitfully. So far, however, researchers have not been able to derive definitive conclusions on how to combine these methods; furthermore, there is little research on how to apply them to service firms. We develop a framework for integrating Lean and Six Sigma instruments in the service industry, particularly in the insurance sector, and discuss it in the context of the insights we gained from a large-scale project carried out at a large German insurance company. We show how various instruments drawn from these two methodologies can be (a) adapted to the insurance industry and (b) combined productively to enable a company to achieve its strategy and goals. The conclusions we draw from these insights can help a wide range of companies customize the combination of the Lean and Six Sigma approaches to suit their specific needs.

This article analyzes the optimal composition of groups of arbitrary size according to the social preferences of group members in a situation of moral hazard. We focus on rivalry, pure self-interest and altruism to show that in a situation where every group member compares his or her remuneration to the average remuneration of all members in the same group, ideally there should be as many extreme altruists as there are extreme rivals. If, by contrast, every member of the group compares his or her own remuneration to that of a focal agent, ideally, this focal agent should be a strong altruist, while all other group members should be highly competitive. Our results show that it is important to foster heterogeneity in the social preferences of the members of a group in order to maximize the profitability of the firm.