DP6019 Organizing for Synergies

Author(s):	Wouter Dessein, Luis Garicano, Robert Gertner
Publication Date:	January 2007
Keyword(s):	communication, coordination, incentives, incomplete contracts, merger implementation, organizational design, scope of the firm, task allocation
JEL(s):	D2, D8, L2
Programme Areas:	Industrial Organization
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=6019

Multi-product firms create value by integrating functional activities such as manufacturing across business units. This integration often requires making functional managers responsible for implementing standardization, thereby limiting business-unit managers? authority. Realizing synergies then involves a tradeoff between motivation and coordination. Motivating managers requires narrowly-focused incentives around their area of responsibility. Functional managers become biased toward excessive standardization and business-unit managers may misrepresent local market information to limit standardization. As a result, integration may be value-destroying when motivation is sufficiently important. Providing functional managers only with "dotted-line control" (where business-unit managers can block standardization) has limited ability to improve the tradeoff.