Career incentive contract design in project management under companies' competition and asymmetric information

Designing attractive contracts for project managers, for example, career incentive contracts, is one of the most pressing demands for companies. This paper studies an agency problem with two companies (a focal company and a competing company) competing over a menu of career incentive contracts for a manager. The manager has private information about the project's profitability and unobservable effort. From the focal company's perspective, we confirm that it is unnecessary to provide career incentives under full information regardless of whether competition exists. Our study also demonstrates that providing career incentives is always beneficial for the focal company under dual asymmetric information in the context of monopoly. In contrast, when encountering another competing company, as counterintuitive as it may sound, the focal company is better off not providing career incentive contracts in some circumstances. We further identify the conditions under which competition has no effect on the focal company's profit. Finally, our study provides recommendations on mitigating the adverse impacts caused by competition and asymmetric information through simulation results.