The role of organizational scope and governance in strengthening private monitoring
By: Lamar Pierce, Michael W. Toffel
Contributors: Toffel, Michael W.; Harvard Business School
Edition: 3rd rev.
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 11-004; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 11-004.
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2012
Place of publication: [Boston]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 54
Description: Governments and other organizations often outsource activities to achieve cost savings from market competition. Yet such benefits are often accompanied by poor quality resulting from moral hazard, which can be particularly onerous when outsourcing the monitoring and enforcement of government regulation. In this paper, we argue that the considerable moral hazard associated with private regulatory monitoring can be mitigated by understanding conflicts of interest in the monitoring organizations' product/service portfolios and by the effects of their private governance mechanisms. These organizational characteristics affect the stringency of monitoring through reputation, customer loyalty, differential impacts of government sanctions, and the standardization and internal monitoring of operations. We test our theory in the context of vehicle emissions testing in a state in which the government has outsourced these inspections to the private sector. Analyzing millions of emissions tests, we find empirical support for our hypotheses that particular product portfolios and forms of governance can mitigate moral hazard. Our results have broad implications for regulation, financial auditing, and private credit- and quality-rating agencies in financial markets.
Notes: "July 2010, revised January 2011, February 2012, August 2012"--Publisher's Web site.

Previously published as: Leniency in private regulatory enforcement : the role of organizational scope and governance.

Includes bibliographical references.