Advantages And Disadvantages Of Agency Problems

Agency law is a relationship between a principal and in agent in which the agent is legally authorized to act on the behalf of the principal.

Agency Problem: “The difficulties that arise when a principal hires an agent and cannot fully monitor the agent’s actions.” (Cornett, Adair, & Nofsinger, 2016, p. 15).

The scope of this paper is to analyze the kind of agency problems that emerges between The Hershey Company and their stakeholders and shareholders. To answer this, a review of the company`s board structure and ownership structure was made. Thereafter two specific situations that has occurred in recent times was used as case examples to enlighten the agency problems suggested to emerge by the corporate structure.

In this situation, the manager will try to increase profits as much as possible, meaning they may: • Select accounting methods that maximise profit instead of ones that better reflect the firm’s current position such as using a different depreciation method, accelerating revenue recognition or changing the level of depreciation. Try to manipulate accounting figures. Adopting a short-term focus instead of a long-term one. In this perspective, PAT is siding towards regulation. The Agency Costs of Equity One part of residual agency problems is the agency cost of equity. This is because managers’ shirking (they become less productive because they see no need to work for no extra pay) and conflicts with outside equity interests reduce the value of the firm. To minimise this, monitoring and bonding costs are required to implement measures to minimise its detrimental effect on the value of the firm. It must be noted that no firm will completely eliminate this as costs will increase exponentially as one tries to eradicate more and more. Thus, there is an optimal trade-off point between monitoring costs and agency costs. This is where the marginal monitoring and bonding cost equals the marginal shirk. The Agency Costs of Debt Much like the agency cost of equity, there is also one from debt. This is due to the fact that managers will always try to shift wealth from debt to equity holders. Managers have their stake in the firm’s equity and

The global market has shown exemplary contribution to the growth of the world's development until recently where financial crisis have been bombarding most economies. As a result, the cost of livelihood had been unaffordable to many who live below the dollar. The monetary crisis has led to the lowering of many currencies against the dollar, hence advancing the economy crisis to most worldwide nations. This turn of events has been attributed to the lack of exercise of business and management ethics in many multinational companies, firms and investments. Financial scandals have been the order of the past twenty years leading to the sweep over of the flourishing global market. The scandals, especially in larger companies and multinational, are spurred by inter and intra-conflicts in their organizational structures.

“The agency relationship is defined as ‘the fiduciary relationship which results from the manifestation of consent by one person to another that the other shall act in his behalf and subject to his contract, and consent by the other so to act.’ Agents obligations relating to their players are defind not only by contact, but by the fiduciary characteristics of the relationship.” The agent owes his/her player a lot of things in their basic care to their player. These things include the fiduciary duty of undivided loyalty and the duty to act in good faith at all times. The player is going to entrust this agent with all of their fortune, reputation, and legal rights and responsibilities. Along with all of these duties the agent is going to have to abide by what the player wants and carry out what their desire are. This is a responsibility of the agent and it must only do what is desired by and for the player and must not carry out its own business affairs. “The agent must obey all of his/her players’ lawful instruction no matter how arbitrary or capricious any of those instructions seem to the agent or anyone else. However, if the player instructs the agent to perform something illegal, like bribe someone, the agent does not have to comply.”

Most corporate financing decisions in practice reduce to a choice between debt and equity. The finance manager wishing to fund a new project, but reluctant to cut dividends or to make a rights issue, which leads to the decision of borrowing options. The issue with regards to shareholder objectives being met by the management in making financing decisions has come to become a major issue of recent times. This relates to understanding the concept of the agency problem. It deals with the separation of ownership and control of an organisation within a financial context. The financial manager can raise long-term funds internally, from the company’s cash flow, or externally, via the capital market, the market for funds

The WorldCom management had an ethical responsibility to dignify business practices above self-interest. Illegal actions conducted at WorldCom produced short term gains at the expense of long term relationships. Chakraborty, Kurien, Singh, et al. (2004, p. 97) described this practice as "profits at any cost."

Regulation is an important way to enforce ethic and accountability of business. Through the unit, we can see there are some argument against regulatory. Under the free market approach, even without regulation there are private economic-based incentives for the business to provide credible info to outside parties, to avoid an increase in cost of operations. When there is a free market, the theory of market for managers and market for corporate takeovers assume managers’ previous performance will impact on how much remuneration they command in future, or whether they would be replaced by an existing management team, they will be encouraged to adopt strategies to maximise the value of their organization. The assumption is based on the agency theory, which focuses on the self-interest motivation. However, self-interest may create lots of issues as we discussed earlier, holds that regulation

Conflicts between stockholders and creditors Conflict between shareholders and creditors is common for the company which use debt capital to form an optimum capital structure. As mentioned earlier, agency relation exist when one party works as an agent of the principal. In an organization management

Agency issues arise when one party (principal) gives another party (agent) an authority to act on his behalf. In this context, the principal is the investor while the professional hedge fund

Agency relationship refers to a consensual relationship between two parties, where one person or entity authorizes the other to act on his, her or its behalf, and they exist as mutual agreements between individuals, small firms and large organizations. Managerial opportunism is when managers use employer information for personal gain, this creates a conflict of interest, with self-serving managers making decisions that benefit them rather than the company owners or shareholders. Corporate governance problem deals with

Agency problem is a potential conflict between the agent and shareholders in the interest. It is shown that ownership is separated from management. This cause not only is the divergence of ownership and control, but also the information is asymmetrical. When ownership is separated

Agency costs are inevitable within an organization whenever shareholders are not completely in charge; the cost can usually be best spent on providing proper material incentives and moral incentives for agents to properly execute their duties, thereby aligning the interests of shareholders (owners) and agents.

As explained by Schelker (2013), the agency problem between the owners and the management of a firm is at the heart of the corporate governance literature. Hence, there is a need for a