Transfer Pricing

When an enterprise is divided into smaller organizational units, each with its own results accountability, the question arises how to manage and measure the efficiency and profitability of such units. A task which is complicated when organizational units in the same enterprise or enterprise group trade internally as the units have to decide what prices should be paid for such inter-unit transfers. One important challenge is to uncover the consequences that different transfer prices have on the willingness in the organizational units to coordinate activities and trade internally. At the same time the determination of transfer price will affect the size of the profit or loss in the organizational units and thus have an impact on the evaluation of managers‟ performance. In some instances the determination of transfer prices may lead to a disagreement between coordination of the organizational units and overall profitability of the enterprise on the one hand and measurement of profitability and managers‟ performance in the units on the other. This chapter addresses these issues