The Provision of High-powered Incentives under Multitasking

We study multitasking problems where an agent engages in both a contractible task and a non-contractible task, which are substitutes. The agent has private information on the value of the non-contractible task, and there are followers who can also contribute to this task. We highlight a new mechanism by incorporating leading-by-example (Hermalin, 1998) in a multi-tasking model. To prevent excessive effort by the agent with low value on the non-contractible task, the principal provides high-powered incentives for the contractible task. We discuss its organizational implications to pay for performance, incentives to help colleagues, and prevention of overwork