ABSTRACT
All principal-agent relationships, as John Pratt and Richard Zeckhauser would characterize them,1 are based on formal or informal agreements that define those relationships. Agreements can exist on a large scale, such as a constitution which defines the relationship between a people and its government; or on a much smaller scale, such as contracts between parties in business transactions or between contractors and public agencies. Project-related agreements also exist within public agencies among supervisors and subordinates whose jobs involve either managing projects or carrying out the project work. Those latter agreements may take the form of job or responsibility descriptions rather than contracts.
