Demotywujące i dysfunkcjonalne aspekty ceny transferowej
Demotivating and dysfunctional aspects of transfer price

Summary/Abstract: The article describes an empirical case of transfer price in an internal sale transaction between co-operating decentralized profit centres in an entity of a service industry. The transfer price has a special microeconomic meaning here because it controls internal transactions between units that are not separate legal entities themselves but decentralized specializationoriented business areas ranged as profit centers in a legal entity. As a result of headquarters’ high expectations concerning the overall return, profitability of profit centers and that of contacts, and a faulty transfer pricing system unit managers take dysfunctional decisions and fall into reciprocal conflicts. Arbitral and inflexible ways of managing contracts’ profitability, unconcious contract pricing and excesively exorbitated expectations for performance-related bunuses of profit centers’ managers additionaly complicate the decision-taking process. The minimum transfer price exeeds the market price and is perceived as too low by the buying profit center and as too high by the selling profit center. The maximum transfer price is close to the market price and is perceived as too high by the buying unit and as too low by the selling unit. As a result of inflexibility of the solution under consideration the organisation both looses benefits expressed as unrealised margins on rejected but profitable contracs, unearned sales revenue or unserved clients, and provokes internal conflicts leading to the demotivation of managers. The methods of direct observation and critical analysis have been mainly applied in this paper.

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