In his theoretical model, Lin assumes that the team leader maximised
the per capita (or total) output of his team (Lin 1988). But in many cases
team leaders did not necessarily follow this principle, especially in cases
where they were not elected democratically by team members. It was
more usual for team leaders to be appointed by the commune authority.
Monitoring was insufficient in production teams because of its difficulties.
Monitoring was also related to the team leader's behaviour. These
problems relate to the earlier discussion of the different aspirations of a
household head and a team leader (see chapter 2). Because a household
head usually regarded the household as a unit for production and
consumption, household income levels related directly to his utility
function. Under the HRS, the head would more actively monitor
production to maximise the household's income. Within production
teams, team leaders were usually allocated fixed working points for
managing (as compensation for the leader's time spent on meetings,
organisation, planning and management) plus the working points associated
with his work. Assuming that the team leader was the only monitor,
he would not be able to capture all the increased output resulting from
his extra efforts in monitoring. The team leader would get only a
proportion (equal to the share of his working points in the team's total
points) of the increased output.