General readers have no idea why people should care about what executives are paid and why they are paid the way they are. That's the reason that The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, and other popular and practitioner publications have regular coverage on them. This book not only proposes a reason - executives need incentives in order to maximize firm value (economists call this agency theory) - it also describes the nature and design of executive compensation practices. Those incentives can take the form of benefits (salary, stock options), or prerquisites (reflecting the status of the executive within the organizational culture.
The definitive guide for anyone involved in designing and approving executive salaries—revised for new laws and attitudes about salaries and performance The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation, Third Edition, helps you evaluate your company’s culture, organization, and strategy to create the best compensation package for the organization’s interest. It contains new strategies based on recent changes regarding venture capitalism, boards of director’s core responsibilities, changes in director’s pay, shifts in stakeholder power, and laws like the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and healthcare reform. Bruce R. Ellig served at Pfizer Inc. for over 35 years, and spent his last 25 years as secretary of the Board of Directors' Executive Compensation Committee. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Society of Human Resource Management and WorldatWork. Ellig was elected to the National Academy of Human Resources in 1993 and served as a fellow of the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Wharton Aresty Institute.
When it comes to creating an executive compensation program, it can feel like there’s little gray area between giving top performers too shiny a golden parachute, with exorbitant perks, and providing the company’s leaders with the incentive they need to continue doing their best. This book gives readers the techniques and understanding they need to design a rewards strategy that will motivate performers while benefiting the entire organization. Taking a careful look at the complicated state of executive rewards, this no-nonsense, practical guide provides readers with a complete methodology for motivating management to accomplish critical business goals. Eschewing a one-size-fits-all approach, the book uses case studies and examples to illustrate what factors should be considered—including environment, key stakeholders, people strategy, business strategy, and organizational capabilities—when designing a program that will benefit both their company and the people who fuel its success.
Executive Compensation is an invaluable legal guide through the maze of rules, regulations and practices that govern corporate financial compensation for executive employees.
The company is under-performing, its share price is trailing, and the CEO gets...a multi-million-dollar raise. This story is familiar, for good reason: as this book clearly demonstrates, structural flaws in corporate governance have produced widespread distortions in executive pay. Pay without Performance presents a disconcerting portrait of managers' influence over their own pay--and of a governance system that must fundamentally change if firms are to be managed in the interest of shareholders. Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried demonstrate that corporate boards have persistently failed to negotiate at arm's length with the executives they are meant to oversee. They give a richly detailed account of how pay practices--from option plans to retirement benefits--have decoupled compensation from performance and have camouflaged both the amount and performance-insensitivity of pay. Executives' unwonted influence over their compensation has hurt shareholders by increasing pay levels and, even more importantly, by leading to practices that dilute and distort managers' incentives. This book identifies basic problems with our current reliance on boards as guardians of shareholder interests. And the solution, the authors argue, is not merely to make these boards more independent of executives as recent reforms attempt to do. Rather, boards should also be made more dependent on shareholders by eliminating the arrangements that entrench directors and insulate them from their shareholders. A powerful critique of executive compensation and corporate governance, Pay without Performance points the way to restoring corporate integrity and improving corporate performance.
ANSWERS TO EXCESSIVE EXECUTIVE PAY Charges of excessive executive compensation have filled the business press for a number of years, yet few understand why pay plans trigger such results.This desktop reference book is an easy-to-access, invaluable guide to structuring appropriate executive pay plans. Properly used, it will help avoid excessive executive pay resulting from poorly designed plans. Written by renowned compensation expert Bruce Ellig, this book is a must read for the designers, approvers, and recipients of executive compensation, as well as those who write about the subject. Consultants and in-house pay designers will find detailed examples (supplemented with over 400 figures and tables) to trigger their own creativity. Compensation committees and other approvers of executive pay plans will value the definitions and descriptions of various pay plans and the conditions under which they would be appropriate. Executives themselves will find the book useful. Not only in better understanding their own plans, but learning more about other plans, both those they may only have heard about, as well as many that have not yet caught their attention. And those who write about the subject will be able to put their comments in a better perspective.. The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation takes an in-depth look at each of the executive pay elements: salary, executive benefits and incentives (both short and long term). This review also includes the role of the board of directors (and its compensation committee) along with the influence of the major stakeholders (most notably the shareholder). And a complete chapter is devoted to various measurements of executive performance. This book also contains a compendium of selected key information on executive compensation, including laws, Internal Revenue Code sections, IRS revenue rulings, accounting interpretations, and SEC actions. No other book has such a complete resource section. In addition, it includes both a historical review of key developments and a look ahead, as well as a glossary with more than 2,000 definitions.
The scholarly literature on executive compensation is vast. As such, this literature provides an unparalleled resource for studying the interaction between the setting of incentives (or the attempted setting of incentives) and the behavior that is actually adduced. From this literature, there are several reasons for believing that one can set incentives in executive compensation with a high rate of success in guiding CEO behavior, and one might expect CEO compensation to be a textbook example of the successful use of incentives. Also, as executive compensation has been studied intensively in the academic literature, we might also expect the success of incentive compensation to be well-documented. Historically, however, this has been very far from the case. In Too Much Is Not Enough, Robert W. Kolb studies the performance of incentives in executive compensation across many dimensions of CEO performance. The book begins with an overview of incentives and unintended consequences. Then it focuses on the theory of incentives as applied to compensation generally, and as applied to executive compensation particularly. Subsequent chapters explore different facets of executive compensation and assess the evidence on how well incentive compensation performs in each arena. The book concludes with a final chapter that provides an overall assessment of the value of incentives in guiding executive behavior. In it, Kolb argues that incentive compensation for executives is so problematic and so prone to error that the social value of giving huge incentive compensation packages is likely to be negative on balance. In focusing on incentives, the book provides a much sought-after resource, for while there are a number of books on executive compensation, none focuses specifically on incentives. Given the recent fervor over executive compensation, this unique but logical perspective will garner much interest. And while the literature being considered and evaluated is technical, the book is written in a non-mathematical way accessible to any college-educated reader.
This title is also available for the Kindle and Kindle Fire. Visit Amazon.com for more information. Executive compensation is an issue all healthcare organizations face. This new book, written by a healthcare executive compensation expert, helps CEOs and board compensation committees deal with issues such as compensation philosophy, the structure of the executive compensation program, the balance among its components, the emphasis on pay-for-performance, and the challenges of governing executive compensation. Most chapters end with a set of related best practices. They are addressed to trustees as advice on governing executive compensation and to CEOs as advice on managing compensation for other executives. Topics covered include: Defining the level of compensation needed to attract and retain talented leaders Designing and administering incentive compensation plans--both annual and long term Deciding whether to provide perquisites to executives Structuring employment agreements and severance policies Understanding the board's or compensation committee's role in overseeing executive compensation
Research on executive compensation has exploded in recent years, and this volume of specially commissioned essays brings the reader up-to-date on all of the latest developments in the field. Leading corporate governance scholars from a range of countries set out their views on four main areas of executive compensation: the history and theory of executive compensation, the structure of executive pay, corporate governance and executive compensation, and international perspectives on executive pay. The authors analyze the two dominant theoretical approaches – managerial power theory and optimal contracting theory – and examine their impact on executive pay levels and the practices of concentrated and dispersed share ownership in corporations. The effectiveness of government regulation of executive pay and international executive pay practices in Australia, the US, Europe, China, India and Japan are also discussed. A timely study of a controversial topic, the Handbook will be an essential resource for students, scholars and practitioners of law, finance, business and accounting.
The numerous incentive approaches and combinations and their implications can be dizzying even to the compensation professional. Pay for Results provides a road map for developing and implementing executive incentives that drive business needs and strategy. It is filled with specific analytic tools, including tables, exhibits, forms, checklists. In addition, it uncovers myths in performance measurement strategy and design. Timely and thorough, this book expertly shows businesses how to drive their specific needs and strategy. Human resources and compensation officers will discover how to apply performance metrics that align with shareholder investment.
