Executive Compensation: the Ethical and Impact Challenge

In “The Overpaid CEO” Susan Homberg and Mark Schmitt bring to attention how CEO pay in America is ridiculous in numbers as opposed to other parts of the world. Looking back, in the nineteen hundreds CEO pay was relativity average. As businesses and companies began to expand there was a demand for higher pay. Between 1978-2012 CEO pay increased by 875%! Many rules and regulations were put in to place to limit the pay of a CEO, such as the Securities Exchange Act that I will explain later on, regardless CEO pay kept getting higher and higher as many loopholes were found. Bonuses pay a large part in the salaries of CEOS’, as an effect CEOS’ tend to partake in risky behavior in order to score those big paychecks.

Executive Compensation. I’m in agreement with Thomas Piketty that the one cause of rising inequality in the United States “the rise of supersalaries” for top executives (Piketty & Goldhammer, 2014, p. 298). The average American estimates CEO to worker pay ratio at about 30-to-1, which is more than 4 times what they believe to be ideal. The career review site Glassdoor reported from 2014 data that the average pay ratio of CEO to median worker was 204-to-1 and that at the top of the list, four CEOs earn more than 1,000 times the salary of their median worker with the very top pay ratio of 1,951-to-1. In some cases a CEO makes in one-hour what it takes the average employee six-months to earn. In comparison, the Washington Post reported for the

Compensation systems can take on many forms, all of which have positives and negatives related to it. However, certain components are noted to be determinants of solid compensation plans. One agreement of a solid compensation system is the use of incentives. “Clearly a successful companies set objectives that will provide incentives to increase profitability” (Needles & Powers, 2011). Incentive bonuses should be measures that the company finds important to long-term growth. According to Needles & Powers (2011) the most successful companies long term focused on profitability measures. For large for-profit firms, compensation programs should offer stock options. The interweaving between the market value of a company’s stock and company’s performance both motivate and increase compensation to employees As the market value of the stock goes up, the difference between the option price and the market price grows, which increases the amount of compensation” (Needles & Powers, 2011). Conclusively, a compensation plan should serve all stakeholders, be simple, group employees properly, reflect company culture and values, and be flexible (Davis & Hardy, 1999; The Basics of a Compensation Program).

7. Option compensation will continue to be a critical component of compensation for executives as it simplistically aligns the executives’ pay to shareholder value in its simplest sense. I don’t believe that options compensation is the primary driver of behavior when things shift from the legal to the illegal. As with most senior executives in industry, ego is a huge driver in individual behavior. Compensation is important, but the recognition of your performance is sometimes even more important. We have created a performance driven culture without the necessary control framework for people to operate within. One minute you are doing a great job, the next you have crossed an imaginary line. The frameworks don’t do enough to quantify behavior as legal and illegal leaving inconsistent rules for organizations to operate within. How does Enron compare to the subprime mortgage debacle, or to Steve Jobs backdating options. There remains too much room for interpretation.

I hope this finds you well. As head of the executive compensation committee I am writing this recommendation in order to reach a unilateral consensus on the adequate amount the new CEO just hired should be paid. I want to concisely go over the pros and cons of attempting to follow industry standards and will debrief a compensation plan I have put together that reflects our values as a company.

The economic downfall of 2008 illustrates the impact of unbridled corporate pay structures on our economy. Securities fraud, committed as a result of incentive packages offered to executives to create quick profits, had a detrimental effect on the overall economy. As observed during the Bank and Loan bust of 1989, CEOs take greater risks when offered stock options in their compensation packages. The 2008 Financial crisis, sparked by subprime mortgage market and hedge funds, was driven by banking executives making short term risks that served detrimental to stockholders in the long run. Furthermore, many compensation packages offered Golden Parachute clauses with no claw backs to both performing and underperforming executives.

The term 'executive pay' has acquired bad connotations over the past decade or so and the recent Occupy Wall Street movement brought this issue back into public consciousness on a worldwide scale (Minder, 2013). In Switzerland, the parliament recently passed legislation that would limit executive compensation excesses under threat of fines and imprisonment and the European Parliament agreed to limit banker bonuses to twice their base salaries. Adding fuel to this fire was last month's announcement that the golden parachute for departing Novartis Chairman Daniel Vasella would include a $78 million dollar severance payment.

Official compensation comprises of both an altered part and also a variable (or “at risk”) part which comprises of different STI and LTI components that suitably reflect executive's’ duties, responsibilities and outcome against objectives. It guarantees that compensation suitably attracts and motivates kin of the most elevated nature. The variable part includes: -

Executives are the top leaders in their companies. An executive is someone who has the power to put plans, actions, or laws into effect. An executive is usually a person with senior managerial responsibility. Executive compensation has core and employee benefits. An executive compensation emphasizes long-term or deferred rewards.

As Murphy (1998) rightly points out, CEO compensation has become one of the most debated issues in the recent past. A lot of research in this field has been conducted to determine the relationship between CEO pay levels with the corporate performance, firm size, board vigilance, CEO’s human capital, tenure & age. But the results of these researches are not very hopeful and have yielded conflicting results. This review aims at understanding these relationships and also tries to provide an ethical perspective on CEO compensation.

Read the discussion case "Executive Compensation" on pages 190-192 then answer/discuss questions 1-7 that follow.

More considerations for your compensation committee: How’s your does your organization monitor handling social, environmental, and government policy issues? How does that translate or not translate into executive compensation? How is your organization handling performance management, succession planning, and other executive growth strategies? How does talent management translate into your corporate culture and employee engagement? How do you identify, attract, and support potential key executive candidates? How can you retain top

The compensation package should be sufficient to attract and retain ablemanagers but not go beyond what is needed. Also, compensation packages should be structured so that managers are rewarded on the basis of the stock’s performance over the long run, not the stock’s price on an option exercise date. This means that options (or direct stock awards) should be phased in over a number of years so managers will have an incentive to keep the stock price high over

Compensation packages are tools used by members of management to further the existence of a company. Primary uses of compensation include recruitment, retention and reward. Using compensation to recruit and retain qualified employees is a commonality among employers and compensation levels for new hires are often set competitive to other employers seeking to hire from the same candidate pool. Compensation used as a reward for exceptional job performance is often in the form of bonuses or commissions.

“Corporate governance, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is ‘the system by which businesses are directed and controlled.’” (cited in Britton & Waterston, 2010, p.235) Corporate governance of a company maintains the welfare of the stakeholders in an organisation. Stakeholders are people who are directly affected by the company’s actions and consequences, such as the directors, managers, employees, auditors, and shareholders. Executive compensation is an important part of the corporate governance. It is a financial return for the executives’ services to the company, which is devised to ensure that the directors are “kept in line” in terms of their actions and performance in the business’s