Relationship between executive pay and company financial performance in South African state-owned entities

SA Journal of Human Resource Management

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Relationship between executive pay and company financial performance in South African state-owned entities
 
Creator Carlson, Craig Bussin, Mark H.R.
 
Subject — agency theory; company financial performance; executive pay; South Africa; state-owned entities
Description Orientation: Executive pay has been increasing; however, company performance has not been increasing proportionally. This could be due to an agency problem, resulting in executive pay not aligning with the shareholders’ desired company performance.Research purpose: The purpose of this research was to establish if there was a relationship between the total pay of the chief executive officer and their company’s financial performance in South African Schedule 2 state-owned entities (SOEs).Motivation for the study: A review of literature revealed conflicting views regarding the relationship between executive pay and company financial performance. There were limited studies conducted in South Africa, especially considering SOEs.Research approach/design and method: This research was a quantitative, archival study using 8 years of secondary data from South African Schedule 2 SOEs. Spearman’s rank-order correlation was used to evaluate the relationship.Main findings: One significant weak positive relationship was observed when considering the net profit or loss metric of financial performance. Hence, there was no conclusive relationship between executive pay and company financial performance, which supported the proposition that there is an agency problem in South African SOEs.Practical/managerial implications: There is a distinct need for an all-encompassing SOE legislation framework to standardise pay structure and reporting requirements. Additionally, accurate measures of performance are necessary to overcome the agency problem.Contribution/value-add: This research adds to the limited knowledge base regarding the relationship between executive pay and company financial performance in South African SOEs. It also identified the need to incorporate non-financial metrics to influence executive pay.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2020-05-14
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajhrm.v18i0.1211
 
Source SA Journal of Human Resource Management; Vol 18 (2020); 11 pages 2071-078X 1683-7584
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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https://sajhrm.co.za/index.php/sajhrm/article/view/1211/2025 https://sajhrm.co.za/index.php/sajhrm/article/view/1211/2024 https://sajhrm.co.za/index.php/sajhrm/article/view/1211/2026 https://sajhrm.co.za/index.php/sajhrm/article/view/1211/2023
 
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Rights Copyright (c) 2020 Craig Carlson, Mark H.R. Bussin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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