The impact of remuneration governance on chief executive officer overpayment

South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences

 
 
Field Value
 
Title The impact of remuneration governance on chief executive officer overpayment
 
Creator Bussin, Mark Wöcke, Albert Deysel, Benno
 
Subject — CEO remuneration; pay-performance sensitivity; corporate governance; share-based payments; behavioural agency theory; CEO overpayment
Description Background: Chief executive officer (CEO) payment and company performance are highly controversial, and existing research has focused on this link for decades. The study was conducted in South Africa where corporate governance regulators have introduced measures to improve the relationship between CEO pay and performance.Aim: This research aimed to explore the problem by extending Pepper and Gore’s (2015) behavioural agency theory to examine the moderating effect of remuneration governance on the CEO pay – company performance relationship.Setting: The study focused on the Top 100 listed companies in which several regulations concerning CEO pay were introduced, which provided the opportunity to examine such regulations on the alignment of CEO pay and company performance.Method: Panel data from 67 company annual reports were analysed over two decades with 871 datapoints, divided into three periods corresponding with the introduction of regulations. Analyses included corrected panel standard errors and estimated generalised least squared hierarchical multiple regression and moderated multiple regression analyses.Results: Results showed a statistically significant positive relationship between company performance measures and total CEO remuneration (including long-term incentives [LTIs]) for each of the three periods. We found that LTIs tied to performance-vested criteria and CEO minimum shareholding do enhance pay-performance sensitivity. Results further suggest that the behavioural agency theory is incomplete and researchers should consider the role of remuneration governance in moderating CEO overpayment.Conclusion: Remuneration governance should be refined through the inclusion of retrospective CEO remuneration disclosure to increase pay-performance sensitivity.Contribution: This research contributes to knowledge of CEO payment and company performance.
 
Publisher AOSIS Publishing
 
Contributor
Date 2023-03-17
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajems.v26i1.4860
 
Source South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences; Vol 26, No 1 (2023); 10 pages 2222-3436 1015-8812
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4860/2718 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4860/2719 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4860/2720 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4860/2721
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2023 Mark Bussin, Albert Wöcke, Benno Deysel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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