In the media today, remuneration programs to CEO’s are frequently discussed. Media are usually focusing on the large amounts paid out rather than why the companies use the programs. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether the conflict of interest presented by the Principal Agent Theory is affected by a CEO remuneration program. To reach the purpose, an inductive method has been used. Questionnaires have been send out by e-mail and phone interviews have been carried out with two sample groups, one with remuneration programs, and one that do not use remuneration programs. The main theoretical framework used is Principal Agent Theory. With the help of other supporting and complementing theories the authors have been able to analyze the empirical findings gathered, and come to a conclusion. The authors were able to come to the conclusion that an effective remuneration program can to some extent steer a CEO’s behavior in the short term, and thereby affect the conflict of interest going on between principals and agents according to Principal Agent Theory. At the same time the authors have come to the conclusion that it is more difficult to make any clear connections between remuneration programs and being able to steer CEO’s behavior in the long run. However the long run reason for a remuneration program is to create a loyalty between the owners and managers. It has also been seen that companies without a remuneration plan tend to apply a Stewardship relationship rather than a principal agent relationship, and are thereby managing to decrease the conflict of interest between the two parties. / Bonusprogram är ofta diskuterade i media idag. Fokus ligger oftare på storleken på beloppen som betalas ut snarare än varför företagen väljer att använda sig av programmen. Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka huruvida intressekonflikten presenterad i Principal Agent Teori påverkas av ett bonusprogram till VD. För att uppnå syftet har en induktiv metod används. Frågeformulär har skickats ut via e-post och telefonintervjuer har genomförts med två olika urvalsgrupper, en där företagen använder sig av bonusprogram till sin VD och en där företagen inte använder sig av bonusprogram till sin VD. Den huvudsakliga teorin som använts är Principal Agent Teori. Med hjälp av andra stödjande samt kompletterande teorier har författarna kunnat analysera det empiriska materialet som samlats in och på så sätt lyckats komma fram till en slutsats. Författarna kom fram till slutsatsen att ett effektivt bonusprogram kan till viss del styra en VD:s beteende på kortsikt, och på så sätt påverka den intressekonflikt som pågår mellan principal och agent enligt Principal Agent Teorin. Samtidigt har författarna kommit fram till slutsatsen att det är svårare att se något klart samband mellan bonusprogram och möjligheten att styra en VD:s beteende på långsikt. En annan anledning för att använda ett bonusprogram är att skapa en lojalitet mellan ägare och chefer på långsikt. Det har även framkommit att företag som inte använder sig av ett bonussystem tenderar att ha en Stewardship relation snarare än en principal agent relation mellan ägaren och VD. På så sätt lyckas dessa företag minska intressekonflikten mellan de två parterna.

Vilka krav ställer den ökade mediebevakningen på företagsledare? Vilka konsekvenser får det för VDs uppdrag? På vilket sätt påverkar mediernas personifiering och skärpta fokus på aktieägarvärde föreställningar om vem som är en bra VD? Det är några av de frågor som behandlas i den här doktorsavhandlingen. Studien ger, utifrån ett organisations- och ledningsteoretiskt perspektiv, en djupare inblick i vad medialiseringen av näringslivets ledare innebär och hur företagsledare hanterar medier och kändisskap. Här berättar en VD, nyckelmedarbetare, styrelseledamöter och en rad journalister om en händelserik tid i ett av landets mest medieuppmärksammade börsbolag. I studien åskådliggörs, problematiseras och tolkas interaktionen mellan medier och företagsledare. Begrepp som rationalitet, legitimitet, medialt kapital och parallelljag diskuteras och används som verktyg i analysen av den medialiserade direktören. Pernilla Petrelius Karlberg är verksam vid Ekonomiska Forskningsinstitutet (EFI), sektionen för Företagsledning och Arbetslivsfrågor, vid Handelshögskolan i Stockholm. Hon undervisar också i lednings- och organisationsteori samt kultur- och medieekonomi. Hon har tidigare studerat rekrytering av koncernstyrelser. Hon är bland annat författare till Kvinnor i styrelser (2003, EFI och SNS Förlag) samt medförfattare till Den Tafatte (2004, Academia Adacta) och Rekrytering av koncernstyrelser (2002, EFI och SNS Förlag). / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2008. Spikblad saknas</p>

In the last decades the Swedish labor market has been characterized by a stereotype perception on women’s role and position on the market. The perception speaks of the characteristics of female leadership as being less qualified causing the gaps between the two genders to transform into a gender segregated society. The historically slow progress has limited the career opportunities for women to reach top management. However the increasing discussions during the 21st century on how to reduce the gender differences in the labor market has made it more acceptable with women on higher positions. Despite of that there is still a lack of women representing top management position on the Swedish labor market today. According to the efficient market hypothesis, financial assets have the ability to adapt and reflect on all available information in consideration of the price. According to the theory this means that the announcement of CEO succession doesn’t have an effect on the share price. In contradiction previous studies show that there is a correlation between published information and share prices. The aim of this paper is to examine how CEO successions effect share prices and wheatear there are differences in how the price is affected by the succession of male or female CEO´s.  The result of the study shows that there is a correlation between male and female CEO successions as confirmed by testing a hypothesis that also has rejected the efficient market hypothesis. What is significant in the study is the difference in reaction to the announcement of CEO succession between the two genders. Female CEO succession generates clear negative abnormal returns unlike male CEO succession generating positive abnormal returns. The study also indicates that female succession generates a clearly unstable share price during the estimated timeframe which can be clearly discerned from a relatively stable share price that can be observed from male successions. In conclusion, the study shows that there are differences between both genders furthermore indicating that the traditional and narrow minded view of women’s leadership is still anchored in the society.

This paper studies a sample of CEOs from companies listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1992 to 2010, and confirms the theory that board members rely more heavily on firm performance measures for turnover and compensation decisions when less is known about the CEO’s ability. In this paper, I make two contributions to the literature. First, I confirm the empirical findings of literature with a new data set showing that the effect of firm performance on CEO turnover declines over a CEO's tenure. Second, I introduce a new tool, the relationship between CEO compensation and firm performance, for testing the effects of CEO tenure on board member decisions. The evidence indicates that the relationship between firm performance and CEO compensation declines over a CEO's tenure. Collectively, the results of this paper support the theory that board members gradually learn the CEO's ability over his tenure, therefore their decisions for turnover and compensation depend more on firm performance for a new CEO.

Essay 1: To delegate or not to delegate to stock markets: The case of boards with related industry expertise Abstract: I examine the extent to which boards with expertise in related product markets, i.e., downstream (customer) or upstream (supplier) industries, delegate their monitoring and advisory functions to stock markets. Directors from related industries (DRIs) are argued to have greater access to information about the input and output product markets of the firm. This, in turn, is predicted to reduce the reliance on stock-based compensation, a costly mechanism, particularly for firms that depend more on information about product markets and whose stock prices are not very informative about product markets. The evidence documented in this paper is largely consistent with these predictions. A number of additional tests suggest that this evidence is not likely to be explained by the potential conflict of interests between the firm’s stockholders and DRIs. Hence, I conclude that boards with related industry expertise delegate to stock markets to an optimally lesser extent due to their informational advantages. Essay 2: Stock-based CEO compensation following conglomerate acquisitions Abstract: I examine how stock-based incentive compensation for the CEO is designed following corporate acquisitions conditional on the economic nature of the acquisition. Large acquisitions represent significant changes in the economic environment of the firm. Furthermore, these changes are more likely to occur with conglomerate acquisitions. Accordingly, implications of the two mainstream theories of incentive compensation, i.e., efficient contracting theory and agency theory, are tested separately for conglomerate acquisitions. The empirical tests generally show that stock-based compensation is employed more intensely after conglomerate acquisitions than otherwise. Overall, the results documented in this paper seem consistent with the notion that greater economic uncertainties that are likely to follow conglomerate acquisitions induce the board to rely more heavily on stock-based incentives, an external monitoring mechanism.

This thesis consists of three chapters on financial structure, managerial compensation, and product markets. The unifying theme of these chapters is to examine how the financial decisions of firms are affected by market imperfections. Chapter 1 places emphasis on the impact of internal imperfections arising from asymmetric beliefs (or behavioral biases) and agency conflicts by examining how these internal imperfections affect managerial compensation and corporate financial structure. On the other hand, Chapters 2 and 3 incorporate external market imperfections especially arising from imperfect product market competition. More specifically, these two chapters develop market equilibrium frameworks to examine how the matching market for CEOs and firms interacts with the product market to affect the distributions of CEO compensation and firm size. In Chapter 1, we develop a dynamic model to examine the effects of asymmetric beliefs of a firm's manager and blockholders regarding the profitability of the firm's projects, and differing attitudes towards their risk, on its capital structure. The firm's capital structure reflects the tradeoff between the positive incentive effects of managerial optimism that increases the manager's output and blockholders' private benefits against the negative effects of risk-sharing costs. We provide several testable implications for the effects of the degree of managerial optimism as well as permanent and transitory components of the firm's risk on different components of capital structure. In our calibration of the model, performed separately for different industries, we show that while optimism and risk have qualitatively similar effects on capital structure in different industries, their quantitative effects are significantly different. The interactive effects of asymmetric beliefs and agency conflicts could potentially explain a significant portion of the substantial inter-industry variation in capital structure. Chapter 2 studies how the distributions of CEO talent and compensation vary across industries, and how product market characteristics affect these distributions. We develop a market equilibrium model that incorporates the competitive assignment of CEOs to firms in a framework in which firms engage in imperfect product market---specifically, monopolistic---competition. Using the distributions of CEO pay and firm value in each of twelve Fama-French industries, we calibrate the parameters of our structural model, and indirectly infer the unobserved distributions of CEO talent and firm quality that together determine firm output. We then conduct several counterfactual experiments using the calibrated models corresponding to each of the industries. We find that the distribution of CEO talent does, indeed, vary dramatically across industries. More importantly, contrary to the conclusions of earlier studies that abstract away from the effects of the product market (Tervio, 2008 and Gabaix and Landier, 2008), the impact of CEO talent on firm value appears to be quite significant. Our estimates of the effect of CEO talent on firm value for the industries in our sample are two orders of magnitude higher than those obtained by the aforementioned studies. Further, our estimates suggest that the compensation of CEOs is quantitatively in line with their contributions to firms. Broadly, our study shows that it is important to incorporate the product market environment in which firms operate when assessing the contributions of CEOs to firms. Chapter 3 builds a market equilibrium framework in which the CEO-firm matching process is affected by the product market. We show that under reasonable assumptions there is a unique equilibrium in which only managers with ability above a unique cutoff level are matched to firms. This very simple screening process endogenizes the distribution of active managers who match with firms. Our calibration of the model using a parametric approach, which is in contrast with the empirical analysis performed in Chapter 2, strongly supports the principle arguments on the importance of CEO talent and appropriate CEO talent levels (on average) in Chapter 2. In addition, due to the law of demand and supply, which is a key feature of the extended model, we obtain somewhat different influence of some of product market characteristics on CEO pay. Furthermore, our parametric approach allows us to draw some implications for the effects of CEO talent distribution on the market equilibrium.

At first glance, the group CEO's (koncernchefens) legal position looks easy. It is the CEO’s responsibility to lead and make decisions on matters which affect the entire group, all while defending the company’s best interests. However, when one looks closely at how the Companies Act (Aktiebolagslagen) regulates how a company should organize itself, as well as the options available to manage the group, one rea-lizes that simply appointing a group CEO does not necessarily make the company compatible with the Companies Act. A group CEO threatens to reduce both the Board and CEO's legal administrative districts which are not in accordance with legal and commercial principles.In order to introduce a group CEO it requires a detailed investigation of the group's legal relationships. Through investigation, the companies can clarify what is included in the subsidiaries’ executives' legal management area, in order to align the group CEO's powers—eliminating the threat to restrict the jurisdiction of the various group companies' Board of Directors and CEO. The group CEO could potentially take advantage of his or her position and use his or her power to damage one of the subsidiaries. Since the group CEO is not mentioned in the Companies Act, Chapter 29, as one of the responsible parties, the group CEO is not, at least not directly, sub-ject to damages based on the Companies Act, tort law.A potential solution to this is to apply the Commercial Code (Handelsbalkens) 18th chapter and its rules of tort law, which states that the group CEO would take a trus-teeship (sysslomannaställning) with one of the Group companies. This paper/essay presents and analyzes various ways a CEO can exercise the power to represent sever-al group companies and the grounds upon which the group CEO can be held liable for his or her actions.

We trace the process of relationship development of the CEO¡]Chief Executive Officer¡^and CIO¡]Chief Information Officer¡^in one company in Taiwan over a 8-year period. In the process of corporation information technology makes policy and information system implementation, the both of change agency CEO and CIO can lead IT/IS project to successful or failure. Exploring the trust relationship building of process between CEO and CIO in the case, we hope provide research benefits that why or how to result in success or failure that a corporation information technology makes policy and information system implementation. In this research we use the process research model methodology that developed by Daniel Robey and Michael Newman in 1992 year and 1996 year, identify the 26 sequences events process in the AACL company¡¦s CEO/CIO for over 8 years, and define them as either encounters or episodes. We enrich and understanding the process of form of CEO/CIO trusts relationship, and other special phenomenon when an organization process information technology or information system changes. We use the change agentry for our exploring perspective, to analyze and theoretical argue the evolution of change agency¡¦s technological frames¡Bthe form of process of CEO/CIO in trust community¡Borganization¡¦s senior and junior staff in opposing phenomenon when organization changing, and how to build a model in champion or title of CEO/CIO. We conclude that the CEO and CIO, them as play a multiple change agency of role for driving organization¡¦s changing, however, the multiple change agency between CEO and CIO must go through an interact process for each other, they are sufficient building a robust trust relationship, let company¡¦s business benefits and technology benefits are really integration. This is my research why emphasize the important view that the multiple change agency CEO/CIO are need has a sufficient building robust trust relationship when organization process the information system changing.

The majority of mentoring research has explored mentoring from the vantage point of protégé perceptions, reactions, experiences, and development (Wanberg et al. 2003; Kram, 1988). Participants in mentoring studies have commonly been employees, college students, or mid-level managers. Little is known regarding the impact of mentoring roles in relation to top executives who are, over the span of their careers, likely to participate in developmental relationships as both mentor and protégé. In fact, accessing people who are active CEOs has been extremely problematic for a majority of interested researchers (Thomas, 1995). Limited research on mentoring and especially that on CEOs is used to inform the current Human Resource Development (HRD) scholarship and practice. The current study will inform HRD and provide insight into how mentoring relationships can be used to develop individuals in organizations. Key findings from this study were reported from a qualitative study (Moustakas, 1994) involving twelve CEOs of large for-profit US corporations who detailed their experiences as both mentors and protégés. Emerging themes from the larger study overlap, in part, with key mentoring functions as identified by Kram (1988). In addition to reinforcing and informing the work of Kram (1988), key CEOs provided insight regarding their experiences in long-term (several years or more) mentoring relationships. The combined themes resulted in a framework demonstrating the development of mentoring relationships. In addition to a general discussion of a mentoring framework, I focused the study primarily on CEO perceptions regarding the impact of their mentoring related experiences on 1) how their mentors have impacted their development; 2) how they mentor others; and 3) the relational elements in mentoring relationships. Because a rarely assessed population was studied, scholars and practitioners in HRD will gain a unique understanding and greater insight into how mentoring relationships develop professionals, particularly CEOs.

This study employed upper echelon perspective, social capital perspective, and strategic leadership and leadership style perspectives to examine the effects of CEO transformational leadership and CEO dominance on the three internal social capital dimensions, i.e. structural, relationship, and cognitive capital, of top management team (TMT). It also investigated the effects of the TMT internal social capitals on firm performance, and the mediating roles of the TMT social capital in the CEO leadership-performance relationship. The unit of analysis is at the firm level. Structural equation modeling conducted with LISREL was employed to test the fitness of overall hypothesized model and the significance of hypothesized relationships among studied variables. Empirical results showed that the theoretical models fit the data very well, and most of hypotheses are supported; the significance of top executives and interactions on firm outcomes were significantly ascertained. Specifically, CEO dominance may produce negative effects on TMT network density and trust while CEO transformational leadership may promote TMT network density, trust, and shared vision. On the other hand, TMT network density may foster firm performance. Finally, results showed that TMT network density mediated the relationships of CEO leadership and firm performance. This study has significant implications for upper echelons perspective, the integration of strategic leadership and leadership style research, and the applications of social capital perspective. Research findings also exhibit valuable insights for the strategic implications of TMT dynamics in business practices. Limitations and future directions were discussed for further extensions.