While the de-politicization of public sector management was a core objective of past reform initiatives, more recent debates urge the state to act as a strong principal when it comes to public sector unity and policy coherence - and consequently make a case for reinvigorating links between the political and managerial sphere. Using data from Austrian public sector organizations, we test and confirm the causal relationship of political connectedness of board members and executive compensation. Differentiating between value-based and interest-based in-groups, we suggest that only value-based political connectedness has the potential to restore patronage as a control instrument and governance tool. Self-interested and reward-driven patronage, on the other hand, indicated by a strong association of political connectedness and executive pay, refers to the type of politicization that previous public sector reforms promised to abolish.

abstract: This dissertation explores the determinants of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) perquisites, i.e., nonmonetary compensation offered to particular employees and not essential to the accomplishment of a CEO’s duties. While the current CEO perquisite literature has focused on understanding the economic determinants of CEO perquisites, I study the social-psychological determinants of perquisites. Specifically, I propose that organizational status is positively associated with CEO perquisites. The status literature suggests that high-status organizations derive benefits from status and status signals, while agency theory proposes that perquisites are a way for CEOs to extract private rents. Therefore, I posit that for high-status organizations, the benefits derived from certain CEO perquisites may negate the costs associated with those perquisites. I examine a specific CEO perquisite: the mandatory use of corporate aircraft for personal travel. Prior research and the popular press suggest that this perquisite is often seen not only as a status signal but also as an agency cost. Accordingly, I hypothesize that higher status organizations and organizations with higher status directors are more likely than lower status organizations or organizations with lower status directors to mandate their CEOs to use corporate aircraft for personal travel. I also propose that the effect is stronger for low- or high-status organizations than for middle-status organizations. In addition, I hypothesize five contingencies moderating the above relationships. I examine hypothesized relationships using a sample of S&P 500 organizations, and I find support for many of my hypotheses. This dissertation contributes to both status and executive compensation literature. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2019

In the nonprofit industry, lapses in internal controls and low levels of accountability have resulted in many organizations becoming insolvent. Grounded in the agency theory, the purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between federal compliance requirement, executive compensation, nonprofit size, nonprofit type, and internal control infraction. Archival data were collected from 144 nonprofit organizations in the southeast United States. The results of the multiple regression analyses indicated the model was able to predict the relationship between federal compliance requirement, executive compensation, nonprofit size, nonprofit type, and internal control infraction, F(7, 136) = 6.559, p < .001, R2 = .252, with non-profit type (hospitals), (β = -9.392, t = 7.191, p <0.050), accounting for a higher contribution to the model than executive compensation, (β = -0.049, t = 1.96, p <0.050). Federal compliance requirement and nonprofit size did not explain any significant variation in internal control infraction. The implications for positive social change included the potential for a better understanding by nonprofit managers of the importance of internal controls, leading to the effective and efficient provision of goods and services needed by members of society.

In this work I investigate how executive social connections and executive gender diversity dually affect firm Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a set of firm policies implemented to benefit the social, economic, and environmental welfare of all stakeholders, and how the changes in CSR driven by executive social connections and executive gender diversity in turn affect a range of corporate policies. This research adds to the social networks, gender, and CSR literature within finance in multiple ways. First, while much past work examines the impact on corporate policy of executive gender or executive social connections in isolation, no major work to date examines the impact of gender dependent executive social connections on corporate policy. Second, this work definitively ties the dual effects of executive gender diversity and social connections to firm CSR. The dual impact of social connections and gender diversity on CSR is shown to affect major corporate policies. In all, this work provides evidence that CSR helps drive important firm polices, including M&A and executive compensation policy, and that CSR is impacted by both a firm’s executive gender diversity and social network connections. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Researchers have consistently shown that a firms repurchase announcement is met with positive abnormal stock price return reactions. Open-market repurchases are extremely flexible, non-committal and non-punitive; thus, it is puzzling that the mere announcement of an open-market repurchase will likely increase a firms stock price. I propose to disentangle a firms choice to repurchase its stock to determine when a repurchase announcement is good news for shareholders and when the announcement is not. I find that the purpose of the repurchase announcement matters. At the announcement date, managers intention of avoiding dilution is significantly negative and enhancing shareholder value is significantly positive, as expected. However, more interesting results are observed at two-years and three-years post announcement where I show that counteracting dilution is not a good reason to conduct a repurchase and, although not as strongly negative, enhancing shareholder value does not bear out its announcement promise. Furthermore, I find that firms that repurchase their shares to finance an acquisition are well compensated for their efforts, especially in the long run. I attribute their success to higher cash flows resulting from reducing their tax burden with their amortization deduction of the goodwill created from the purchase accounting acquisition.

<p>Prior studies argue that the board and management of a firm should maximize shareholder value. Also, there is evidence that compensation levels are linked to firm performance as well as monitoring, in other words, the composition of the board influence compensation.</p><p>We document no correlation between CEO compensation and firm performance for a sample of Swedish companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange (SSE) over the sample period 1999 to 2008. However, the Industry firms might pay the CEO for performance. Also, stock ownership influence compensation levels; when the five largest shareholders increase their holdings, CEO compensation levels decrease. We interpret this finding as that monitoring is important and the agency costs can be reduced by higher holdings by institutional investors.</p>

In the first of the three chapters in this thesis, the effects of overlapping board directorships on executive compensation are analyzed. In particular the possibility of more or less explicit agreements to reciprocally increase compensation levels, or the possibility that the personal relationships of board members and CEOs determine compensation levels are examined, with suggestive results. The second chapter documents the existence of economically important halo effects in the Australian consumer real estate marker. The final chapter evaluates the effects of blackout (or silent) periods in the UK on corporate insider behavior. Joakim Bång's main research interests are in empirical corporate finance, and in particular in executive compensation, corporate governance and behavioral finance. He is currently teaching at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, 2011

<p>This dissertation explores the role of executive compensation in determining the capital structure decisions of a firm. CEOs experience a large personal cost of default that interacts through the risk adjusted probability of default with their compensation contract. Since default happens in a particularly costly state of the world for a CEO whose compensation contract consists primarily of pay for performance elements, i.e. a CEO who has a large personal equity stake in the firm, a large pay performance sensitivity is negatively and significantly associated with firm leverage choice. I document this effect in detail for the first time, and I show that it is both statistically robust and significant in magnitude, approximately 1\% of firm value. I show that this effect is driven by the stock holdings of the CEO, not the option holdings. I provide a simple principal agent model that explains the observed negative relationship and makes additional predictions on the relationship of other firm characteristics to pay performance sensitivity and leverage. I then test and confirm these predictions empirically using a standard OLS framework and an instrumental variable approach to control for endogeneity in the compensation contract. I also look at leverage adjustment speeds and show that CEOs with higher pay performance sensitivity adjust leverage upwards towards target values more slowly and downwards more quickly than their peers, and I interpret this as direct evidence that CEOs are actively managing personal risk through firm leverage choice.</p> / Dissertation

Dodd-Frank represents a federal intervention in corporate governance, which had previously been an issue for the states.The most prominent state in this respect is Delaware because of its favorable treatment of corporate interests.Although Delaware’s regulations are too lenient to encourage responsible risk management practices, the federal law is normally driven by populist outrage and anti-corporate sentiments that impair lawmakers’ abilities to write rational, efficient reforms.The climate of political pressure does not foster a thoughtful review of the best ways to affect risk management practices. This paper thus explores the role of leverage in the financial crisis, the shortcomings of Dodd-Frank’s capital requirements, the ways in which reform could have encouraged more responsible leverage positions, and the nature of federal corporate governance regulation.

The compensation of CEO’s has been at the forefront of the public’s mind for the past few years. During the recession, one could not go a day without hearing about the atrocious salaries and bonuses that executives were being paid. Although it only recently became an explosive topic, academics have been researching all aspects of compensation for many years. One of the earliest looked at the idea of pay for performance (Jensen and Murphy 1990), and the field has taken off from there. Many studies have been done on the determinants of compensation, and I was interested in how age relates to compensation. I created a model for determining compensation, but also took it one step further and looked at the compensation structure across different industries as well. I found that age did indeed influence compensation levels, but that it only had some effect on pay structure and only in certain industries.