For over 3 decades, the federal government has attempted to introduce pay-for-performance into the federal workforce. It is important for federal agencies to understand the impact of pay-for-performance, specifically pay banding, on job satisfaction and retention of frontline managers as agencies face the exodus of the retiring Baby Boomer generation. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of pay banding on job satisfaction and intention of frontline managers to leave the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The theoretical foundation for this study was Adams's equity theory as viewed through the lens of Mannheim's generational theory. The overarching research question was concerned with whether pay banding effects generational perceptions of job satisfaction and predicts turnover intention. This quantitative study used ANOVA, hierarchical multiple regression, mediation analysis, moderation analysis, and logistic regression to analyze the impact of pay banding on generational perceptions of job satisfaction and turnover intention among IRS frontline managers. The sample was limited to frontline managers of the Department of the Treasury (n = 2,525). Key findings indicated that pay banding was negatively associated with job satisfaction and that pay banded managers were 1.36 times more likely to leave the agency than managers who were not pay banded. Pay banding mediated the relationship between gender and job satisfaction. Positive social changes that may result from governmental policymakers applying the findings of this study are improved retention of highly skilled frontline managers, improved the efficiency and effectiveness of government services, and reduced cost of retraining managers due to attrition. These changes may improve the work environment for employees and improve governmental services provided to the citizenry.

There are two competing theoretical debates about the impact of ownership concentration on organisational outcomes, namely efficient-monitoring hypothesis and conflict-of-interest (strategic-alignment) hypothesis. New Zealand has a distinctively concentrated ownership structure. This raises an important research question: Does concentrated ownership in New Zealand perform an efficient monitoring or opportunistic function? This question remains unanswered due to the very limited research on ownership structure in New Zealand. This research considers three specific where studying the function of ownership concentration is likely to be insightful. Three contexts are: CEO compensation scheme, corporate voluntary disclosures and investor perception of ownership structure in the stock market. This research further contributes to the existing literature by decomposing ownership into four mutually exclusive groups, namely financial institution-, government-, management- and other company-controlled ownership structures. The different impacts of ownership concentration under each type of controlling ownership structure are investigated. The findings of Essay One reveal that concentrated ownership is a significant contributor to the poor CEO compensation pay-for-performance relationship in New Zealand listed companies. However, reduced ownership concentration promotes the alignment between CEO compensation and firm performance. These results imply that large shareholders in New Zealand do not play a monitoring role in curbing managerial power; rather it exacerbates the poor relationship between CEO compensation and firm performance. In Essay Two, regression results show that companies characterised by financial institution-controlled ownership structure tend to make significantly fewer (more) disclosures at high (low) concentration levels. In contrast, firm observations in the high concentration group with government- and management-controlled ownership structures have considerably higher voluntary disclosure scores compared with their low concentration counterparts. With respect to the linearity assumption, the relationship between ownership concentration and voluntary disclosure practices unveil a non-linear pattern, indicating that the efficiency of large shareholders’ monitoring varies with the level of intensity of ownership concentration. The results of Essay Three demonstrate that ownership concentration in general is positively associated with information asymmetry observed around annual report release date. This is supportive of investor-adverse selection towards ownership concentration, and such an adverse selection problem is strongly associated with financial institutional and managerial shareholdings. Also, ownership concentration decreases stock liquidity, so no result is found in line with the ownership concentration liquidity hypothesis. When voluntary disclosure is taken into account, regression results suggest that disclosure significantly attenuates information asymmetry risk related to ownership concentration. This effect is particularly pronounced for firms with management-controlled ownership structure. Findings highlight the importance of corporate disclosures under concentrated ownership structure in eliminating information asymmetry and enhancing market efficiency in New Zealand.

Det är en ständigt pågående debatt om huruvida belöningssystem fungerar som motivationsinstrument eller inte. Många, främst inom den psykologiska skolan, är kritiska till belöningssystem, trots detta finns de i alla organisationer. Kan denna förekomst förklaras av att det finns en annan skola, den ekonomiska, som är det dominerande synsättet hos företag? Syftet med denna uppsats är att ställa den psykologiska skolans motivationsuppfattning emot den ekonomiska i en analys, och utifrån denna se om det går att dra slutsatsen att det ekonomiska tankesättet är det som dominerar och därmed ge en förklaring till varför belöningssystem förekommer som motivationsverktyg i ett företag. För att kunna utreda detta har vi valt att göra en fallstudie på företaget Tempur och dess säljare, samt tagit hjälp av teorier ur såväl den psykologiska motivationsuppfattningen, Maslow och Herzberg, som den ekonomiska, economic man. Utifrån detta har vi dels dragit slutsatsen att den ekonomiska teorin dominerar såväl Tempurs antaganden om individen som säljarnas beteenden, dels att belöningar i form av pengar är den mest betydande faktorn för säljarnas motivation.

This thesis presents a challenge to policy initiatives that presume that patient-centered care will reduce racial disparities in health. Data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey were used to test patient assessment of provider behavior defined as patient-centered care according to the National Health Disparities Report of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the Department of Health and Human Services. Results indicated patient-centered care improves self-rated health status, but blacks still report worse health status than whites experiencing comparable patient-centered care. Further, black-white differences in patient-centered care had no affect on health status. Rival theories of black-white differences in health, including social class and health literacy, provided better explanations of disparities than assessment of provider behaviors. These findings suggest that policies designed to financially incentivize patient-centered care practices by providers should be considered with caution. While patient-centered care is better quality care, financial incentives could have a negative effect on minority health if providers are deterred from practices that serve disproportionate numbers of poor and less literate patients and their families. Measurement of the concept of patient-centered care in future health disparities research was also discussed.

The federal government is often criticized for performance that fails to meet the public's expectations. Its traditional pay system receives much of the blame for rewarding seniority instead of performance. While everyone agrees that performance matters, they don't always agree on the best way to improve it. My research investigates human resource management strategies designed to motivate better performance and productivity. Specifically, I examine the credibility and feasibility of implementing pay for performance throughout the federal government and identify ways that managers can promote greater productivity through human capital investment. I conduct an extensive review of work motivation theories and synthesize findings from previous academic and government studies in order to develop models that are tailored to the federal workplace. I test these models using federal survey data from the Merit Principles Surveys of 2000 and 2005. A variety of attitudes, perceptions, expectations, and work environment factors are expected to influence job performance. Findings reveal that pay for performance belief and success are greatly affected by performance management, fair treatment in all personnel matters, supervisory fairness in decision-making, and organizational culture. Further results indicate that managers can markedly improve productivity by ensuring employees are highly engaged in their work, delivering effective performance management, providing a supportive organizational culture, and giving employees adequate resources and training. With federal agencies constantly striving to improve performance and productivity, these findings have practical implications for government as they suggest ways that public managers can achieve better performance and greater productivity through increased work motivation.

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The purpose of the study was to examine district, campus, and community determinants of principal’s salaries using a spatial econometric framework. Among the district variables business tax (p = 0.001), property tax (p < .01), and the Herfindahl Index (measure of competition) were statistically significant indicators of principal salaries. The results suggest that more affluent districts tend to pay principals higher salaries, which was expected. Regarding campus characteristics, the percent of economically disadvantaged was not a statistically sound indicator (p = 0.468), but campus enrollment was significant (p = <.01). Interestingly as the percentage of economically disadvantaged students increased, the principal salary decreased. In contrast, as student enrollment increases the salary of principals increases, suggesting that principals of larger campuses earn higher salaries. Interestingly, student achievement was not a statistically significant predictor of principals’ salary given that pay for performance in Texas is at the forefront of political debate. Among the variables examined at the community level, only the percentage of homes owner occupied (p = 0.002) was found to be a statistically significant indicator of principal salary (p = .002). The lack of evidence on reforms, such as determinants of principal salary, points to data and research deficiencies to be addressed in order to learn more about their effects and make sound public policies. The paper utilized a spatial regression approach to examine the determinants of principal salary using data from the local, state, and national data sources. Principal salaries are viewed from several lenses in this study by considering effective outcomes of pay defined by actual salaries and market considerations for pay as defined by community, organizational, and human capital variables. Literature from the private sector as well as from the public school setting was used as a theoretical underpinning for the hypotheses set forth in this study. Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further. The paper includes implications for educational policy development related to pay for contribution, rather than pay based on tenure, experience, or district wealth. The research also fulfils an identified policy need to study how principal salaries are determined.

In this study, I explored the different perceptions of teachers in a large urban school district in Texas towards a pay-for-performance program used on their respective campuses between 2011-2016. In total, 97 teachers from four different middle school campuses participated in this study. A descriptive analyst was conducted on teacher responses to an online survey to answer the research questions examined in this study: 1) What are teachers' perceptions of the pay-for-performance program's impact on teacher motivation?, 2) What are teachers' perceptions of the pay-for-performance program's impact on teacher retention?, and 3) What are the differences among teachers' perceptions of the pay-for-performance programs on the participating campuses? The results indicate 48.3% and 53.4% of the participants perceive pay-for-performance programs as having a positive impact on teacher motivation and teacher retention, respectively. Additionally, the results demonstrate 47.5% of participating teachers responded positively towards the pay-for-performance program on their respective campuses. This study has implications for policymakers and school district leaders who may consider implementing teacher pay-for-performance programs. Future research studies might explore school districts of different sizes throughout Texas and across the United States to gain a broader prospective of pay-for-performance programs.

Recent research has suggested that interest alignment, i.e., the degree to which members of an organization are motivated to behave in line with organizational goals, is a source of competitive advantage that can generate rents for the firm (Gottschlag and Zollo, 2007). Drawing on agency theory, this dissertation tests whether the interest alignment premise manifests itself differently in the strategic behavior of family-controlled firms when compared to their nonfamily peers. In particular, for firms in the S&P 500, I evaluate the results of two important strategic policies; mergers and acquisitions, as well as CEO compensation practices. In studying acquisitions made by family and nonfamily firms in the S&P 500 index from 1992-2006, I find that family firms are more careful when embarking on actions leading to mergers than non-family firms, as evidenced by their selection of smaller targets and targets who are in related businesses. I also find that there is a preponderance of cash purchases by family firms that does not vary with market movements and that completion times for merger transactions are shorter than for non family firms. The care and concern with which family-controlled firms choose their "mates" translates into higher stock returns when compared with non-family firms. Overall, I believe that family-controlled firms derive value from their merger and acquisition strategy. With regard to CEO compensation practices, I find that family firms provide strong incentives to the CEO for superior performance but pay significantly lower than nonfamily firms in terms of both salary and stock-based pay. The pay-for-performance sensitivity between annual stock returns and total compensation is significantly greater for family firms in general, and for family CEOs when compared with compensation of CEOs in nonfamily firms. The pay-for-performance sensitivity is in turn positively related to firm performance, suggesting that firms with greater pay-for-performance sensitivity (family controlled firms) also perform better. The analyses in my thesis thus illustrate that family-controlled firms and non-family firms in the S&P 500 differ in their strategic decision-making. It would be fair to say that family firms have longer investment horizons and give deliberate thought to expending resources whether for acquisitions or for CEO pay, and may suffer lower agency costs than nonfamily firms due to family governance (and public monitoring) which may lead to their relative superior performance. This dissertation finds that each acquisition made by a family controlled firm generates an extra return of 0.50% when compared with a nonfamily firm, and family controlled firms earn 0.50% every year directly attributable to pay-for-performance sensitivity. The study thus underlines and reiterates the importance of instilling the long-term view in the management of all firms, lowering agency costs, and aligning the interests of managers with those of stockholders for superior financial performance / Ph. D.

Can pay-for-performance increase the motivation of public employees? By providing a basis for personnel decisions, particularly linking rewards to performance, performance appraisals aim to increase employees' work motivation and ultimately to improve their work performance and organizational productivity. With the emphasis on results-oriented management, performance appraisals have become a key managerial tool in the public sector. Critics charge, however, that pay-for-performance is ineffective in the public sector, largely because the link between performance and rewards is weak. However, no one has empirically measured the strength of the linkage. If performance ratings do have an impact on career success in the federal service, they might contribute to race and gender inequality. Although many studies have examined factors affecting gender and racial differences in career success, studies that try to connect gender and racial inequalities to managerial tools are scarce. Using a one percent sample of federal personnel records, the first essay examines the impact of performance ratings on salary increases and promotion probabilities, and the second essay explores whether women and minorities receive lower ratings than comparable white males, and women and minorities receive lower returns on the same level of performance ratings than comparable white males. The first essay finds that performance ratings have only limited impact on salary increases, but that they significantly affect promotion probability. Thus, the argument that performance-rewards link is weak could be partially correct, if it considers only pay-performance relationships. The second essay finds that women receive equal or higher performance ratings than comparable white men, but some minority male groups, particularly black men, tend to receive lower ratings than comparable white men. On the other hand, the returns on outstanding ratings do not differ between women and minority male groups and white men, though women groups seem to have disadvantages in promotion with the same higher ratings as comparable men in highly male-dominant occupations.