A research report submitted to the Faculty of Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management. 1994 / Organisations in South Africa are. paying out millions of Rands in financial incentives to executives without ,knowing conclusively whether or not company performance actually improves as a result of financial incentive schemes. Unions, tne media, workers, politicians and others are paying increasing attention to the levels of compensation that executives receive. The question being asked is whether these levels ate really necessary. This, the first research of its mud in South Africa, surveys the views of 121 top managers, from 17 organisations using incentive schemes, on the, impact of these schemes. There is convincing evidence that they are perceived to increase motivation and company performance, build teamwork and are effective in aligning the interests of managers and shareholders. The schemes are valuable in attracting, retaining and motivating executives" Given the complexity of setting executive remuneration, it is submitted. that there be no interference in the level of incentive scheme payouts. The factor analysis yielded a four factor solution, which was interpreted in terms of the literature review and constructs in the questionnaire. The first factor revealed that incentives are a motivator and increase company performance. The) build teamwork and are effective in aligning the interests of managers and shareholders. The second factor state; that incentives should be underpinned by openness and transparency. A fundamental principle behind this is that the relevant financial position should be known by all participants. It was also stated that the whole organisation i.e, all IfNels , should be on an incentive scheme, The third factor highlighted risk aversion in these executives and that basic salary is most important. The fourth factor, locus of control, stressed the importance of the scheme to the individual personally in terms of motivation, focus, reward, retention of services and the ability to control the incentive scheme payout. 111e surprising finding was the extent to which SA executives were risk averse and just how important the basic salary is. Guidelines, based on the factor analysis, content analysis and oo:rrespohd~nce analysis conducted on the questionnaires, ate offered to the designers incentive· schemes. Without correctly designed and aggressive incentive schemes the owners oforgamsations could expect very m.ediocre, "9 to S" type of commitment from their top·management team. Incentive schemes playa vital role in the design of com.petitive remuneration systems. Their importance should not be underestimated. / MT2017

Thesis. 1978. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Includes bibliographical references. / M.S.

Teachers are central to improving education quality and student learning. Yet, it is common that education systems short-pay teachers. Linking the occupational choice literature, this dissertation raises concern regarding potentially large adverse effects of holding teacher wages back from broader market levels, in terms of declining teacher aptitude and reduced student learning. Using a four-part analysis, I examine and contextualize theoretical stipulations using the case of Chinese teachers. Firstly, in Part I, I establish the causal link between teachers’ human capital level and student learning outcomes, by employing student fixed-effect models to relate differences in teachers across subjects to variations in student test scores. I find statistically significant impacts of teachers holding advanced tertiary degrees on improving student learning, at 0.033 standard deviations or adding about 1 additional month of learning over a typical 9-month academic year. Secondly, in Part II, I document relative pay gaps between teachers and comparable workers using Mincer earnings function. Between 1988 and 2013, I find sharp shifts in the relative wage attractiveness in the teaching sector, such that teachers’ mean wage levels experienced 24 percentage-points reversal, at 11 percent below the private sector levels in 2013. Also, returns to holding advanced tertiary degrees in teaching is about 11 to 15 percent less than that of the private sector in years 2007, 2008, and 2013, while this difference was statistically indistinguishable in the pre-2007 period. Thirdly, in Part III, I estimate the probability of entry to teaching by different human capital traits, and find declining trends for more educated individuals overall. In 2007 and 2013, new labor market entrants with advanced tertiary degrees are 4.7 and 5.8 percentage-points less likely than comparable workers in older cohorts to choose teaching. Similar patterns continue to hold when I use alternative human capital and skills proxies. Fourthly, in Part IV, using a national representative panel dataset containing 211 matched teachers, I track career destinations and relate it to opportunity wages and non-pecuniary outcomes. In general, I find that teacher turnover rates are high at about 35 percent, half of which are exits from the education sector entirely; there also exist positive associations between opportunity wage levels and turnover decisions, but there is no evidence of non-pecuniary gains from turnovers.

Academically, this study's significance is two-fold. First, by way of comparative study, it proves the applicability of the "Political Process Model" to an authoritarian polity, provided that adjustment is made on the basis of the parameters proposed by Cook (1996). That is to say, political opportunity is rare in a closed political system and only arises in a particular "proximate environment" or a certain specific period of time. It is non-structural. Therefore the opportunity can only be measured by its functionality, which includes the diminution of the possibility of suppression and the access to the polity. In respect of the latter, this study ushers in the new concept of "leverage" to explain how those groups far from the core of power used their numerical strength to successfully challenge the authoritarian colonial government. / Secondly, in the process of sorting out the historical context of the insurgency, it has become apparent to me that since the end of WWII, the colonial government had been actively intervened in the education arena in order to achieve its total domination. Towards that end, the colonial government had laid down political and economic regulations in accordance with its political agenda, established a highly comparable legal and administrative framework. Supported by empirical data, this study casts serious doubt on the validity the political setting of "small government, big family" promulgated by the popular theory of "Utilitarian Familism". It further provisionally confirms that the institutional complex structured by the state together with the ideology of "meritocracy" actively crafted by it ought to be one of the causes of political stability in Hong Kong. The same also provides a plausible explanation of the political apathy of local teachers. / The "Certificated Teachers' Pay Dispute in 1973" ("the Dispute") was, historically the first collective insurgency of indigenous teachers as well as the first industrial action taken by local civil servants. Teachers from publicly funded schools successfully claimed their economic demands from the then colonial administration. Prima facie the subject matter of this study seems to be concerned only with the economic interest of a certain group of people. However, an in-depth inquiry brings to the fore its underlying political theme, i.e. the redistribution of power. Herein I use the "Political Process Model" as the theoretical framework and the "struggling for power" as the conceptual tool to operate the empirical data. This study also verifies that the Dispute was the confluence of two major political processes, namely (1) an unprecedented political opportunity provided by changes in the political structure, and (2) the change of indigenous organizational strength. The notion of "collective grievances" cannot provide a convincing explanation of the issues aforesaid. / The Dispute was a landmark event in local trade union movement. An in-depth investigation can unearth its deep-rooted significance and thereby throw more useful light on local social change. In addition, this study exposes the excessive instrumentality of the local education institution which I think, all educators should critically examine and resist. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) / 余惠萍. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2005. / 參考文獻(p. 285-297). / Adviser: Wing Kwong Tsang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: A, page: 0948. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2005. / Can kao wen xian (p. 285-297). / Yu Huiping.

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This study considers the determination of the ex ante pay-performance relationship. A single-period partial equilibrium model is used to show that the executive income can be expressed as a function of the firm's return expressed in dollar terms. The executive income is jointly determined by the opening firm size and current return, which function as a managerial talent proxy and self-selection mechanism respectively. Comparing to Jensen and Murphy (1990) wealth-based Pay-Performance Sensitivity (PPS), this research presents an income-based PPS. The alternative PPS not only overcomes a misleading misspecification in Jensen and Murphy (1990), but also corrects Rosen's (1992) argument for only including return in the pay performance relationship. This research finds empirically that both the opening firm size and stock return play a significant role in determining executive income. This study provides supplementary evidence to Murphy's (1986) Learning Model. However, shareholder income may not be an ideal performance measure in capturing the multi-period pay-performance relationship.

This study investigates the relationship between CEO pay and firm performance, the asymmetric nature of pay-performance sensitivity, and the effect of CEO participation on the pay-setting process, for publicly-listed New Zealand firms during 1997 to 2002. The research is conducted using a unique hand-collected panel data set containing information about executive compensation, firm performance, ownership, firm governance and CEO participation in the pay-setting process. The sample covers the six-year period following the introduction of mandatory disclosure requirements that were imposed on executive and director compensation in 1997. An initial descriptive analysis of the data reveals a large pay difference between worker and CEO pay. In addition, pay-performance indexes for the highest and lowest paid CEOs document differences between the change in pay relative to real shareholder returns. An examination of the sensitivity between growth in CEO pay, and contemporaneous and lagged firm performance using a firm fixed-effects model, shows that not only is pay significantly related to firm size and performance but also board size, compensation risk and director share ownership. Models of the relationship between growth in CEO compensation and firm performance indicate the pay-performance sensitivity generated by cash and the change in the value of stock option holdings is reported to be three-times the magnitude of the sensitivity due to salary and bonus payments alone. In addition, growth in CEO compensation is asymmetrically related to changes in firm performance. CEO cash compensation is positively related to increases in firm value only. Total compensation is related to contemporaneous returns and positive lagged returns. Change in CEO wealth is positively related to contemporaneous returns but is more sensitive to losses. However, change in wealth also increases when lagged returns are positive and negative, implying that CEOs are able to extract pay in excess of that which is optimal under the contracting view of executive compensation. Furthermore, firms in which CEOs demonstrate a low level of participation in the pay-setting process earn higher levels of pay, which also grows at significantly greater rates than their high-participation counterparts. In particular, growth in low-participation wealth is more sensitive to positive and negative contemporaneous returns as well as being negatively related to negative lagged excess returns. This finding is opposite to theoretical predictions and can be explained by the tightly held nature of the high-participation firms which typically have fewer directors, are exposed to higher return volatility and have greater director and CEO beneficial share ownership. Consistent with the trickle-down effect, there is a positive relationship between growth in the non-performance related cash compensation awarded to CEOs and the growth in pay earned by their executive directors and employees. In addition, growth in non-CEO executive pay is not related to firm performance when there is an overpayment effect and CEOs exercise a high level of participation in the pay-setting process. Consistent with the contracting view, growth in non-CEO executive pay is positively related to firm performance with no benefits from CEO overpayments when stock option awards are included in the CEO pay contract.

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published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences