Explaining Compensation Trends in Executive Occupations

解释高管职业的薪酬趋势

• 批准号: 0648138
• 负责人: Thomas DiPrete
• 金额: $ 15.99万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-05-01 至 2010-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0648138&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Explaining; Compensation; Trends; Executive; Occupations

Thomas DiPreteColumbia UniversityThis project will develop dynamic models for the compensation of executives of midsize and large business corporations and for the presidents of private universities and colleges in the United States. While considerable research has been done on the question of why corporate executives are paid so highly, relatively little attention has been paid to the mechanisms that have produced a relatively high rate of increase in the pay of elite organizational workers relative to mid or even upper-level workers in the same organizations or in the broader labor force. The proposed project tests alternative theories for this rapid rise with specific attention to processes that involve social comparison, social legitimation of rising compensation levels, and the maintenance of legitimacy of high status organizations. Status comparison theory predicts that the size of compensation increases is especially sensitive to the size of increases in organizations that are perceived to be comparable. The pay legitimation hypothesis is that compensation growth in high status firms and organizations will have especially large impacts on compensation growth at other firms. Status maintenance theory predicts that the highest status organizations seek to protect themselves from the negative effects on their reputation that might result from paying their executives an "excessive" compensation, and therefore the highest status organizations tend to be close followers rather than leaders in the level of compensation they offer their executives. The effects of these mechanisms will be compared to the relative performance model that underlies principal-agent theory, which implies that executives are paid more when their companies perform better than peer companies. The predictions of these models will also be tested against the predictions from a model of heightened rent-extraction, which theorizes that rises in executive pay stem from growing levels of external hiring for executives and a corresponding heightened bargaining power that stems from the increased opportunity for external mobility. The application of status processes to explain the secular rise in executive compensation via an environment-level cumulative advantage process is novel even as it is firmly grounded in sociological theories about human behavior.The key hypotheses of the project will be tested through statistical analysis of longitudinal data on compensation for these occupations along with data on the occupational incumbents and on the characteristics of the organizations and environments within which they worked for the period from 1992 to the present. Existing models for executive compensation will be used as a baseline and the specifications will then be elaborated in order to test the core hypotheses of this project. Potential endogeneity bias will be addressed through a variety of strategies including instrumental variables regression methods.The project will develop a comparison of the dynamics of increased compensation for corporate executives and university presidents, because, while the two occupations are similar in their executive responsibility for large and complex organizations, they differ in the form their compensation takes, possibly in the level of influence they have over salary setting, and in the characteristics of organizational status distinctions in the world of business corporations and that of colleges and universities . These differences allow the opportunity to study more thoroughly the impact of status processes on compensation growth, and to gain an improved scientific understanding of the dramatic rise in executive compensation in both for-profit and non-profit organizations in the U.S. during the past two decades. The results of this research will be disseminated widely through conference papers and through publications in disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals. The proposed research activities will have a broader impact through the involvement of graduate students at Columbia who are affiliated with Columbia's interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Wealth. The project will provide the basis for training in the specification and estimation of dynamic models, including models that involve environmental feedback. Because these models share similarities with the diffusion models that are a focus of attention in Columbia's Collective Dynamics Group, it is anticipated that the project will better integrate the study of diffusion processes within social networks and the study of the dynamics of stratification systems.

托马斯DiPrete哥伦比亚大学这个项目将开发动态模型的补偿的中型和大型商业公司和校长的私立大学和学院在美国。 虽然对企业高管薪酬为何如此之高的问题进行了大量研究，但相对而言，很少有人关注精英组织员工的薪酬相对于同一组织或更广泛的劳动力中的中层甚至上层员工的薪酬增长率相对较高的机制。 拟议的项目测试这种快速崛起的替代理论，特别关注的过程，涉及社会比较，社会合法性的补偿水平上升，并保持高地位组织的合法性。 地位比较理论预测，薪酬增长的规模对被认为具有可比性的组织的增长规模特别敏感。 薪酬合理化假说认为，高地位企业和组织的薪酬增长将对其他企业的薪酬增长产生特别大的影响。 地位维持理论预测，地位最高的组织寻求保护自己免受可能因向高管支付“过高”薪酬而对其声誉产生的负面影响，因此，地位最高的组织往往是他们向高管提供的薪酬水平的密切追随者，而不是领导者。 这些机制的影响将被比较的相对绩效模型，委托代理理论的基础，这意味着，当他们的公司比同行公司表现得更好，高管支付更多。 这些模型的预测也将与一个租金提取增加的模型的预测进行检验，该模型的理论是，高管薪酬的上涨源于高管外部招聘水平的提高，以及相应的议价能力的提高，而议价能力的提高源于外部流动的机会增加。 应用地位过程来解释高管薪酬的长期上升，通过一个环境-水平累积优势过程是新颖的，即使它牢固地建立在关于人类行为的社会学理论的基础上。该项目的关键假设将通过对这些职业的薪酬纵向数据沿着职业在职者和组织特征的数据进行统计分析来检验。他们从1992年至今工作的环境。 现有的高管薪酬模型将用作基线，然后详细说明规范，以测试该项目的核心假设。 潜在的内生偏见将通过各种策略来解决，包括工具变量回归方法。该项目将开发一个公司高管和大学校长的薪酬增加的动态比较，因为，虽然这两个职业在大型和复杂的组织中的执行责任相似，但他们的薪酬形式不同，这可能与他们对薪酬制定的影响程度有关，也可能与企业界和大学界的组织地位差异特点有关。这些差异使我们有机会更彻底地研究身份过程对薪酬增长的影响，并对过去二十年来美国营利性和非营利组织高管薪酬的急剧上升有更好的科学理解。这项研究的结果将通过会议论文和通过在学科和跨学科期刊上发表文章广泛传播。 拟议的研究活动将通过哥伦比亚研究生的参与产生更广泛的影响，这些研究生隶属于哥伦比亚跨学科的财富研究中心。 该项目将为动态模型（包括涉及环境反馈的模型）的规范和估计培训提供基础。 由于这些模型与哥伦比亚集体动力学小组关注的扩散模型有相似之处，因此预计该项目将更好地整合社交网络内的扩散过程研究和分层系统动力学研究。