The Dynamics of Controversial Practices: SEC Sunshine, Aspirational Pay, and the Evolution of Executive Compensation Networks

有争议的做法的动态：SEC 阳光、理想薪酬和高管薪酬网络的演变

• 批准号: 1359666
• 负责人: Thomas DiPrete
• 金额: $ 29.67万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-04-15 至 2018-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1359666&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dynamics; Controversial; Practices; SEC; Sunshine

Stimulated by 2006 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations that required large firms to report their compensation peers, a set of recent papers have concluded that many companies favor "aspirational" peers (i.e., larger companies and with better paid CEOs than the focal company). Research on the use by companies of aspirational peers has focused on the prevalence and average overall level of bias, and has attempted to explain bias in terms of organizational and CEO characteristics rather than in terms of the networked environment. However, public corporations are tied to one another in networks along various dimensions, including similarity in industry and size, board interlocks, the sharing of compensation consultants, and the network of asserted compensation peers used by companies in the setting of executive compensation. The proposed research tests the theory that pressures for legitimacy and rationalizations of practices of contested legitimacy occur through mechanisms of local comparison, which involve both information transfer and the mimicry and co-evolution of controversial practices. Using stochastic actor oriented network analytic methods, the proposed research will estimate the effects of social influence and social comparison on the evolution of compensation networks in the post-2006 period, when the network is newly visible both to researchers and to the corporations themselves as a consequence of the new SEC rules. These questions are addressed through the analysis of a unique database that contains information on compensation peers for the universe of companies that have reported this information since the new regulations came into effect.Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit of this project is the new understanding it promises about the dynamics of compensation peer networks of publicly traded corporations and the illumination these dynamics offer on the diffusion and modification of controversial organizational practices. A longstanding literature on the diffusion of innovations and organizational practices treated the practices in question as relatively fixed and studied the rate and extent of diffusion through the population. More recently, scholars have focused on the fact that many organizational practices are controversial, and as a consequence they advance, evolve, and retreat in response to environmental pressure and the conflicting interests of organizational actors and stakeholders. This recent literature emphasizes characteristics of organizations (e.g., the "fit" of the practice with the organization and organizational actors along various dimensions) that potentially explain the adoption, adaptation, or relinquishment of controversial practices. In contrast, the impact of organizational networks on the spread and evolution of controversial practices is relatively unexplored. The proposed research contributes to the filling of this gap. In the process it may provide an explanation for how the overall upward compensation bias in executive compensation peer groups is maintained and whether it is likely to persist into the future.Broader Impacts: The broader impacts of the proposed research include the training of undergraduate and graduate students and the potential value of the proposed research for public policy. The project will also allow the continued collection of longitudinal data on compensation peers on a scale that does not elsewhere exist. After the project is concluded, these data will be made available for other researchers and also accessible for a non-technical audience. Using Javascript and HTML5 the query results can be visualized as a network, and network descriptives will be presented in a table. Publishing the data through such an infrastructure allows the data to be used for education purposes, and it allows non-technical audiences to explore this rich data source. The algorithm used to identify and extract peers from corporate annual reports in the electronic archive of the SEC can easily be generalized to extract systematic and previously unavailable data items in a wide variety of contexts. Instructions will be provided to allow researchers to use the algorithm for such purposes.

受2006年美国证券交易委员会（SEC）要求大公司报告其薪酬同行的规定的刺激，最近的一系列论文得出结论，许多公司青睐“有抱负的”同行（即，更大的公司和更好的支付CEO比焦点公司）。关于公司使用有抱负的同行的研究集中在普遍性和平均整体水平的偏见，并试图解释偏见的组织和首席执行官的特点，而不是在网络环境。然而，上市公司在沿着各个维度的网络中彼此联系在一起，包括行业和规模的相似性，董事会连锁，薪酬顾问的共享，以及公司在高管薪酬设置中使用的声称薪酬同行网络。拟议的研究测试的理论，合法性和合理化的做法有争议的合法性的压力发生通过本地比较的机制，其中涉及信息传递和模仿和有争议的做法的共同进化。使用随机演员为导向的网络分析方法，拟议的研究将估计社会影响力和社会比较的薪酬网络的演变在2006年后的时期，当网络是新的研究人员和企业本身的结果，新的SEC规则。这些问题是通过分析一个独特的数据库来解决的，该数据库包含了自新法规生效以来报告了此信息的公司的薪酬同行信息。智力优势：这个项目的智力价值在于它承诺对上市公司薪酬对等网络的动态以及这些动态对扩散和修改有争议的组织做法。关于创新和组织实践的传播的长期文献将所讨论的实践视为相对固定的，并研究了在人口中传播的速度和程度。最近，学者们关注的事实是，许多组织的做法是有争议的，因此，他们的进步，发展，并在应对环境压力和组织行为者和利益相关者的利益冲突撤退。最近的文献强调了组织的特征（例如，实践与组织和组织参与者沿着各个维度的“适合”），这可能解释了有争议的实践的采用、调整或放弃。相比之下，组织网络对有争议的做法的传播和演变的影响相对未被探索。拟议的研究有助于填补这一空白。在这个过程中，它可能会提供一个解释如何整体向上补偿偏差在高管薪酬同行群体是保持和它是否有可能持续到future.Broader影响：更广泛的影响，拟议的研究包括本科生和研究生的培训和公共政策的潜在价值的拟议研究。该项目还将允许以其他地方没有的规模继续收集关于薪酬同行的纵向数据。项目结束后，这些数据将提供给其他研究人员，也可供非技术受众使用。使用JavaScript和HTML5，查询结果可以被可视化为一个网络，并且网络属性将以表格的形式呈现。通过这样的基础设施发布数据允许将数据用于教育目的，并允许非技术受众探索这个丰富的数据源。用于从SEC电子档案中的公司年度报告中识别和提取同行的算法可以很容易地推广到在各种背景下提取系统的和以前不可用的数据项。将提供说明，允许研究人员使用该算法用于这些目的。