Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating the Shift in CEO Hires in the United States

美国加州大学伯克利分校的Matthew Stimpson在过去的40年里，美国收入不平等的急剧加剧在很大程度上是由于企业高管的薪酬飙升。这篇论文将把对“超级明星”CEO日益增长的需求置于历史背景中，从而有助于公众对CEO合适薪酬水平的辩论。这项研究调查了一个未被充分研究的导致高管薪酬上升的机制：自20世纪中叶以来，美国大公司聘请外部CEO的人数增加。从1970年到2005年，从公司外部招聘(而不是从公司内部提拔)新CEO的比例翻了一番以上，有证据表明，如果考虑到二战后的整个时期，这一上升趋势甚至更明显。从公司外部聘用的首席执行官的薪酬往往高于从内部提拔的首席执行官，因此，外部招聘的增加与高管薪酬的飙升有关。为了帮助解释这种向外部聘用CEO的转变，本文将(1)更好地记录CEO外部聘用何时以及在哪些行业首次变得普遍，(2)调查自20世纪中叶以来企业界对这些外部聘用的评估如何发生变化。对20世纪70年代以来高管薪酬大幅上涨的许多解释都依赖于CEO外部市场的存在。在过去的半个世纪里，这个外部CEO市场急剧扩张，本文将调查美国上市公司向外部CEO招聘的转变。之前关于外部CEO市场出现的描述将外部CEO招聘视为一种稳定的现象，而不是一种含义已经改变、需要解释其接受程度的做法。许多解释强调了20世纪80年代出现的经济变化，但很少将80年代之前的时期作为比较案例进行研究。本文的研究设计将解决这些缺陷，以更有说服力地解释CEO向外部招聘的转变。这项研究将(1)构建1950年至2015年美国500家大型上市公司CEO继任的数据集，(2)使用报纸文章和分析师报告的内容分析来检验对外部CEO招聘的评价如何随着时间的推移而发生变化。除了澄清CEO薪酬上涨的原因外，这项研究还将有助于解释一般管理技能的价值是如何在实践中制度化的，赋予那些被视为拥有这些技能的人在劳动力市场获得更大回报的灵活性。

SES-1602221Neil FligsteinMatthew StimpsonUniversity of California-BerkeleyMuch of the sharp increase in income inequality over the past forty years in the United States is due to surging pay for business executives. This dissertation will contribute to public debate about appropriate pay levels for CEOs by putting the rising demand for "superstar" CEOs into historical context. The research investigates an understudied mechanism contributing to rising executive compensation: the rise in outside CEO hires at large U.S. firms since the middle of the 20th century. The percentage of new CEOs hired from outside the company (rather than promoted from within) more than doubled from 1970 to 2005, and evidence suggests that this upward trend is even starker if the entire post-WWII period is considered. CEOs hired from outside the company tend to have higher compensation than those promoted from within, and hence this rise in outside hires is linked to surging executive pay. To help explain this shift towards outside CEO hires, this dissertation will (1) better document when and in which industries outside CEO hires first became common and (2) investigate how evaluations of these outside hires by the business community have changed since the middle of the 20th century. Many explanations of the steep rise in executive compensation since the 1970s rely on the existence of an external market for CEOs. This external CEO market has expanded dramatically over the past half-century, and this dissertation will investigate the shift towards outside CEO hires among publicly traded firms in the United States. Prior accounts of the emergence of an external CEO market treat outside CEO hires as a stable phenomenon rather than a practice whose meaning has changed and whose acceptance needs to be explained. Many explanations highlight the economic changes that arose in the 1980s, but the pre-1980s period is rarely studied as a comparison case. The research design of this dissertation will address these shortcomings to provide a more compelling account of the shift towards outside CEO hires. The study will (1) construct a data set of CEO successions at 500 large, publicly traded U.S. firms from 1950 to 2015 and (2) use content analysis of newspaper articles and analyst reports to inspect how evaluations of outside CEO hires have changed over time. In addition to clarifying explanations of rising CEO pay, this research will help explain how a value for general management skills became institutionalized in practice, granting those seen to possess these skills with the flexibility to reap greater rewards in the labor market.