Explaining Compensation Trends in Executive Occupations

Thomas DiPrete哥伦比亚大学这个项目将为大中型企业的高管和美国私立大学和学院的校长开发动态薪酬模型。虽然对为什么公司高管的薪酬这么高的问题已经做了相当多的研究，但相对较少的关注是什么机制导致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更高级别的员工的薪酬涨幅相对较高。拟议的项目测试了这种快速增长的替代理论，特别关注涉及社会比较、不断上升的薪酬水平的社会合法性以及维护高地位组织合法性的过程。地位比较理论预测，薪酬增长的幅度对被认为具有可比性的组织的增长幅度特别敏感。薪酬合法化假设是，地位高的公司和组织的薪酬增长将对其他公司的薪酬增长产生特别大的影响。地位维持理论预测，地位最高的组织试图保护自己，使自己免受向高管支付过高薪酬可能对其声誉造成的负面影响，因此，在向高管提供薪酬水平方面，最高地位的组织往往是密切关注的追随者，而不是领导者。这些机制的效果将与支撑委托代理理论的相对业绩模型进行比较，该模型意味着，当公司表现优于同行公司时，高管的薪酬会更高。这些模型的预测还将与租金提取加剧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，以及外部流动机会增加带来的相应的更高的议价能力。应用地位过程通过环境一级的累积优势过程来解释高管薪酬的长期上升是新颖的，尽管它牢固地植根于关于人类行为的社会学理论。该项目的关键假设将通过对这些职业薪酬的纵向数据以及1992年至今职业在职者的数据以及他们工作的组织和环境的特征的统计分析来检验。将使用现有的行政人员薪酬模型作为基线，然后将详细说明，以检验该项目的核心假设。潜在的内生性偏差将通过包括工具变量回归方法在内的各种策略来解决。该项目将对公司高管和大学校长薪酬增加的动态进行比较，因为尽管这两个职业在大型和复杂组织的执行责任方面相似，但他们的薪酬形式不同，可能是在他们对薪酬设定的影响程度上，以及在商业公司和大学世界中组织地位差异的特征上。这些差异使我们有机会更深入地研究地位过程对薪酬增长的影响，并对过去20年来美国营利性和非营利组织高管薪酬的急剧上升有了更好的科学理解。这项研究的结果将通过会议论文以及学科和跨学科期刊上的出版物广泛传播。拟议的研究活动将通过哥伦比亚大学附属于哥伦比亚大学财富研究跨学科中心的研究生的参与而产生更广泛的影响。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方面的培训提供基础。由于这些模型与哥伦比亚大学集体动力学小组关注的扩散模型有相似之处，预计该项目将更好地整合社会网络中扩散过程的研究和分层系统动力学的研究。

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.