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

neil FligsteinMatthew stimpson加州大学伯克利分校过去四十年来，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薪酬的飙升。本文将通过将对“超级明星”ceo不断增长的需求置于历史背景中，对ceo适当薪酬水平的公开辩论做出贡献。这项研究调查了一个尚未得到充分研究的导致高管薪酬上涨的机制：自20世纪中叶以来，美国大型公司聘用外部首席执行官的情况有所增加。从1970年到2005年，从公司外部聘请（而不是从内部提拔）的新ceo比例增加了一倍多。有证据表明，如果将二战后的整个时期考虑在内，这种上升趋势甚至更为明显。从外部聘请的首席执行官往往比从内部提拔的首席执行官获得更高的薪酬，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CEO招聘的转变，本文将(1)更好地记录外部CEO招聘何时以及在哪些行业首次变得普遍，(2)调查自20世纪中叶以来商界对这些外部招聘的评估是如何变化的。对于高管薪酬自上世纪70年代以来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市场急剧扩大，本论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，而不是一种意义已经改变、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20世纪80年代之前的时期作为比较案例进行研究。本论文的研究设计将解决这些缺点，以提供一个更有说服力的账户转向外部CEO招聘。该研究将(1)构建一组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外界对CEO招聘的评价是如何随着时间的推移而变化的。除了解释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在实践中是如何制度化的，赋予那些被认为拥有这些技能的人在劳动力市场上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.