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The authors study and compare the effects of three CEO compensation restricting policies issued by the Chinese government in 2009, 2012 and 2015. This paper aims to shed light on the conditions under which CEO compenstation can be effectively regulated without negatively affecting firm performance.

These policies targeted state-owned enterprises (SOEs), especially central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs). Using these policies as natural experiments, the authors investigate how their effects differ on CEO compensation, firm performance and two known performance-decreasing mechanisms: perk consumption and tunneling activities.

The authors show that restricting CEO pay does not necessarily backfire in terms of deteriorating firm performance. This non-decreasing firm performance can be achieved by restricting perk consumption and tunneling activities while introducing CEO pay regulations.

The authors exploit a powerful experimental setting in the context of China. The evidence contributes to the literature on CEO pay regulations and is relevant to the managerial decisions of policy makers and boards of directors.

Given the serious question raised by the subprime of the 2008 global financial crisis over the rising practices of excessive rewarding of executives in the USA and European firms, the executive pay-performance nexus has emerged as a popular topic of debate in the contemporary corporate finance research. Conducted mostly on the Anglo-Saxon contexts, research outcomes have been inconclusive and dichotomous. Considering this backdrop, this study aims to investigate the endogenous relationship between executive compensation and risk taking in the context of the USA.

Using a large sample of non-financial firms from 2010 to 2020 based on panel data and two-stage least square regression. In this study, the riskier corporate decision is measured as book leverage and ratio of R&D expense to total assets. Chief executive officers’ (CEO) experience and age are used as instrumental variables, and these are expected to influence compensation incentives and, hence, affect firm riskiness indirectly. Firm size, return on assets and CEO turnover are reported to affect compensation and corporate decisions, therefore, included as control variables. Given that higher executive compensation is related to riskier corporate decision in firms, this study incorporates total wealth (i.e. accumulated equity related compensation) as an additional proxy of compensation, and this selection is justifiable by the perfect contracting notion of the agency theory.

The results of this study show a significant positive and increasing nexus among compensation and riskier corporate decisions. Besides, the compensation level proxied through the percentage of each form of compensation in total compensation is very important as greater equity and greater salary diminishes risk taking.

The outcomes of this study have useful implications for firm stakeholders and policymakers.

The level of pay measured by the percentage of each type of compensation in total compensation is of utmost importance as it can increase or decrease risk taking in corporate decisions.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of governance mechanisms and firm performance on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation in relation to the Jordanian business environment. This study also examines the moderating role of gender diversity.

The sample is drawn from the annual reports of 68 Jordanian firms between 2015 and 2019. This paper uses the ordinary least square regression. It also uses the generalised method of moments approach to control any endogeneity issue and analyses the data in depth. In addition, it uses a dynamic model to address concerns regarding causality in the study’s models.

The results show that governance mechanisms and firm performance have an impact on CEO compensation. Furthermore, the outcomes indicate that gender diversity significantly and positively moderates the association between firm performance and CEO compensation. These findings enhance and support agency theory in the context of Jordan.

The study’s results have significant implications for policymakers, shareholders, investors, academicians and the public in the developing Jordanian market. The findings also support more monitoring and inspection to prevent the occurrence of opportunistic management behaviour and ensure that CEO remuneration packages are appropriately designed.

This study provides a unique understanding by explaining the impact of governance and performance on CEO compensation in a developing country such as Jordan. Besides that, the current study extends prior studies in Jordan significantly.

This study investigates the current trends in CEO compensation by applying a bibliometric technique from the Scopus database.

The bibliometric analysis examines CEO compensation trends through the Scopus database. Frequency analysis is conducted using Microsoft Excel, while data visualisation is performed using VOSviewer. Finally, citation metrics are carried out using Harzing's Publish or Perish.

The results reveal that research into CEO compensation has been consistently increasing since 1976. This study identifies the most popular publication trends, the most active institutions, the top funding institutions, annual publication growth, document and source type, publishers, subject area, author co-citations, highly cited articles, top publishing countries, and keyword co-occurrences. Notably, Arizona State University in the United States (US) is the leading institution with the most prominent publications on CEO compensation. The US is the most active country involved in CEO compensation research.

The current research only derived articles from the Scopus database. Nonetheless, the findings provide an in-depth comprehension of the meaning of “CEO compensation” and present the outline of the research trends on the concept, thus significantly facilitating further studies.

The findings can assist researchers in comprehending and classifying the drivers of CEO compensation previously identified and proven in past studies. Additionally, the findings also create opportunities for new researchers to study CEO compensation.

This study is among the pioneering research investigating CEO compensation-related publications and utilising the Scopus database from an international perspective. This study also offers a historical view of CEO remuneration, a summary of the most significant nations, journals, and writers on the topic, and an outline of how CEO remuneration studies have changed over time. These contributions will enable other researchers to focus on this subject.

This paper aims to investigate whether executive compensation, corporate social responsibility (CSR)-based incentives, environmental social and governance (ESG) performance and firm performance are the significant predictors of CSR committees, in addition to CEO, firm and corporate governance characteristics, from the tenet of stakeholder and managerial power theories.

Switzerland is an exemplary country from the perspective of corporate governance and executive compensation. This empirical study includes a panel data set of listed Swiss companies, so fixed-effect logistic regression has been used.

It has been found that the companies that offer CSR-based incentives and higher compensation to their CEOs and have better ESG performance are more likely to have CSR committees.

This empirical paper fills the gap in the literature, guides practitioners about the factors that influence the creation and efficiency of CSR committees, and inspires regulatory bodies to ponder on a mandatory CSR committee to form resilient and sustainable organizations worldwide.

COVID-19 has re-emphasized the prominence of sustainability and the stakeholder approach. Thus, this paper indicates that CSR committees require the adaption and implementation of a holistic sustainability policy that integrates both external and internal factors and thereby provides a whole process for sustainability issues.

The impact of CSR committees on corporate social performance (CSP) has already been investigated. However, the predictors of CSR committees have been less scrutinized in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to examine the nonlinear relationship between financial constraints and the chief executive officer (CEO) stock options compensation and to analyze whether the impact of financial constraints on the CEO stock options compensation changes at certain level of financial constraints or not.

This study is based on a sample of 90 French firms for the period extending from 2008 to 2019. To deal with the non-linearity, the authors use a panel threshold method.

Using different measures of financial constraints [KZ index (Baker et al., 2003), SA index (Hadlock and Pierce, 2010) and FCP index (Schauer et al., 2019)], the results reveal that the impact of the financial constraints (SA index and FCP index) is positive below the threshold value and it becomes negative above.

The non-linearity between financial constraints and CEO stock options shows that the level of financial constraints can be a major determinant of the CEO compensation structure. More specifically, this study sheds light on the key role played by the level of financial constraints and how this latter influence management decisions.

This paper is the first to the best of the authors' knowledge to examine the nonlinear relationship between financial constraints and the CEO stock options compensation using a panel threshold model.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how chief executive officers’ (CEOs) narcissism impacts firm performance and how this, in turn, affects a CEO’s positive rhetorical tone.

The narcissism score is measured by using an analytical composite score for each CEO based on eight factors. The paper uses textual analysis on a sample of 848 CEO letters of US firms over the period 2010–2019. WarpPLS software, version 7.0 was used to conduct structural equation modeling through the partial least squares because a non-linear algorithm exists between CEO narcissism, firm performance and positive tone, and the values of path coefficients moved from non-significant to significant.

The results suggest that performance partially mediates the relationship between CEO narcissism and positive tone. This indicates that not all the positivity expressed by narcissistic CEOs is opportunism; some of it is indeed driven by better performance. The reported findings indicate that firm performance explains one-quarter of a CEO’s positive words, whereas some three-quarters of the positivity is driven by a narcissistic CEO (i.e. opportunism). A comparison of letters signed by highly narcissistic and less narcissistic leaders reveals that among those letters signed by highly narcissistic leaders, firm performance plays a significant mediating role between narcissistic tendencies and positive tone. However, among those with less narcissistic score, there is no evidence that performance mediates the tone and narcissism. Interestingly, both highly narcissistic and less narcissistic CEOs use positive words and optimistic expressions even when their firms perform poorly or negatively.

The results help shareholders be aware that CEOs may opportunistically use their personal characteristics and language to manipulate them. Data limitations about women CEOs were one of the reasons behind the small proportion of women CEOs in this study, making it low in generalizability.

A comprehensive review showed that none of previous studies examined the more ambiguous relationship between a CEO’s narcissist tendency, the firm’s performance, and CEO rhetorical tone. As one set of studies focused on Narcissism → Performance, and the other one on Performance → Tone, this current study completes the picture with Narcissism → Performance → Tone.

This study aims to explore the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) power and stock price crash risk in India. Furthermore, it seeks to analyse how insider trades may moderate the impact of CEO power on stock price crash risk.

A study of 236 companies from the S&P BSE 500 Index (2014–2023) have been analysed through pooled ordinary least square (OLS) regression in the baseline analysis. To enhance the results' reliability, robustness checks include alternative methodologies, such as panel data regression with fixed-effects, binary logistic regression and Bayesian regression. Additional control variables and alternative crash risk measure have also been utilised. To address potential endogeneity, instrumental variable techniques such as two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) and difference-in-difference (DiD) methodologies are utilised.

Stakeholder theory is supported by results revealing that CEO power proxies like CEO duality, status and directorship reduce one-year ahead stock price crash risk and vice versa. Insider trades are found to moderate the link between select dimensions of CEO power and stock price crash risk. These findings persist after addressing potential endogeneity concerns, and the results remain consistent across alternative methodologies and variable inclusions.

This study significantly advances research on stock price crash risk, especially in emerging economies like India. The implications of these findings are crucial for investors aiming to mitigate crash risk, for corporations seeking enhanced governance measures and for policymakers considering the economic and welfare consequences associated with this phenomenon.

The purpose of this viewpoint is to comment on the implications of the Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) Review and Consultation Documents expected to update regulation governing the determination/reporting of executive remuneration in UK stock market listed companies. Practical points from actors involved in executive remuneration decision-making/reporting are presented, set within the context of neo-institutional theory.

This qualitative research systematically analyses UK Corporate Governance Codes, the FRC’s recent Review/Consultation and peer-reviewed published studies of executive pay determination based on in-depth interviews with non-executive directors, institutional investors, executive pay advisers and human resources (HR) professionals.

Further regulation, while providing coercive influence over executive remuneration decision-making, is likely to lead to only limited change in processes and reporting due to benchmarking, the make-up of Remco membership and shareholders' preferences. Mimetic and normative isomorphic forces work against coercive isomorphism leading to resistance to change as decision-makers strive to safeguard their social status/reputations.

Reviewing executive remuneration package components and paying attention to company strategy, sustainability and values in pay determination are welcomed but recognised as difficult to achieve. Drawing upon a wider range of information sources/voices can assist in broadening the discussion. HR professionals can help widen stakeholder input to executive remuneration decision-making.

The authors’ viewpoint is grounded in peer-reviewed empirical data that draws directly upon the views/experiences of executive remuneration decision-makers to identify problems in adhering to FRC recommendations for change. The authors extend the meta-theoretical perspective of neo-institutional theory – specifically institutional isomorphism – as providing explanatory and predictive power to understand executive pay decision-making.

Employees play a vital role in the success of a corporation. While boards of directors are created to protect shareholders’ interests, it is unclear if these directors also ensure employee welfare. In this vein, our paper examines the relationship between board leadership structure and employee well-being.

The authors employ several analysis techniques, including univariate analysis, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, two-stage least squares (2SLS) regressions, propensity score matching methodology, the Heckman Selection model and difference-in-differences analysis. The sample comprises USA public firms for the period 1998–2018.

Our findings indicate that having an independent chairperson can significantly benefit the welfare of employees, especially for firms with overly powerful chief executive officers (CEOs) and during times of financial distress.

Independent leadership structure is one of the crucial board characteristics that have not been examined to explain employee welfare at firms. We find that an independent chairperson can mitigate the negative effect of overly powerful CEOs on employee benefits. Importantly, independent chairpersons are beneficial for employees in difficult times and when CEOs are busy with daily activities.