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The purpose of this study is threefold: to examine the impact of a remuneration committee (RC) on the level of chief executive officer (CEO) remuneration; whether firms with a RC, pay a premium to CEOs with different skill sets (general or specific); and whether a pay premium mitigates the potential for CEO turnover.

This study uses a sample of 5,305 firm-year observations on a data set drawn from companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange for the period 2007 to 2014. The authors use ordinary least squares as well as logit regression techniques to test the formulated hypotheses. Difference in difference and propensity score matching techniques were undertaken to address the endogeneity concerns.

The findings show that firms with a RC pay a higher total remuneration to CEOs compared to firms without a RC. Furthermore, firms with a RC, value and reward CEOs with general skills by paying a premium not offered to CEOs with industry-specific skills. Paying a premium, in turn, mitigates CEO turnover by strengthening the CEO’s commitment to the organisation.

The study helps us to understand the critical role played by the RC in the remuneration of CEOs. The findings show that RCs act as an effective governance mechanism to deal with issues of executive remuneration and to retain skilled CEOs. Additionally, CEOs who acquire and develop general managerial skills will be able to extract higher pay from improved bargaining power. The findings will be of relevance to shareholders, regulators and company management who have an interest in executive pay and performance.

As a result of the Australian Government Productivity Commission's recommendation to mandate remuneration committee independence for ASX300 companies, this study aims to investigate whether voluntary remuneration committee independence aligns chief executive officer (CEO) total pay and bonuses with firm financial performance.

A series of hypotheses test the research question using multiple regressions for a sample of 143 ASX300 companies during 2001. This time was prior to strengthen corporate governance regulation, but after mandated executive remuneration disclosure, thus capturing varying levels of voluntary remuneration committee independence.

This study shows firm size is an influential factor in the relationship under investigation. ASX300 large firm remuneration committees link CEO total remuneration and bonuses to firm financial performance. Smaller ASX firm remuneration committees do not link either type of CEO remuneration to performance despite remuneration committee independence. Findings are mixed for medium-sized ASX300 firms.

Limitations include the necessary time restriction to 2001 for sampling the ASX300 firms. The implication of this study's findings is that the proposed public policy for mandatory remuneration committee independence is not universally effective in linking CEO remuneration to firm financial performance for ASX300 firms.

This study contributes to the limited research on voluntary remuneration committee independence in relation to CEO remuneration and firm financial performance in the Australian context.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between remuneration packages [chief executive officer (CEO) and director] and independent corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices (marketplace, environment, community, workplace and money spent on CSR) of 588 Malaysian listed firms during 2006–2017. Further, the study explored the moderating effect of board gender diversity on the remuneration-CSR nexus.

The dynamic estimator; namely, the system generalized method of moments given by Arellano and Bover (1995) has been used on the data set to control dynamic endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity problems.

Findings indicate a weak relationship between remuneration and CSR where prior CEO remuneration negatively influences marketplace activities, environment-related activities and workplace practices. However, directors’ remuneration leaves no effect on socially responsible activities. Moreover, board gender diversity negatively moderates the CEO remuneration-CSR relationship and an insignificant moderating effect has been observed for directors’ remuneration-CSR nexus.

This study is particularly significant for regulatory bodies of Malaysia e.g. Securities Commission Malaysia, Bursa Malaysia, policymakers, investors and managers. For academia, this study fetches support from agency theory and overinvestment hypothesis to explain the relationships.

This paper is novel in providing empirical evidence on the moderating effect of board gender diversity on the relationship between remuneration and independent CSR activities for the first time. Moreover, this study has sourced several theoretical and practical implications. Then, the study uses a dynamic estimator that caters to the problems of endogeneity, simultaneity and heterogeneity.

The prime objective of this study is to investigate the moderating influence of executive and independent female directors on the relationship between remuneration packages (CEO and executive director) and socially responsible practices (marketplace, environment, community, workplace and money spent on CSR) of 483 Malaysian listed firms during 2006–2017.

The dynamic estimator, namely, system generalized method of moments (GMM) given by Blundell and Bond (1998) has been employed on the dataset to control dynamic endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity problems.

Findings indicate that there is a significant relationship between remuneration patterns of CEOs and executive directors and socially responsible activities. In the same way, executive board gender diversity significantly, whereas independent board gender diversity insignificantly moderates the remuneration and CSR nexus.

This study is particularly significant for regulatory bodies of Malaysia, e.g. Securities Commission Malaysia, Bursa Malaysia, policy makers, investors and managers. For academia, this study fetches support from agency theory, stakeholder theory and upper echelons theory and presents integrated theoretical approach to be considered for future research.

This paper is unique in providing empirical evidence on the moderating effect of both executive and independent women directors on the relationship between remuneration patterns of CEOs and executive directors and independent CSR activities for the first time. Moreover, this study has sourced several theoretical and practical implications. And, the study employs dynamic estimator for precise and concrete results.

The purpose of this article is to examine if certain board characteristics have an impact on the total remuneration of top management and the ratio of stock-based remuneration to total top-management remuneration.

The study draws on data from the largest public Canadian companies, the constituents of the TSX/60 index. The study controls for firm size and profitability.

The authors concludes that total remuneration of top management is directly linked to board-member total remuneration and the board average number of director-tenure years. The study also shows that the ratio of stock-based to total top-management remuneration is positively affected by the percentage of independent directors, total remuneration of board directors, the ratio of stock-based remuneration of directors to their total remuneration and the average number of tenure years of the board of directors.

If regulators are determined to curb the excesses in top-management remuneration by means of promoting boards with certain characteristics, they should implement measures facilitating the control of directors’ remuneration and tenure, to discourage cronyistic behavior. Good corporate governance requires that the board act as a counterbalance to top management, ensuring that a substantial percentage of top-executive total compensation is variable, and not fixed. According to our findings, the boards that are the most likely to hold managerial avoidance of variable pay in check are those favoring director independence, variable director remuneration and longer director tenures.

The present article examines specifically the latter aspect, namely, the role of board characteristics (independence, size, compensation, board director ownership and tenure, etc.) in the determination of top-management compensation. This relationship is important because it allows us to further the analysis of corporate governance. If the above-mentioned traits of boards have a meaningful relationship with the compensation of the top management, one might conclude that certain practices in the composition of boards could influence good corporate governance practices. This is relevant for regulatory agencies, for investors and for corporations.

The article adds to the extant literature in a number of ways. Firstly, it considers the role of the traits of the board in the determination of the compensation of the top-management teams, and not only of the chief executive officer, as is the focus of previous literature. Secondly, the article focuses on the power interplay between boards and managers, and, more particularly, on the ability of boards to be an effective mechanism of corporate governance. Finally, the article examines the potential impact of board traits in the determination of top-management compensation in the context of Canadian firms, a subject that has received less attention from academic research, which has mostly concentrated on analyzing the issue in the US context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of family directors and independent directors on executive remuneration of listed family firms in Malaysia, and their involvement in remuneration committee on executive remuneration.

Fixed effect estimation is employed to examine 1,395 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2014.

Family and independent directors do not have statistically significant influence on executive remuneration. Rather, family ownership exerts a significant positive influence on executive remuneration. This study also reveals that the interaction of family CEOs with the family directors on remuneration committee exerts a significant positive influence on executive remuneration.

The measurement of executive remuneration excludes the share options due to the non-disclosure of this information in the annual reports.

The findings would be useful to the policy-makers and regulators in appraising the governance measures of remuneration arrangement.

This study premises on the Type II agency conflict between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders. Independent directors could not mitigate the Type II agency conflict via the governance of executive remuneration. They are not the effective governance mechanism that the minority shareholders can rely on. The additional analyses provide theoretical implication that the pervasive Type II agency conflict is ameliorated when the CEOs do not have family relationships with the controlling family shareholders.

This paper aims to explore an alternative approach to regulation for addressing governance problems relating to director and executive remuneration in publicly listed firms. The author investigates the development of hybrid regulatory framework, composed of state regulation and self-regulation, for remuneration governance in Australia.

The synthesis of constructs borrowed from agency and institutional theories and its contextual analysis examines the effectiveness of formal (state regulation) and informal (self-regulation) institutions for the development of a hybrid of regulation. Thereafter, the author examines the impact of hybrid regulation on remuneration disclosure behavior in Australia.

The author finds that improvement in disclosure is primarily driven by the establishment of remuneration committees and separate role of chief executive officer (CEO) and chairperson but weakened by the presence of CEO at remuneration committee and presence of remuneration consultant.

Global crises have called for greater transparency and protection of investors through state regulation alone. However, corporate governance, being a social practice that is shaped by diverse interests, calls for a holistic approach. A useful contribution of this study is that through an in-depth examination into the stages and actors of the government interventions involving the balancing of tension between conflicting forces, it provides insights for developing an effective regulatory hybrid which has greater acceptance for corporate governance. In conclusion, it implies the significance of priming the social arena through active engagement of diverse market forces prior to introducing state regulation.

This study extensively aims to investigate the effects of different aspects of corporate governance (CG) mechanism, including board size, executive directors’ shareholdings, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) duality, a family member as the CEO and/or chairperson of the board, independent directors in remuneration committee and number of board meeting, on executive directors’ remuneration in small firms listed on Bursa Malaysia (BM).

The sample of this study consists of 173 bottom-listed companies from Bursa Malaysia in Year 2010. The Year 2010 was chosen because the disclosure of remuneration committee activities and directors’ pay structure is required under the revised Malaysia Code of Corporate Governance, 2007. Furthermore, the period selected is after the global economic crisis (2008), which may have an effect on the remuneration structure in small firms. The ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the relationship between remuneration as dependent variable and other independent variables.

A finding from this study reveals that there is a significant positive relationship between executive ownership and executive remuneration, and between board size and executive remuneration. The results provide evidence that the family members manipulate power and control remuneration in small firms. This indicates that the independent directors are not truly independent to monitor and control the firm activities, including minimizing the excessive remuneration.

This study examines how the corporate governance (CG) affects remuneration among 173 small firms in Malaysia based on market capitalization, for one year, 2010. Hence, the results may not be generalizable to other periods or types of the companies. This shows the possibility of the absence of some additional variables in the research model and hence a limitation to the findings of the study. Although the study is being parsimonious in the choice of relevant variables, prior literature serves the guide in the selection of the used variables. This therefore gives room for future research using the potential omitted variables. Furthermore, the study focuses on total remuneration, such as fees, salaries, bonuses and benefits in kind, which makes aggregate directors’ remuneration. However, this study did not consider the remuneration related to stock options. Finally, this study only uses secondary data; hence, it could be interesting to use other instruments to collect data like a questionnaire to add more weight to the research. This study only uses one-year data; therefore, impact of changes between years cannot be analysed.

Results of the study provide evidence that the family members manipulate power and control remuneration in small firms. They reduce the effectiveness of non-executive directors because most of them are appointed by a family member and not socially responsible to their stakeholders.

This paper aims to investigate the incidence of remunerating Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)-listed non-executive directors (NEDs) with options and to determine whether companies that fail to adhere to NED remuneration recommendations share a common corporate governance profile. Despite corporate regulators condemning the practice of remunerating NEDs with stock options, there is a paucity of evidence regarding its prevalence in Australia.

Focusing on ASX400 companies during 2008, a series of hypotheses relating NED stock option remuneration and corporate governance are tested using logistic regression.

The study shows that the prevalence and quantum of NED option payments during 2008 was considerable with 73 of the ASX400 companies, including options in NED remuneration (option payers). Comparison of the corporate governance characteristics of option payers to that of a matched control group (non-option payers) highlighted both the existence and independence of the remuneration committee as critical in ensuring NED remuneration practices comply with regulator recommendations.

These results provide regulators and stakeholder groups with additional evidence to continue to call for corporate governance reforms to ensure that corporate remuneration practices are in the best interest of shareholders.

This study is the first to highlight the extent to which Australian-listed company NED remuneration practices fail to comply with regulator recommendations and adds to the limited research on remuneration committee effectiveness.

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.