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The purpose of this paper is to investigate changes in the economic importance of performance-related-pay (PRP) in Britain through the 2000s using firm-level data.

The authors utilise nationally representative, monthly data on the total wage bill and employment of around 8,500 firms. Using these data, the authors decompose the share of the total economy-wide wage bill accounted for by bonuses into the shares of employment in the PRP and non-PRP sectors, the ratio of base pay between the two sectors, and the gearing of bonus payments to base pay within the PRP sector.

The growth in the economic importance of bonuses in Britain in the mid-2000s – and subsequent fluctuations since the onset of recession in 2008 – can be almost entirely explained by changes in the gearing of bonus to base pay within the PRP sector. There has been no substantial change in the percentage of employment accounted for by PRP firms; if anything it has fallen over time. Furthermore, movements in the gearing of bonuses to base pay in the economy are heavily influenced by changes in Finance: a sector which accounts for a large proportion of all bonus payments in Britain.

The paper demonstrates the importance of understanding further how firms decide the size of bonus payments in a given period.

This is the first paper to present monthly firm-level data for Britain on the incidence and size of bonus payments in the 2000s.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the union-nonunion pay gap impact separately for wages and bonuses as well as total compensation to include both wages and bonuses in China. The way in which the impact varies as control variables are added is illustrated as is how the impact varies by the type of firm ownership. The overall pay gap is also decomposed into a component due to differences in their pay determining characteristics as well as a component due to differences in their returns to those characteristics. These separate components are also calculated throughout the pay distribution.

Using the 2010 China Family Panel Studies Survey, a nationally representative survey in China, the methodology involves different estimation procedures as appropriate for the nature of the data and the dependent variables. First the authors estimate a single equation to determine the union-nonunion pay gap. Then the authors estimate the union impact on the various components of compensation (wages and bonuses). Next the authors decompose the relative contribution of each factor in explaining the wage gap. Finally, quantile regressions are used to examine the union impact across various levels of the pay distribution.

The authors find a gross union-nonunion pay gap (wages + bonuses) of 42 percent, dropping to 12 percent after controlling for the effect of other pay determining factors. The union impact on wages is only 8 percent, but bonuses are about twice as high for union workers. The union impact is essentially zero for (state-owned firms) SOEs and for foreign-owned firms but it is large at 16 percent for private firms and even larger at 22 percent for government agencies. Of the overall pay gap of 42 percent, about three-quarters is attributable to differences in their endowments of pay determining characteristics and about one-quarter to differences in the returns for the same endowments of characteristics. Quantile regressions reveal that the pure or adjusted union wage premium exhibits a u-shaped pattern being highest in the bottom and to a lesser extent the top of the pay distribution.

There are a dearth of studies examining the union-nonunion pay gap in China. Of the studies that examine this issue, all of them are at the enterprise level with no studies at the individual level. Taking a nationally representative dataset at the individual level, the authors are able to estimate the union-nonunion pay gap in China. The authors identify the portion of the gap that reflects differences in endowments of pay determining characteristics and the portion that reflects different returns to those characteristics, and the relative contribution of the different variables to those components; and how these components change over the pay distribution. The authors also offer explanations for many of these patterns.

In this chapter I provide a sociological discussion of the gender pay gap legalisation by drawing on data in the sport sector across public and private commercial sports organisations. The gender pay gap is a significant reporting tool as it refers to the difference in the average hourly wage of all men compared to all women across an organisation (gov.uk, 2020). It is part of legislation introduced in the UK in 2017 which requires all employers with 250 or more employees to calculate and publish annually their gender pay gap data (gov.uk, 2020). The patterns emerging from the data indicate that the highest disparity in gender pay remains in those organisations where professional sport is commercialised around male performance (average gender pay gap is 59.1% in 2018–2019). In this chapter I draw on figurational concepts of power that enable the analysis of gender relations processually and draw on the role of shame and embarrassment to discuss the ways in which gender pay gap reporting may be used as a power resource to challenge ongoing inequalities in sport governance.

BECAUSE productivity means profitability it is the aim of any manufacturing organization. Too often productivity is thought to be the same thing as increased production. In reality it is very different. The way to increase production is fairly obvious. More machinery is obtained, larger quantities of raw materials are purchased and more workers are engaged. If, for example, these three essentials are doubled production should be twice as much. Production has increased, but if it has not succeeded in lowering the price of whatever is being manufactured what has been gained?

DURING some courses on production and management problems at the T.U.C. Training College job evaluation and merit rating were discussed. The notes used for that purpose form the basis of a booklet which the Trades Union Congress has published at 1s. 6d. Its purpose is to equip trade union representatives with an outline of the systems most widely used.

This paper seeks to add historical perspective to the contemporary debate concerning the efficacy of executive bonuses. That debate has become particularly significant in the USA as a result of the recent economic collapse and the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, turning the government – at least temporarily – into a shareholder of numerous companies.

The article is primarily an intellectual history of an idea: that executive bonuses are required to achieve top performance. The main primary source is two sets of articles from the Harvard Business Review from the 1930s and the 1950s. These are supplemented by other primarily and secondary material.

Arch Patton, a McKinsey Consultant and the most published author in the Harvard Business Review during the 1950s, constructed a defense of executive bonuses based on ideology rather than empirical evidence.

Constituents of the current debate on executive bonuses should be aware of the degree to which statements of support for efficacy are often presented as universally and exclusively correct which may result in distortion and concealment of real interests.

Despite the ubiquity of executive bonuses, no study has looked at the historical roots of the debate. Agency theory, which is presented as a rational and legitimate argument in favor of such bonuses, fails to address the historical context in which bonuses actually took root in corporate America.

This chapter examines and discusses the unintended outcomes of the production bonus scheme the mine had instituted to motivate and increase the productivity of the frontline mining teams. This is crucial given that the maladministration of the bonus system could lead to a range of undesired outcomes such as deteriorating levels of trust between management and frontline workers, prioritisation of production at the expense of safety, poor work relations and ultimately low levels of organisational, employee and team performance. There are a number of organisational, management and labour factors that can render a production bonus scheme effective or ineffective. These factors influence the nature and extent of worker reactions to the bonus scheme.

This chapter examines and discusses the factors that influenced the reaction of the mining teams to the team-based production bonus scheme and the extent to which mine management fulfilled its side of the bargain in the implementation of the production bonus. The chapter highlights the manner in which the team-based bonus system influenced teams of stope workers to engage in their informal organisational practice of making plan (planisa) in order to offset the snags that jeopardised their prospects of earning the production bonus. The chapter reveals that, to a large extent, the productivity bonus generated conflict rather than cooperation at the point of production down the mine. As a result, the incentive scheme failed to live up to expectations by not eliciting the desired levels of organisational, worker and team performance at the rock-face.

This study aims to examine whether chief executive officer (CEO) pay-performance sensitivity to shareholder wealth is related to the use of non-financial performance measures in incentive contracts.

Using hand-collected performance measure data in a sample of S&P 500 firms across the period 1994–2010, this study investigates the sensitivity of CEO bonus and cash pay to shareholder wealth of firms that use non-financial performance (NFPM) measures of varying types and contractual weights in their bonus contracts along with financial measures (NFPM firms) in comparison to that of firms using financial measures only (FPM firms).

This study finds evidence that the pay-performance sensitivity is stronger in NFPM firms than in FPM firms. These results are driven by the use of CEO individual goals and operational efficiency. Furthermore, when using environmental, social and governance factors, the pay-performance sensitivity is stronger in terms of accounting performance only. This study also finds that using NFPM enhances pay-performance sensitivity more as their contractual weights increase and as financial risk increases.

These findings are important to stakeholders, and especially regulators in understanding incentive effects of alternative performance measures. This study also sheds light on what types of non-financial measures are better in helping firms align CEOs’ incentives to shareholders’ interests.

This study contributes to prior research on benefits of non-financial information within the context of executive compensation. This study presents original results about the effects of contractual weights of non-financial measures and financial risk on CEO pay-performance sensitivity. This study also presents new insights regarding how different types of non-financial measures affect CEO pay-performance sensitivity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the net relationship between internal wage dispersion and firm performance.

An empirical investigation of the relationship between internal wage dispersion and firm performance is performed using linked employer‐employee data for Norwegian firms from 1986 to 1997.

Contrary to findings in previous empirical work of a positive relationship between internal wage dispersion and firm performance, the analysis finds no such evidence in Norwegian firms, even though internal wage dispersion has increased.

The paper contributes to the relatively sparse empirical literature on internal wage dispersion and firm performance. Further, the analysis provides a new econometric specification for estimating internal wage dispersion that explicitly takes into account the hierarchical organization of firms. In contrast with previous work, the analysis also distinguishes between dispersion in both the fixed and variable portions of wages.