Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday April 07 2020, @01:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-all-adds-up dept.

How much CEOs matter to firm performance:

"Do CEOs matter?" has been a perennial question in management discourse. But "the CEO effect" has been notoriously difficult to isolate -- a moving target caught in the slipstream of dynamic forces that shape firm performance.

So Morten Bennedsen, INSEAD Professor of Economics and the André and Rosalie Hoffmann Chaired Professor of Family Enterprise, along with colleagues Francisco Perez-Gonzalez (ITAM and NBER) and Daniel Wolfenzon (Columbia University and NBER) decided to find out how much CEOs matter by measuring the impact on firm performance when a CEO is absent, specifically, hospitalised.

They find, in a forthcoming paper, "Do CEOs Matter? Evidence from Hospitalization Events", soon to be published in the Journal of Finance, that the financial ramifications of CEO hospitalisation are significant.

Based on data of nearly 13,000 Danish SMEs between 1996 and 2012, Bennedsen and his co-authors find that five-to-seven day hospitalisations sent firm profitability tumbling by 7% in the year of illness. Longer hospital stays of 10 days or more wreaked even deeper damage, lowering operating return on assets (OROA) by a full percentage point.

Journal Reference
Morten Bennedsen, Francisco Pérez-Gonzalez, Daniel Wolfenzon. Do CEOs Matter? Evidence from Hospitalization Events, The Journal of Finance[$] (DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12897)

See also: Phys.org

[Source]: INSEAD research


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 07 2020, @04:55PM (18 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 07 2020, @04:55PM (#980008) Journal

    3SD above the mean

    What's the distribution that you're basing your "SD" on? Pay is not a normal distribution.

    It's not money anymore at those levels, it's power, and we should have other ways to distribute power that aren't tied to money.

    It's just vastly better to pay with money (or even better stock shares, which is most of that) than with say, Roman Republic-style power plays where thousands of people die. Or maybe you think gourmet chefs in the company cafeteria mean we can shave a few million off the compensation package?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2020, @10:38PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2020, @10:38PM (#980107)

    I'm a fan of bringing back slavery and paying CEOs with permanent "servants" comprised solely of people who celebrate CEOs and unironically say they deserve their obscene pay. Y'know, neolibs, repubs, and liberts. Sorry hallow, you'll probably end up as the family tech support bitch.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 08 2020, @12:16AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 08 2020, @12:16AM (#980145) Journal
      And I'm a fan of people getting a taste of their own idiotic suggestions. All I can add is that if the best you can do is fantasize about bad things happening to people who merely disagree with you. then your argument is worthless.
  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 07 2020, @11:19PM (15 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday April 07 2020, @11:19PM (#980119)

    For better or worse, our organizational world is built on pyramids. If an organization has roughly a 7:1 ratio at each layer, a 7 layer organization has about 137,000 employees in total. If such an organization has a base pay structure that increases by ~41.4% at each level, the ratio of base pay from the ~115,000 rank and file employees to the CEO is 8:1. If those rank and file employees earn $35K salary, that puts the CEO salary at $280K/yr. Of course, there are performance based bonuses, which the better companies extend down to the rank and file at something like 10% of salary, and it makes sense for these bonus ratios to increase up the chain also, keeping that same sqrt(2) 41.4% ratio per level, by the time you're CEO, you'd have normal bonuses of %80 of salary for meeting target, for a total rank and file compensation (on a normal bonus year) of $38.5K/yr and total CEO compensation of just over $500K, with graduated steps up the ladder. That's a reasonable, rational ~13:1 pay ratio across all people in the company.

    What we have more often today, in the same 7 layer 7:1 organization of ~137K people, is the rank and file paid somewhat lower, perhaps $27K/yr with maybe a 5% bonus if they're lucky, and a much steeper ratio of something like 150% between layers (actually, the ratios tend to increase toward the top of the pyramid), resulting in CEO base compensation of say $6.5 million per year, with performance based compensation to the sky, $100M+/yr in some cases. That works out as a 1:244 ratio for base pay, and more like a 1:3000 ratio for total compensation. CEOs are out there swinging for the big hits, putting rank and file jobs at risk so they might get their big bonuses if the risks pay off, and if they don't, well, hell, over 200x rank and file pay is nothing to cry over.

    It happens because it's cheap and easy to give the big raises to the pointy top of the pyramid, pushing that compensation down to the rank and file makes the "wow" factor so much less, so screw 'em, instead of a 2% raise for everybody, stiff the bottom and give a 100% raise at the top. A friend graduated in 1990 with a BS in psychology, went to work as a bank teller making something like $22K/yr. Her boss made more like $45K/yr at the time. Every year, the bosses would have the bank pay to fly them to a "retreat" somewhere like Cabo San Lucas where they got together and decided, with great regularity, that the rank and file would get ~2% COLA raises while the senior levels (those at the retreat making the decisions) would get +15%, or more in good years. With 15 rank and file for every manager, the math is easy: half of the raise money is going to the manager level - it makes sense, right? Sure, if you're a psychopath.

    30 years on, the psychopaths have normalized the concept that the bottom of the pyramid is for abuse. I think it was Jorma Ollila, CEO of Nokia at the time, I saw an interview with where he was more or less embarrassed by his position. He can afford the best car, the best house, the best of everything 20x over - it's not like he can drive more than one car at a time (though Jay Leno could show him a thing or two...)

    Money is a stupid proxy for power for several reasons: starting with nepotism, moving on through senility... Just because you finally got lucky in your '60s and beat the game doesn't mean you should continue to tell people how to run the world after you go dotty; and odds are if you beat the game that well, you probably neglected the raising and passing on of your wisdom to your offspring, but they usually get a big chunk of the money anyway. Power should be wielded by those who can continue to convince people they should have it, without buying them Bloomberg/Caesar style.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 08 2020, @12:20AM (14 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 08 2020, @12:20AM (#980151) Journal

      Money is a stupid proxy for power for several reasons:

      The biggest reason of all is that you can take away the money, and then the power goes away.

      Power should be wielded by those who can continue to convince people they should have it, without buying them Bloomberg/Caesar style.

      That's generally how it works in the business world.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08 2020, @02:04AM (13 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday April 08 2020, @02:04AM (#980174)

        That's generally how it works in the business world.

        This would be the same business world that has deified the top of the pyramid to the point that you need a CEO who's in the stratosphere club just so they can relate to the other CEOs that the company has to do business with.

        I accept your premise that CEOs are, generally, only kept around as long as they're productive, but giving them hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, in compensation while they are there lets them leave with unwarranted investor power in the marketplace - and, almost following the Peter principle - they stay in the game accumulating this cash hoard until they are no longer useful actually running a company, then you have to humor their senile ass to get their investment money.

        Actually reminds me of the old retired CEO I met from Naples, guy was 90+ and chasing skirts at the bar - not senile, but definitely retired and unable to run day-to-day operations anymore. We wined and dined him and got his stamp of approval on a partnership we proposed with his company, he took us around to meet everyone and tell them what a good idea the partnership was - and out of respect all his old employees did the deal, signed on the bottom line, and then proceeded to ignore the fuck out of his intent the minute he was out of sight.

        Bottom line - we're all just people, and for every smart, capable person who could run a 100K employee organization with a little exposure and experience, there are less than 0.01 of those positions available. The giant piles of cash that float around in those circles distort the picture to where you get people who aren't so smart or capable running things, just because they're connected with the cash and those connections are sometimes perceived as more valuable than actually being able to make good decisions.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 08 2020, @05:12AM (12 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 08 2020, @05:12AM (#980203) Journal

          I accept your premise that CEOs are, generally, only kept around as long as they're productive, but giving them hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, in compensation while they are there lets them leave with unwarranted investor power in the marketplace - and, almost following the Peter principle - they stay in the game accumulating this cash hoard until they are no longer useful actually running a company, then you have to humor their senile ass to get their investment money.

          And it's unwarranted why? I looked and there's actually one CEO, Elon Musk with a genuine $2.6 billion over ten years [theverge.com] performance-based compensation package. That's about high as it gets. And if Elon can actually turn Tesla into a major auto company (or for another end state, get it bought out at a premium by an existing auto company), then it'll be worth it.

          Bottom line - we're all just people, and for every smart, capable person who could run a 100K employee organization with a little exposure and experience, there are less than 0.01 of those positions available. The giant piles of cash that float around in those circles distort the picture to where you get people who aren't so smart or capable running things, just because they're connected with the cash and those connections are sometimes perceived as more valuable than actually being able to make good decisions.

          So what? All we know here is that the sums of money in question go past your threshold for "warranted". That's not saying much.

          These threads end up the same way. A bunch of people without a clue telling us that companies could be getting those CEOs cheaper.

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08 2020, @12:49PM (3 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday April 08 2020, @12:49PM (#980240)

            A major auto company is "worth" $2.6B to the world why?

            I'll grant that Musk is an outlier among CEOs, and it's great that he's coming close to doing some great things, it has been too long since that sort of thing has happened in the world. Meanwhile, the rest of the Fortune 1200 averages $10M per year in CEO compensation, 200 to 500x what their rank-and-file employees are compensated, and generally that compensation is given in exchange for nothing particularly special or outstanding.

            Also, your published lists of contractually agreed compensation fail to accurately value things like option plans - another all too common mechanism whereby huge risk taking is rewarded in exchange for a quarterly bump in value as perceived by an under-informed marketplace.

            A bunch of people without a clue telling us that companies could be getting those CEOs cheaper.

            The problem isn't even that "the CEOs could be cheaper" CEO compensation is just numbers on a page, just like all money is imaginary numbers made up and loosely tied to the shaping of human behavior.

            The problem is the relative valuing and de-valuing of human beings, and in the current pointy pyramid system, we're putting some human contribution at over 200x the value of other humans who are just as capable, and many times just as valuable to the organization and the world, and the ratios continue to increase. High wealth disparity was the hallmark of medieval kingdoms, slave societies like the ancient Egyptians, and today's third world whether you're looking at gun-thugs ruling in Africa or drug lords in South America (nevermind how those drug lords came to be in the first place...) The biggest problem is that we've been moving, relatively quickly, in the bad direction toward more inequality, and we are continuing down that path at an increasing pace.

            If we want to continue to be a strong society, we need to value the whole pyramid, not just the points at the tip.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 08 2020, @07:14PM (2 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 08 2020, @07:14PM (#980345) Journal

              A major auto company is "worth" $2.6B to the world why?

              Actually, it's worth greatly more than a few billion dollars these days.

              and generally that compensation is given in exchange for nothing particularly special or outstanding.

              [...]

              Also, your published lists of contractually agreed compensation fail to accurately value things like option plans - another all too common mechanism whereby huge risk taking is rewarded in exchange for a quarterly bump in value as perceived by an under-informed marketplace.

              [...]

              The problem isn't even that "the CEOs could be cheaper" CEO compensation is just numbers on a page, just like all money is imaginary numbers made up and loosely tied to the shaping of human behavior.

              [...]

              The problem is the relative valuing and de-valuing of human beings, and in the current pointy pyramid system, we're putting some human contribution at over 200x the value of other humans who are just as capable, and many times just as valuable to the organization and the world

              The cognitive dissonance is interesting here. In one breath, you're complaining that CEOs are overpaid and overvalued to society. In the next, you claim the compensation is imaginary. Why should we care that CEOs are getting hundreds of times more than workers, if the pay is imaginary?

              • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08 2020, @11:13PM (1 child)

                by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday April 08 2020, @11:13PM (#980427)

                In one breath, you're complaining that CEOs are overpaid and overvalued to society. In the next, you claim the compensation is imaginary. Why should we care that CEOs are getting hundreds of times more than workers, if the pay is imaginary?

                It's not dissonance, it's your inability to perceive multiple aspects of the same issue.

                Money is vastly more important to people who don't have it and yet we continue to shovel ever greater quantities of it in the direction of the people who need it least.

                --
                🌻🌻 [google.com]
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 09 2020, @01:33AM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 09 2020, @01:33AM (#980469) Journal

                  It's not dissonance, it's your inability to perceive multiple aspects of the same issue.

                  Then why are you arguing so fiercely for something that you termed imaginary?

                  Money is vastly more important to people who don't have it and yet we continue to shovel ever greater quantities of it in the direction of the people who need it least.

                  So imaginary money is actually really important to poor people? Ok, I'll just give everyone a zillion Joe Merch Bux. Just did it. Now everyone has a vast amount of imaginary money. You can thank me for solving global poverty later after some sense has had a chance to creep into your head.

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08 2020, @01:34PM (7 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday April 08 2020, @01:34PM (#980245)

            Put more simply: the monkeys are organized and all food flows through the kitchen.

            The hundred monkeys with control of the kitchen have decided to keep all the grapes for themselves, they only pass out cucumbers to the million monkeys outside.

            It's what was wrong with the USSR - we're not at those levels of popular demotivation yet, but we're heading in that direction. Demotivate any farther than the USSR and you need to resort to threat of violence or starvation to motivate the workers. We don't need many workers to feed the people anymore, but handing out cucumber while keeping all the grape doesn't work out in the end - and even if it does, do we as a society want to take 99.9% cucumber?

            It has been ~40 years since The Clash wrote this, it's a shame that we have made so much technological progress and so little societal progress since then:

            This is a public service announcement
            With guitar
            Know your rights
            All three of them

            Number one
            You have the right not to be killed
            Murder is a crime
            Unless it was done
            By a policeman
            Or an aristocrat
            Oh, know your rights

            And number two
            You have the right to food money
            Providing of course
            You don't mind a little
            Investigation, humiliation
            And if you cross your fingers
            Rehabilitation

            Know your rights
            These are your rights
            Hey, say, Wang

            Oh, know these rights

            Number three
            You have the right to free speech
            As long as
            You're not dumb enough to actually try it

            Know your rights
            These are your rights
            Oh, know your rights
            These are your rights
            All three of 'em
            Ha!
            It has been suggested in some quarters
            That this is not enough
            Well

            Get off the streets
            Run
            Get off the streets

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 08 2020, @07:16PM (6 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 08 2020, @07:16PM (#980346) Journal

              It has been ~40 years since The Clash wrote this, it's a shame that we have made so much technological progress and so little societal progress since then:

              Yes, it's only the best improvement [soylentnews.org] in the human condition ever. Nothing to see here.

              • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 08 2020, @11:09PM (5 children)

                by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday April 08 2020, @11:09PM (#980425)

                only the best improvement

                Evidence gathered and presented by your favorite delusionist - colour me unsurprised.

                There is some truth to the fact that the peasantry is only now starting to complain because they are somewhat at liberty as compared with centuries gone by - the old maxim of idle hands being the devil's workshop is quite true, if you represent the establishment. It was the idle rich of the Renaissance who had the means and opportunity to upset that applecart of societal control systems.

                It's all rather academic to us, assuming mortality continues to claim us within ~100 years of our birth, and if that ceases to be true in the next 40-50 years, the wheels are going to fly right off the applecart.

                --
                🌻🌻 [google.com]
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 09 2020, @01:38AM (4 children)

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 09 2020, @01:38AM (#980472) Journal

                  the wheels are going to fly right off the applecart.

                  Unless, of course, they don't. Reality just isn't following the narrative after all. My take is that if suddenly everyone lives a lot longer, they'll finally get around to looking at and solving the problems that take longer than a present day human lifespan to develop - whatever those end up being.

                  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 09 2020, @03:06AM (3 children)

                    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday April 09 2020, @03:06AM (#980485)

                    My take is that if suddenly everyone lives a lot longer instead of adding 75 million per year to the population total, we will shoot straight up to 125 million per year - and if functional reproductive health is also pushed into higher aged people the birth rate will climb even higher.

                    --
                    🌻🌻 [google.com]
                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 09 2020, @03:20AM (2 children)

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 09 2020, @03:20AM (#980490) Journal

                      we will shoot straight up to 125 million per year

                      A problem that can be solved by having a lot less kids. Note that the developed world already has this solved.

                      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 09 2020, @07:16PM (1 child)

                        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday April 09 2020, @07:16PM (#980645)

                        Note that the developed world already has this solved.

                        I note that the developed world currently is in a population expansion pause - predictions about the future are notoriously inaccurate.

                        --
                        🌻🌻 [google.com]
                        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 09 2020, @08:20PM

                          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 09 2020, @08:20PM (#980658) Journal

                          predictions about the future are notoriously inaccurate.

                          Arguments from ignorance fallacies typically are too.