Peer Group Benchmarking Inherently Flawed and Inflationary

Every CEO, it seems, has to be made to look like a dashing Confederate cavalry general or a boardroom Elvis Presley.

Peter Drucker

But leaders require much more ordinary, solid qualities, such as showing respect for employees and their work. Drucker thought nothing destroyed leadership as effectively as excessive CEO compensation. Inequality foments disillusionment among lower level management and the company's wage earners, corroding mutual trust between the enterprise and society. Yet CEO pay has soared since WWII, and partly it is due to the compensation systems the have chosen which favor themselves while seeming objective—peer group benchmarking!

The unnecessary use of external peer group benchmarks to set management compensation is causing executive pay in the United States to rise inexorably without merit. Peer group benchmarking—now so widely utilized that it is enshrined in federal regulations—has become the corporate standard even though it was never intended to determine senior management compensation and was not designed to do so. Initially used after World War II to compare jobs like, say, accountants and civil engineers across companies, peer group benchmarking of salaries was an easy but misguided approach that eventually was used for CEOs and senior executives. Corporate boards need to cut their emphasize on peer grouping, and increase their emphasis on the company and its executives' accomplishments in setting their pay.

A report by the IRRC finds corporations should move away from formulaic peer group analyses in judging compensation packages, and hold directors accountable for their judgements. Companies are better served when directors use discretion—down as well as up—in setting compensation levels. Shifting to a compensation system that focuses on internal, company specific and success related methods will help solve the problem of excessive compensation plaguing many public corporations, resulting in a more reasoned compensation approach, improved board oversight, and a healthier corporation.

• Peer group theories are misguided because they are based on the idea of responsive, competitive markets for executive talent, though executives are not constantly changing their company loyalties.
• Systemically, a formulaic reliance on peer grouping will lead to spiraling executive compensation, even if peer groups are well constructed and comparable.
• Even boards made up of faithful guardians of shareholder interests will fail to reach the levels of compensation merited when they rely on the faulty and costly process of peer benchmarking.
• Boards should measure performance and determine compensation by focusing on factors directly important to the company.

In summary, the solution is to avoid arbitrary application of peer group data to set executive compensation levels. Instead, compensation committees must develop internal pay standards based on the specific company, its competitive environment and its dynamics. If customer satisfaction is deemed important to the company, then results of customer surveys should play into the compensation equation. Other such factors include revenue growth, cash flow, and other measures of return, an executive's current and historic performance and internal pay equity. Some reference to peer groups may be warranted, but the compensation process must maintain the flexibility necessary to retain and encourage talent in the managerial skills particularly important to that company, skills that should be continually assessed.

Authors of the report, Executive Superstars, Peer Groups and Over-Compensation—Cause, Effect and Solution, were Charles M Elson, Edgar S Woolard, Jr, Chair and director of the John L Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, and Craig K Ferrere, the Edgar S Woolard Fellow in Corporate Governance at the Weinberg Center. Download the full IRRC report.

The Ultra-rich—Intelligent? Talented? No, Lucky and Brutal

The ultra-rich 1% claim that they have unique qualities that explains why they are where they are—among the ultra rich. They credit themselves with success for which they were not responsible. Many got certain richly rewarded jobs by a ruthless greed or by being born to the right parents, talents that they would rather not boast about, so they claim it is intelligence, creativity, hard work, enterprise or acumen, much more acceptable talents.

In findings that have been widely replicated, psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, studied for eight years the results of 25 wealth advisers. Their average performance was zero, but, when their results were above average, they got bonuses. Traders and fund managers across Wall Street had their massive compensation for success hardly or no better than random. Doubtless they got bonuses even when they did badly because everyone is allowed to have a bit of bad luck! Surprise, surprise, the city slickers did not want to hear Kahneman's findings.

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgement, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In another study “Crime and Law”, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon psychologically tested 39 senior managers and CEOs of leading British businesses, then performed the same tests on patients at Broadmoor hospital, a mental hospital for convicted criminals too insane for prison. On certain criteria, the manager’s scores matched or exceeded those of the criminally insane patients, beating even some psychopathic patients. These criteria are just those which closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for in managers. Some are:

• their skill in flattering powerful people to manipulate them
• egocentricity
• a strong sense of entitlement
• a readiness to exploit others
• a lack of empathy and conscience.

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare also point out in their book Snakes in Suits, that psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded in modern management. So, while those with psychopathic tendencies born to a poor family are likely to go to prison, those with psychopathic tendencies born to a rich family are likely to end up as top managers. CEOs now take from their businesses “rewards” disproportionate to the work they do or the value they generate. Business has been rewarding the wrong skills.

The über-rich are called the wealth creators, but they have preyed upon the earth’s natural wealth and workers’ labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are actually wealth destroyers. In the US:

• between 1947 and 1979, productivity rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%
• between 1979 and 2009, productivity rose by 80% , while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%
• in roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

In the UK:

• the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%
• The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009

The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

George Monbiot

George Monbiot writes, usually excellently penetrative articles, in The Guardian and on his own website. In the article above, his latest (8 November) essay is summarized in slightly edited form. See the originals at the link given here, or at The Guardian.

Forbes’ CEO Readership must Rethink OWS

“Will I be the next Gaddafi?”, is the sort of question that some corporate CEOs are beginning to wonder, according to Forbes’s Dov Seidman. The Arab Spring followed by the invasion of Libya, and the murder of the Libyan despot by rebels, and the movement now to protest all over the world against corporate greed and the demolition of society as a consequence has forced the question on to executives convinced until now that they could do no wrong because greed was the modern motivator.

CEOs of a multinational companies are worried that employees or consumers will organize against them, grab their ill-gotten gains and throw their corpses into a ditch.

Seidman points out that OWS demonstrators are demanding freedom from the current system. Employees that join the movement want less slave driving and more made of their creativity and collaborative spirit at work. The protesters have initiated an overdue discussion ignored by business and political leaders for too long. The protesters’ conversation may touch upon issues of fairness and justice, but it is fundamentally about freedom. They do not want a free ride, but the freedom to pursue a meaningful life and build a sustainable career. Our current economic system does not provide that freedom.

The world is hyper-connected and interdependent, so that instability is no longer localized. We rise and fall together. A banker anywhere can lose his company billions of dollars, force the resignation of his CEO and send shock waves throughout global finance. A vegetable market trader in Egypt can trigger the fall of Mubarak, which in turn offers the US and Nato an excuse to unseat Gaddafi to deny China access to Libyan oil, and dole it out to the allies on behalf of the über rich. General dissatisfaction can become specific. If a company mistreats a customer, a wave of protest might sweep him out of his office, or close down the corporation.

Employees are beginning to reject hierarchical structures, control processes, and performance based rewards and punishments. Seidman cites The HOW Report, commissioned by his own company and reported in The Economist, which show self governing organizations get more of what they want and less of what they don’t want. They:

1. yield five times more innovation
2. have three times the employee loyalty
3. give nine times the customer satisfaction
4. perform significantly better financially
5. are more likely to expose unethical conduct

than normal top down corporations. The command structures of the Industrial Age are no longer effective. People work to eat, that is obvious, but it has also been known for a century that, given that they will be paid adequately, people want to feel part of a communal effort to do something to be proud of. If money is the only incentive for work, then any employee will move for a better paycheck. If price is the only reason for a purchase, in hard times, they will go for the cheapest. Once consumers feel the pinch, business will fall into depression, so the intelligent CEO must favour fairness in society.

Unemployment is high and must be solved, but many of the OWS protesters have jobs. They are people, though, who see what too many CEOs do not, that corporate and class greed will wreck their own jobs and careers. Already many recent college graduates cannot find suitable employment for their ambitions, and to pay the cost of their education. The cornering of much of the money supply and stashing it in emerging economies by the 1% of über rich and the banks that manage their wealth, leaves too little in circulation here, forcing cuts in jobs and prices, cuts that eventually will sorely affect us all.

The banks must write off much of the debt they have imposed on the world, so that ordinary consumers will feel able to consume again. The über rich will take the hit, but they can afford it, and by so doing the values of their stocks have a chance of remaining buoyant, ensuring the recovery of upper class wealth in the longer term. Failure to do it leads to the Gaddafi scenario of rebellion, bloodshed and carnage, which the fascism state can only stop for a while, never for long, as modern dictatorships prove.

Bonuses and Distribution of Wealth in the UK

UK society, like the US, is skewed horribly in favour of the rich and against the poor. Some 53 of the UK’s richest 1,000 are billionaires. The wealth of these 1000 people has increased from £98.99 billion in 1997 to £335.5 billion today. Over the past 12 months, they got richer by an incredible 29 per cent. Despite the worsening economic situation, this is the largest annual increase in the wealth of this rich minority. What these figures show is an increasingly unequal society that has enriched the already megarich at our expense. The amount of gross domestic product (GDP, annual national production) dedicated to wages and salaries has declined over the past three decades. There is no way that such a distribution of wealth can be said to favour the common good.

The injustice of wealth distribution is in need of urgent debate. Why is the argument for higher taxation on the highest earners continually rejected out of hand? If the country wants better services then they have to be paid for. It is not possible to have something for nothing. And those who earn the most—and usually have got most out of the system—should pay more tax. Justice should be applied to the economic system by restoring higher levels of tax on those most able to pay. If they want to leave the country, then the country can put an even higher tax on any wealth they propose to take with them? Then we can say good riddance to bad rubbish, and let our youth have the chances they are now being denied.

In 1976, wages and salaries accounted for 65.1 per cent of GDP, this had reduced to 52.6 per cent by 1996, a time when the wealth of the richest 1,000 increased threefold. But society took a fairer proportion of that wealth increase. Levels of taxation were far higher on the rich. Tax rates above 80 per cent on those earning the most were not uncommon. Society was more equal and cohesive as a result. Reagan’s pandering to the megarich demands for tax cutting spread to his lapbitch, Margaret Thatcher, then to Bush’s lapbitch, Tony Blair, leading to today’s gross inequality and unfairness, in imitation of the USA.

Top FTSE 100 chief executives earned 47 times median earnings in 2000 and 88 times in 2010. In the public sector the ratio is far lower, more like 12 to one. Even so, the top 1% of public officials earned an average of £120,000. Why does a senior executive need a financial incentive, when every other worker does not get them and makes do with an agree wage? Would executives refuse to work? Would a hospital director let people die if not awarded a bonus?

The Big Society is an austerity program. The coalition government cynically chants its slogan “we’re all in it together” in reducing the deficit. Yet the policy implemented cuts public services, freezes public sector workers pay, cuts jobs and reduces pension rights, while inviting billionaires from everywhere to live here untaxed! When we discover that 1,000 people in Britain now have over £300 million each, we should be seriously complaining that the entire cost of deficit reduction is falling on the poor 65 million of us. At present it is the poorest who continue to pay for the deficit while the megarich grow ever wealthier. This cannot be right.

It has been suggested that there would be no deficit at all, if the treasury recooped some of the wealth the rich have robbed us of in the last thirty of forty years. MP Austin Mitchell thinks this 1,000 people with the most wealth could yield 25 per cent of it for the sake of the economy upon which the rich depend for future wealth. It would clear £84 billion from the deficit. Another suggestion was that the top 1 percent of the richest people, about 650,000 in the UK, could give up 20 percent of their accumulated wealth, clearing the deficit all together. Note that these megarich people would still be megarich under either scheme. They would still have 75 to 80 percent of their amassed riches.

The proposals are all the more attractive because of the neglible tax that most of these people pay and have ever paid, through their use of corporate lawyers to exploit taxation loopholes, and simply defraud the exchequer. Strict taxation on the rich is a basic justice that should be implemented now. The complaint of ordinary middle class people in the late Roman empire was that their megarich paid no taxes, or simply increased rents to cover any they had to pay. Soon after, the western empire collapsed. The people preferred barbarians to their own rulers.

A recent government inquiry considered that there should be a maximum pay ratio of 20:1 between top and bottom. It was meant to be only in the public sector, but, if it was considered just, why not overall? It was a hostage to fortune even to suggest it, so it disappeared in the final report. Instead, it recommended bonuses as being fair! CEOs should have a marginal element of their pay “at risk”, subject to meeting agreed objectives. Then public services would not be offering rewards for failure.

No research has shown that bonuses improve performance, nor do firms paying them do better. Paying students to get better passes did not work. The ones who did well, did it because they enjoyed what they were doing. The same should be applied to bankers and CEOs. If they don’t like it, then let them quit and join the oridnary Joes who have to like it or survive in frugality on benefits. In any case, who would judge the CEO’s performance? A team of bureaucrats?

Schemes like this are bogus, even where performance can be measured. Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS was awarded a discretionary £16m pension pot, while he wrecked the biggest bank in the world. The package was approved by the bank’s remunerators and non-executives, his friends and associates. Directors rip off shareholders with the collusion of institutions, so they get bonuses whether good or useless. Bankers’ bonuses are the biggest because the City is a massive gang of monkeys scratching each others’ backs furiously.

Bonuses are not incentives. They are measures of greed and selfishness, and are possible because corporate leadership is no longer properly accountable. Such schemes were thought up in the 1980s to let top earners take ever larger sums of money from their companies. It was unfair, dishonest, and, for the banks, disastrous. Top executives are paid above the average to work harder and more successfully than the rest of us. If they fail, they should be fired, with no golden handshakes.

Pay should be fixed and pay scales fairly flat. The bonus anyone should get is acclaim by peers and the public for doing a good job.

Reporting from the UK Morning Star and the UK Guardian.

Cash Bailouts Are Frittered as Added Executive Compensation

A business study of corporate bailouts has found that debt relief is more successful than cash injections. It revealed that, in the year after a cash bailout, executives paid themselves and some employees higher compensation!

Executives of firms that receive cash almost immediately give their employees and themselves raises.

Professor Kenneth Kim

The study of the performance of 104 corporate bailouts in 21 countries between 1987 and 2005, was carried out by Kenneth Kim, associate professor, and Zhan Jiang, assistant professor, at the University at Buffalo School of Management, and Hao Zhang, assistant professor, at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

They found also that bailed out firms could recover to a point where their performance was as good as before, depending upon several factors. Recovery was best for firms that had had a sudden decline for reasons outside management control, or because they had problems servicing their debt. Firms that had declined more gradually with no significant external factors, or were unprofitable, were genuinely sick, and could not recover as well despite the bailout, though many did survive. Kim noted:

The former were profitable, they just needed a hand. So, it makes more sense to rescue firms that have been otherwise strong than to keep afloat “prolonged decliner” firms that have been weak or inefficient for some time.

Firms recovered least from governmental bailouts, because governments:

1. don't monitor firms after the bailout as closely as large shareholders and banks
2. may bail out a firm to keep people employed or to keep the economy going, regardless of the firm's performance
3. are more inclined to bail out firms with government connections.

The Human as Molecule—The Statistical Mechanics of Wage Earners

PhysOrg.com—A Purdue University professor of chemical engineering has used “econophysics” to show that under ideal circumstances free markets promote fair salaries for workers and do not support CEO compensation practices common today. The research presents a new perspective on 18th century economist Adam Smith’s concept that an “invisible hand” drives a free market economy to a collective good:

It is generally believed that the free market cares only about efficiency and not fairness. However, my theory shows that even though companies focus primarily on making profits and individuals are only looking out for themselves, the collective self-organizing free market dynamics, under ideal conditions, leads to fairness as an emergent property. In reality, the self-correcting free market mechanisms have broken down for CEOs and other top executives in the market, but they seem to be working fine for the remaining 95 percent of employees.

Venkat Venkatasubramanian

Venkatasubramanian proposes using statistical mechanics and econophysics concepts to gain some insights into the problem:

This is at the intersection of physics and economics. We are generalizing concepts from statistical thermodynamics—the branch of physics that describes the behavior of gases, liquids and solids under heat—to analyze how free markets should perform ideally.

Findings are detailed in a research paper that appeared in the online journal Entropy. Venkatasubramanian has already used the approach to determine that the 2008 salaries of the top 35 CEOs in the United States were about 129 times their ideal fair salaries—and CEOs in the Standard & Poor’s 500 averaged about 50 times their fair pay—raising questions about the effectiveness of the free market to properly determine CEO pay.

In the new work, the researcher has determined that fairness is integral to a normally functioning free market economy. A key idea in Venkatasubramanian’s theory is a new interpretation of entropy, used in science to measure disorder in thermodynamics and uncertainty in information theory. He shows, however, that entropy also is a measure of fairness, an insight that seems to have been largely missed over the years, he said. Andrew Hirsch, another Purdue professor adds:

Venkat’s insight goes beyond the simple grafting of the mathematics of information theory and statistical physics onto the question of fairness of salary distributions within a free market economy. He has recast the notion of entropy into a context that has meaning and relevance for this particular problem.

Venkatasubramanian calls his new theory, statistical teleodynamics, from the Greek telos, which means goal driven:

In statistical thermodynamics, we study the movement of large numbers of molecules. In economic systems, we have a large number of people moving around in a free market system, but instead of thermal energy driving the movement people are motivated by goals.

His theory describes how goal driven rational agents, normally people, will behave in a free market economic environment under ideal conditions.

The bottom line is that the free market does care about fairness. Clearly, the next step is to conduct more comprehensive studies of salary distributions in various organizations and sectors in order to understand in greater detail the deviations in the real world from the ideal, fairness maximizing, free market for labor.

The excessive pay of CEO's can be seen from a simple analysis of the wage distribution curve—too many have incomes way above the average that any defendable distribution curve predicts—showing that CEO's, who pay themselves, with only formal approval from the occasional stockholder meeting, rate themselves as superhuman, according to normal distribution measures. Venkatasubramanian seems to have come up with an ususual basis for a compensation distribution curve, which he claims is 95% fair, but attempts to use the mathematics of statistical physics in sociology and economics have failed in the past. It remains to be seen whether this approach is based on valid asumptions and not merely the desire to use a neat mathematical scheme outside its original frame of reference.