董事会非正式层级与高管薪酬契约有效性

董事会治理是影响高管薪酬契约有效性的关键,已有研究主要从董事会结构层面展开,缺乏对董事会内部运作机制与高管薪酬契约有效性关系的具体分析。基于董事权威不平衡性的治理效应视角,系统考察了董事会非正式层级与高管薪酬契约有效性的逻辑关系及其作用机理,得出了一些具有重要价值的结论,主要包括:1.董事会非正式层级对高管薪酬业绩敏感性具有显著的负向调节作用,且主要体现在业绩下滑的样本公司中,表明董事会非正式层级对高管薪酬契约的影响主要体现在公平性和风险匹配性方面。2.只有当最高层级董事身份为独立董事时,董事会非正式层级对高管薪酬业绩敏感性具有显著的负向调节效应。3.董事会非正式层级增强了高管薪酬的行业和地区薪酬敏感性,进一步验证了董事会非正式层级的社会公平效应。论文的研究为从微观运作层面理解董事会治理和高管薪酬契约有效性提供一种新的视角和结论,对于优化董事会治理和提高高管薪酬契约有效性等均具有重要借鉴意义。

Board informal hierarchy and managerial compensation contracts effectiveness

As the subject of managerial compensation decision-making,board governance efficiency is the key to the effectiveness of the managerial compensation contract.The informal hierarchy constructed from the difference of the individual director’s authority has an important function of information integration and decision coordination,and thus affects the board governance efficiency.However,current research only focuses on the relationship between board informal hierarchy and firm performance,lacking detailed research on the function mechanism between the board’s internal operation mechanism and the managerial compensation.Thus it is necessary to make a system test on the relationship between board informal hierarchy and managerial compensation contract effectiveness.Using the theory of social network and status characters,and based on the data of Chinese listed firms between 2011-2013,the paper systematically investigates the logical relationship and mechanism between the informal board hierarchy and the effectiveness of managerial compensation contracts from the perspective of the effectiveness of board decision-making.The results show that the informal board hierarchy has a significant negative effect on executive pay-performance sensitivity,especially in the sample firms with declined performance.The finding suggests that board informal hierarchy's impact on managerial compensation contracts should be mainly reflected in fairness and risk matching.That is,an informal board hierarchy can constrain high managerial compensation and match the company's risk level by reducing executive pay-performance sensitivity.Besides,only when the top-level directors are independent,the informal board hierarchy has a significant negative effect on the managerial pay-performance sensitivity.This finding implies that the directors with independent status and more concerning social reputation may attach care more about the fairness effect of managerial compensation contracts.Results also show that the informal board hierarchy enhances the industrial and regional executive pay-performance sensitivity.So it is further verified that the informal board hierarchy mainly affects the social fairness of managerial compensation contracts.The conclusions of the research reveal the inherent mechanism of how informal board hierarchy influences the effectiveness of managerial compensation contracts and provides a new perspective for understanding the relationship between board governance and the managerial compensation contract’s effectiveness from the micro-operation level.Therefore,this paper has great significance for optimizing the board governance and improving the effectiveness of the managerial compensation contract.