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Executive Compensation

Assignment: Executive compensation: how companies decide on CEO salaries and compensation. (IMT 580, 25 January 2007)

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This topic is now the subject of a Foster Business Library research guide; click here to connect with this guide.

Foster Business Library Databases:

The Foster Business Library offers an extensive collection of over fifty databases on its homepage; see under Databases. For a complete list of Foster databases, see the List of All Business Databases. Access to these databases from off campus requires that you first go to the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. These resources may not be accessed from off campus except by those with a valid UW Net ID and password. For more information on Foster business databases, click Databases, A-Z. For information on which Foster business databases to use, see the Database Index. For information on accessing Foster databases from off campus, see Database Access. For guidelines on responsible database usage, see Database Usage.

Conference Board Business Knowledge Research: On the Foster Business Library homepage, under List of All Business Databases, at the bottom of the list of Databases. This searchable database of full-text research reports, published by the Conference Board, is focused on major issues in business and economics. For a 37-page PDF cumulative index to this database, click here.

See their research under the topic of Compensation. See also their Annual Studies section, one of which covers Executive Compensation, with data on Top Executive Compensation, for the "five highest-paid executives in over 2,800 companies in 14 major industry sectors" for more than five years, as well as for director compensation.

Hoovers Online: Under Business Databases on the Foster Business Library homepage. Hoovers Online offers information about 14,000 public and private companies worldwide, with links to company homepages and annual reports, charts, company capsule, competitors, divisions, earnings, financials, Fortune and Forbes rankings, history, industry information, insider trading, mission statements, news links, press releases, officers, patents, products, SEC filings, splits, subsidiaries, etc.

U.S. companies in Hoovers Online with a company overview include extensive listings of top company officers and their salaries and bonuses; look in the People category. As an example, see the People section for Starbucks. Not all companies in this database have company overviews, however, and most non-U.S. companies do not have salary information.

JSTOR: This database may be found under List of All Business Databases. JSTOR is a subject searchable index of 360 journals, with full-text backfiles of scholarly journals, some of which date back to the 1800's. Among the collections of scholarly journals on this site are ones for Business and for Economics, encompassing over seventy journals.

A search for "Executive Compensation" produced a list of over 2,000 references.

Lexis-Nexis Academic: To find company information, go to Business and then to Company Financial where you can obtain financial and other data for companies. Information is available from twenty different sources (each of which must be searched separately). SEC filings, particularly company 10K annual reports, are a particularly rich source of company as well as industry information.

Go to Business and then to Company Profiles; search by company name and the word Compensation to obtain compensation data on company officers and board members, from the U.S. Executive Compensation Database. Another source for compensation information is proxy statements. Go to SEC Filings, then to the SEC 10-K Reports pulldown menu to access SEC Filings - Proxy Statements; look for the Executive Compensation section.

Social Sciences Citation Index: Included under Databases on the Foster Business Library homepage. This database "is a multidisciplinary index, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the social sciences. It indexes more than 1,725 journals spanning 50 disciplines, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 3,300 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals. It "provides access to current information and retrospective data from 1956 forward."

A search in this database for Executive Compensation produced over eighty references, from a wide variety of sources.

Web Resources:

Unlike library databases, Web resources are available wherever you have web access; they do not require that you access them via the

Off-Campus Access

evaluate

Business Resources on the Web

homepage

CEO Compensation: Annually, Forbes magazine provides executive pay tables for the heads of the 500 biggest companies in America, usually in the mid-May issue. This list is arranged alphabetically by company name, with rank among 500 CEO's, salary and bonus, and one year change; other compensation and stock gains; total salary plus compensation; and stock owned by each CEO. Some of their charts also include a letter grade for the CEO's "efficiency."
CEO Pay: Each year, in June, the Seattle Times publishes its Northwest 100, a compilation of the top public companies in the Northwest. As part of that compilation, this annual report also examines the compensation of chief executive officers of these companies, with charts, with salaries, bonuses, total, and change over the previous year.
Executive Compensation (CFO.com): This special report brings together articles on this topic, especially as it relates to chief financial officers.
Executive Compensation (New York Times): This New York Times special report is a collection of over twenty articles on this topic, plus graphics and a chart.
Executive Compensation Report: Another good source for information on top executive compensation is this section in the Washington Post, with a ranking of the top 2004 executive compensation packages. See also their chart Clarifying Executive Compensation.
Executive Compensation Wizard: This Salary.com site allows users to access executive compensation charts for U.S. public companies.
Executive Paywatch: This AFL-CIO site offers information on individual U.S. public company executive compensation, as well as rankings, trends, golden retirement packages, case studies, mutual fund CEO pay, and much more; an information-rich site.
Institute for Policy Studies: "For more than four decades, IPS has transformed ideas into action for peace, justice, and the environment." See their report on Executive Excess (in 60 PDF pages), their 13th annual CEO compensation survey.
Institutional Shareholder Services: "Founded in 1985, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) is the world’s leading provider of proxy voting and corporate governance solutions to the institutional marketplace. ISS serves 1,712 clients worldwide…." See their report on 2007 Preview: Executive Pay.
National Bureau of Economic Research: "Founded in 1920, the National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works." See their 2006 working paper entitled Pay For Short-Term Performance, in 26 PDF pages.
U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission: "The primary mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission … is to protect investors and maintain the integrity of the securities markets." The S.E.C. "requires public companies to disclose meaningful financial and other information to the public, which provides a common pool of knowledge for all investors to use to judge for themselves if a company's securities are a good investment." See their documents on Executive Compensation.
Wikipedia: This free online user-created and maintained encyclopedia can be a good starting point for an orientation to a topic. See their entry for Executive Compensation.

Foster Business Library Reference Collection:

The Foster Business Library

Reference Collection

The handbook of employee benefits.
This handbook explains benefit plans that work best for both employers and employees. Important changes and additions to this sixth edition include new material on behavioral/mental health-care benefits, disease management, alternative medicine, and elder care. In addition, executive compensation plans in a pay-for-performance environment are covered for the first time, as are important changes in benefits following September 11, 2001.
Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HD4928.N62 U6353 2005.
See the chapter 32 on Executive Compensation Plans.
The compensation handbook: a state-of-the-art guide to compensation strategy and design.
Written by 56 compensation specialists, this large guide covers current and future compensation issues from surveys, to work-life issues, to global compensation in 46 essays of about 20 pages each. There is also an excellent index.
Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HF5549.5 .C67 .H36 2000.
See the chapters in this volume on Executive Compensation Strategy, Executive Compensation Systems, and more.

Foster Business Library Books:

The Foster Business Library maintains a collection of over 70,000 books on all business topics. To search for materials on all three campuses of the University of Washington, go to the

UW Libraries Catalog

homepage

To limit the results of your search just to materials in the Foster Business Library collection, use the Modify or Limit options at the top of the search results and change the library location to Foster Business Library. Availablity is indicated on the right of each online catalog record. First, note in which collection, within Foster, your materials are in, since the library has ten different Collections, each in a different location and often with differing arrangements. "Available" indicates that the book should be on the shelves under that call number and available for you to check out. "Due" and a date indicates that the book is already checked out to someone and is due back on the date indicated; you can have the "Request/Place Hold" feature to recall the book for your use.

If the material you want is not in the collections of the University of Washington, you can use the "Search Summit" feature to repeat your search in the combined holdings of over thirty cooperating libraries in Washington and Oregon. Use the "Request This Item" feature in Summit to have books in those library sent here to Foster for you to check out.

The Foster general stacks collection is located south of the main part of the Foster Business Library, through the two pass-throughs into the basement of Balmer. The arrangement is by call number, from A (at the east end) to Z (at the far west end).

A keyword search in the UW Libraries Catalog for Executive Compensation produced a list of seventy records in the UW Libraries, with over forty records in the Foster Business Library.

Because executive compensation is also now an important part of securities law, it's also worth checking the holdings of the Gallagher Law Library, a short walk from the Foster Business Library. A keyword search in the Law Library Catalog for Executive Compensation produced a list of over forty records, including many titles not available elsewhere in the UW Libraries.

A subject search for Chief Executive Officers -– Salaries, Etc produced just fifteen records in the UW Libraries, including six records in the Foster Business Library (most of them published prior to 2000). A subject search for Executives -- Salaries, etc = produced over 35 records in the UW Libraries, including 33 records in the Foster Business Library.

Examples of selected relevant subject headings, with holdings in the Foster Business Library, include:

Compensation Management (Over 100 records)
Deferred Compensation (Over ten records)
Employee Stock Options (Over 12 records)

Foster titles from these searches include:

Top pay and performance: international and strategic approach (2006)
Responsible executive compensation for a new era of accountability (2004)
Pay without performance: the unfulfilled promise of executive compensation (2004)
What every investor needs to know about accounting fraud (2004) (See chapter 13 on executive compensation)
Leadership and governance from the inside out (2004) (See the two chapters on executive compensation)
Infectious greed: restoring confidence in America's companies (2003) (See chapter 3 on executive compensation)
Corporate financial strategy [electronic resource] (2002) (See chapter 16 on executive compensation)
The compensation committee of the board: best practices for establishing executive compensation (2001)
Top executive compensation: Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States (1999)

Foster Business Library Articles:

Articles in academic journals, magazines, trade periodicals, and newspapers are one of the best sources for any kind of research. While the Foster Business Library offers a large periodicals print collection, comprising over 800 titles, articles are most easily accessed online, 24/7, in such fulltext article databases as EBSCO Business Source Premier, Factiva, LexisNexis Academic, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest Databases. These article databases are available in the library or from off-campus, and provide access to over 10,000 periodicals and millions of articles.

Library access to most ProQuest databases will terminate at the end of spring quarter 2008, except for ProQuest NewsStand, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Historical New York Times, and the Historical Wall Street Journal. For more about this change, see UW Libraries Providing New Databases. After this change, comprehensive article searches should be performed in EBSCO Business Source Premier, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest NewsStand. Also, after this change, links to the articles below will be broken.

ProQuest Databases:
This database--actually, a family of over two dozen databases--offers full text articles for over 10,000 publications, including scholarly journals, magazines, trade and industry periodicals, newspapers, and reports on a very wide range of topics. To find articles on specific topics, search by word or phrase by keying your search phrase into the search box--or search for your topic in the Topic Guide.
Your search terms will be highlighted in red in each article.

A keyword search for "Executive Compensation" produced over 29,000 articles in this database, including over 1,700 articles in scholarly journals, over 1,400 magazine articles, over 9,700 articles in trade and industry periodicals, and over 14,000 newspaper articles.
A more targeted subject search for SUB(Executive Compensation) produced over 21,000 articles in this database, including over 1,500 articles in scholarly journals, over 1,200 magazine articles, over 8,600 articles in trade and industry periodicals, and over 10,000 newspaper articles.

This search can be narrowed by combining it with other subjects, such as:
Examples of articles, from the searches above, include:

"Weird and Weirder Numbers on Pay Reports" (New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Mar 11, 2007.  pg. 3.1)
"Pressure Over Executive Pay Keeps Rising" (Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Jan 24, 2007.  pg. n/a)
"The sky-high club" (The New Yorker. New York: Jan 22, 2007. Vol. 82, Iss. 46;  pg. 32)
"American Roulette" (New York. New York: Jan 8, 2007. Vol. 40, Iss. 1;  pg. 20, 2 pgs)
"A Year To Suspend Disbelief" (New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Dec 31, 2006.  pg. 3)
"Goldman Chairman Gets a Bonus of $53.4 Million" (New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Dec 20, 2006.  pg. C.2)
"The Bonus Army" (New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Dec 20, 2006.  pg. A.29)
"CEOs Given Raises for Implementing Layoffs" (USA Today. New York: Dec 2006. Vol. 135, Iss. 2739;  pg. 11, 2 )
"Off to the Races Again, Leaving Many Behind; [Special Report]" (New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Apr 9, 2006.  pg. 3.1)
"EMC Chief's Pay Of $25.9 Million Was Mostly Stock" (Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Mar 21, 2006.  pg. B.3)
"How Much Are Execs Really Paid?" (Business Week. New York: Mar 20, 2006. , Iss. 3976;  pg. 96)
"It's Not So Easy To Shame A CEO" (Business Week. New York: Mar 20, 2006. , Iss. 3976;  pg. 14)
"Genentech CEO Paid $69 Million" (Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Mar 15, 2006.  pg. D.7)
"Leaders: Ownership matters; Shareholder democracy" (The Economist. London: Mar 11, 2006. Vol. 378, Iss. 8468;  pg. 10)
"Why Stock Options STILL Make Sense" (Financial Executive. Morristown: Mar 2006. Vol. 22, Iss. 2;  pg. 45, 3 pgs)

Help:

The Foster Business Library Reference Desk is staffed many of the

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See also the Foster Business Library's Business & Economics FAQ, with answers to over nine hundred frequently-asked questions.

For research guides on a wide variety of industries, products, companies, issues and topics, see the Team Librarian Consultation archives.

23 January 2007; updated 12 March 2008. Peter Stevens, Business Librarian, stevens@u.washington.edu