Abstract
This study analyzes Standard & Poor’s 500 Index top 250 companies’ responses to Bloomberg’s disclosed calculations of CEO pay ratios. The results suggest that CEO pay ratios, CEO compensations and average worker compensations do not seem to be related to the decision to respond. They also indicate that many of the corporations have adopted a strategy of avoiding the issue or deflecting attention from it by either choosing not to respond or criticizing the technicalities of the calculation of the CEO pay ratios. Corporations that responded largely conceptualize and communicate the rationale for high executive compensation in performance-driven language.
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Branco, M.C., Delgado, C. (2017). Justifying CEO Pay Ratios: Analysing Corporate Responses to Bloomberg’s Listing of Standard & Poor’s 500 Pay Ratios. In: Capaldi, N., Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R. (eds) Dimensional Corporate Governance. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56182-0_2
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