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This article examines whether the online context affects tournament theory incentive mechanisms. It investigates the impact of prize structure on player performance in eSports under online and offline conditions. Using a quasi-experimental approach with data from the Counter-Strike Global Offensive eSports scene, the study finds that high prize distributions increase individual output in both settings, but the incentive effect is weaker in online events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on tournament theory, we argue that when environmental goals are incorporated into the cadre evaluation system, compared to officials who are close to retirement (i.e., retiring officials), non-retiring officials may exert more effort to foster risky green innovation. Based on a sample of publicly traded firms from heavily polluting industries in China between 2008 and 2016, we hypothesize and find that confronted with severe environmental pollution, firms in provinces with non-retiring governors have higher green innovation performance than those in provinces with retiring governors. Moreover, we find that this effect is stronger for firms in provinces whose governors have higher promotion anticipation, for local state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and for politically connected firms. Our study identifies the political incentives of government officials as an important antecedent of corporate green innovation and highlights the value of establishing a "green" cadre evaluation system to promote sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is to examine whether and how enterprises adjust their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in response to top executives' local tournament incentives. The findings provide evidence to support the claim that local compensation gaps encourage top executives to reduce their CSR performance; furthermore, they indicate that this reduction is accomplished mainly through the CSR categories of diversity, community, the environment and product. The enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs) is examined, and the negative relationship between local compensation gaps and CSR is documented to be weaker in states that feature stronger enforcement of NCAs, which constrains labour mobility and imposes turnover costs. The findings of this research are robust to concerns regarding endogeneity and reverse causality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tournament theory analyzes labor market outcomes where rewards are distributed on the basis of relative rank. An important factor in these outcomes is the likely return to additional effort. Using National Basketball Association game event data across two seasons, we estimate each team's game player portfolio and find that teams who were in contention to win the draft lottery reduce their portfolio's return differential during the 2017–2018 season but not for the 2018–2019 season. We attribute the change to the reduction in the probability of obtaining a higher pick for the 2019 draft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effectiveness of tournament theory based on the age gap between the CEO and the top management team (TMT) in Korean firms. While tournament incentives encourage managers to work harder to improve their performance, their effects may differ on executives' sociological and psychological characteristics. Under Confucian culture, where seniority is highly valued and there is great respect for a senior person, we expect that the effectiveness of tournament theory would differ based on the age gap between the CEO and TMT. Using firms listed on the Korean stock market from 2013 to 2020, we document a significant and positive relationship between the CEO and TMT pay gap and firm performance only when the CEO is older than the average executive in the TMT. Furthermore, we find a significant positive relationship between the pay gap and firm performance only when the CEOs is older than the oldest executives. In addition, we find that the incentive effect of the pay gap between the CEO and TMT exists in horizontal culture firms, even when the CEO is younger than the average age of executives in the TMT. Our findings suggest that, in the presence of an age hierarchy, older executives who feel uncomfortable inhibit collaboration among the TMT, thereby impacting the tournament incentive effect. These observations underscore the importance of social factors in designing executive compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Technology Economics is the property of Chinese Society of Technology Economics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While expert rating is still a dominant approach for selecting winners in contests for creative works, a few crowdsourcing platforms have recently used “crowd voting” for winner selection – that is, let users of the crowdsourcing community publicly vote for contest winners. We investigate how a contest’s reliance on crowd voting for winner selection, defined as the percentage of crowd-voted prizes to the total prize sum (in dollar amounts), affects contest participation. Drawing upon expectancy theory and tournament theory, we develop a theoretical understanding of this relationship. Using a novel dataset of contests employing both crowd voting and expert rating, we find that a contest’s reliance on crowd voting is positively associated with participation. Specifically, every 10% increase in the crowd-voting reliance can boost users’ odds of participation by about 7%. Moreover, crowd voting is more appealing to users whose expertise is not high and whose status in the crowdsourcing community is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study asks whether bookmakers alter the closing betting odds on European football matches due to potential variation in team incentives to exert effort to win games based on position in the standings. Effort is a multidimensional concept and teams have many ways to alter effort supplied in a match. For example, the players included or left out of the starting 11, the tactics used in a specific match, substitutions made during a match, and other factors under team control, can be interpreted as changes in effort supplied. OLS models explaining observed variation in betting odds are estimated for roughly 25,000 regular season football games in 8 top European domestic leagues from 2000–2001 through 2018–2019. Regression results indicate bookmakers alter betting odds on matches involving clubs in the middle of the domestic league standings that have no chance of qualifying for the Champions/Europa Leagues or being relegated. In other words, bookmakers and bettors believe these teams will not put forth maximum effort to compete in and win these matches. We find similar results for teams already assured of relegation and teams that already clinched the league championship. Overall, the research contributes to literature analyzing the impact of incentives in sporting contests. As the world of professional sport and sports gambling become increasingly interconnected and integrated, the results of the study present opportunities not only for collaboration between the parties but also an increased understanding on the role league design has on individual match outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the incentive effects of increased prize differentials and productivity spillovers from substitute coworkers within the context of esports. A direct behavioral measure called "actions per minute (APM)" is utilized to gauge Dota 2 players' on-field exertion of effort dedicated to winning the game. The results based on empirical analysis support the incentive effects of the convex prize structure of esports tournaments on eliciting effort. Further investigation indicates that the incentive effects of high-stakes esports tournaments are more a result of the size of total prize than the relative prize distribution. It is also found that players who serve subordinate roles are more likely to engage in shirking behavior in the presence of teammates with similar roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the relationship between the compensation gap within the top management team (TMT) and corporate performance. We focus on how the fairness preference of the TMT moderates this relationship. The existing researches on the relationship between the compensation gap within the TMT and corporate performance are inconclusive. The reason may be that the traditional tournament theory is based on the hypothesis of self-interest preference of homo economicus. In the research, the fairness preference theory is added to the traditional tournament model, and a more realistic tournament model considering fairness preference is constructed. Based on the analysis of the theoretical model and the empirical regression analysis of the panel data of 733 non-financial A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2014 to 2020, we draw the following main conclusions: (1) There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the TMT compensation gap and the corporate performance. Within the optimal compensation gap, there is a significant positive correlation. The larger the compensation gap, the better the corporate performance will be. When the optimal compensation gap is exceeded, there is a significant negative correlation. The larger the compensation gap, the worse the corporate performance will be. (2) The fairness preference of the TMT will weaken the correlation between the TMT compensation gap and corporate performance.Within the optimal compensation gap, the fairness preference will weaken the positive relationship between them, and when it exceeds the optimal compensation gap, the fairness preference will also weaken the negative relationship between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study introduces vertical pay dispersion, a prevailing equity issue in discussions of organizations and society, to public management research. Bridging tournament and equity theory with the publicness debate, the study analyses the role of publicness dimensions —ownership, funding, and control— for manager-to-worker pay ratios of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The results show that, for a unique five-year data set, ownership publicness partly affects vertical pay dispersion, and the effects are moderated by city and SOE size. The study enhances the understanding of vertical pay dispersion in the public sector and offers a research agenda regarding the determinants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether social capital influences tournament incentives and income differences between the chief executive officer (CEO) and median worker. We find that firms headquartered in US counties with stronger norms of cooperation or social capital have lower tournament and income differences. Firm value is higher when compensation is consistent with local norms. The results hold for alternative measures of social capital, instrumental variables, and quasi‐experiments related to the legalization of marijuana and firm headquarter relocation. These findings suggest that local social norms influence income differences and firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two key groups central to improving firm performance are the top management team (TMT) and the board of directors. Executives undertake strategic actions, whereas board members fulfill their resource provision and monitoring roles. Drawing on tournament theory and equity theory, we propose that high pay dispersion among outside directors and the TMT is positively associated with strategic risk, whereas high (low) TMT pay dispersion and low (high) outside director pay dispersion are positively associated with firm performance. Our predictor is the unexplained component of horizontal pay dispersion, or the residual of pay dispersion resulting from regressing pay on observable firm, industry, period, and individual characteristics. Our results highlight the importance of unexplained pay dispersion for TMTs, but not for boards of directors, in improving firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vertical pay dispersion (VPD), a hierarchical pay structure used to motivate employees, has traditionally been studied separately from high‐performance work systems (HPWSs). As a component of HPWSs, incentive‐based compensation schemes focus on employee‐ or team‐level incentives. However, the influence of the simultaneous utilization of VPD and HPWS on performance remains understudied. This study addresses the question of whether these approaches to managing human capital serve as complements or substitutes to one another. VPD and HPWS are argued to substitute for one another with respect to motivation‐ and skill‐enhancing practices. The opposite notion is true in regard to opportunity‐enhancing HPWSs, which serve to amplify the effectiveness of VPD. In a multisource, longitudinal sample of South Korean firms, the hypothesized predictions are supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on professional football offer conflicting results regarding the impact of wage dispersion on team performance. However, the existing intra-league heterogeneity among clubs is overlooked and could be the reason for the diverging outcomes. The aim of this paper is to reanalyze this relationship having the clubs' size as moderator. Payroll – which captures the financial strength – is used as proxy of club size. Ordinary Least Squares regressions with season and league fixed effects are employed. Dispersion is measured by three indexes for robustness check. The outputs confirm the quadratic relationship between wage dispersion and performance, but adding that identical levels of dispersion have different impact on football clubs according to their financial strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigates whether tournament incentives motivate chief executive officer(s) (CEOs) to be socially responsible. Furthermore, it explores the role of sub-national institutional contingencies [i.e., state-owned enterprises (SOE) vs. non-SOEs, foreign-owned entities (FOE) vs. non-FOEs, cross-listed vs. non-cross-listed, developed region] in CEO tournament incentives and the corporate social responsibility performance (CSRP) relationship. Data were collected from all A-shared companies listed in the stock exchanges of China from 2014 to 2019. The study uses the baseline methodology of ordinary least squares (OLS) and cluster OLS regression. Moreover, firm-fixed effects regression, two-stage least squares regression, and propensity score matching deal with the endogeneity problem and check the robustness of the results. The results provide reliable evidence that tournament incentives motivate CEOs to be more socially responsible. On the other hand, sub-national institutional contingencies positively affect the association between CEO tournament incentives and CSRP. The findings have important implications for companies and regulators who wish to enhance CSP by providing incentives to top managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: With the advent of the knowledge economy, physical assets have given way to human capital as an important strategic resource for companies. The company's workforce is considered to be one of the most important intangible resources and assets of the company that have a direct impact on the process of value creation for the company. On the other hand, managers, especially CEOs, play an important role in running a company. Therefore, the present study investigates the relationship between CEO power and firm labor productivity. Methods: A sample of 104 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during 2011- 2018 was selected and the research hypotheses were tested using multivariate regression models based on panel data technique. Results: The results of this study showed a positive relationship between CEO power and labor productivity. In other words, according to tournament theory, firms with stronger CEOs are associated with increased labor productivity. The results also showed that CEO power is positively correlated with labor efficiency and negatively related to labor cost, meaning that more powerful CEOs increase labor efficiency and reduce labor costs. In addition, the results of supplementary analysis showed that the research results are not sensitive to changes in estimation methods and are robust. Conclusion: According to tournament theory, strong CEOs are recognized as the best workforce and receive more rewards for their performance than other employees. Therefore, a significant difference in the amount of payment can motivate the lower-level workforce and help them in their efforts and better performance to obtain career advancement, and this will increase the productivity of the company's workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine factors influencing the executive pay multiple (executive-employee pay disparity) and its effects on performance. Using unique data from Korea, where all publicly listed firms are required to provide detailed information on average employee pay in their annual reports, they find that a substantial portion of cross-sectional variation in the executive pay multiple is explained by the firm’s economic and political characteristics. Results also indicate that the executive pay multiple has a statistically significant negative relation with subsequent operating and stock return performance. A two-stage approach, however, reveals that the performance effects of the executive pay multiple are likely to be influenced more by deviations from the expected executive pay multiple, estimated using the first-stage determinant model, than by the absolute pay multiple per se. The study sheds light on recent debates regarding the usefulness of executive pay multiple disclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We explore the linkage between vertical pay dispersion, a critical aspect of bank compensation scheme, and the frequency and severity (total monetary loss) of operational risk. Using operational risk events panel data from Chinese domestic commercial banks, we find that vertical pay dispersion positively impacts both the frequency and total loss severity of operational risk events, and such impacts increase marginal effects via quantile regression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is still an ongoing debate regarding the firm performance implications of pay gaps between top executives and subordinate employees. This study integrates relative deprivation theory and tournament theory to investigate the potential nonlinear effects of pay gaps. We expect that at low levels of pay inequality, increased inequality hurts firm productivity, while at higher levels of pay inequality, increased inequality helps firm productivity. Our study of Chinese firms confirms that pay gaps have an approximately U-shaped relationship with firm performance. This nonlinear relationship is weaker in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) than in non-SOEs, suggesting that state ownership is an important moderator in the association. Overall, this study explains previous mixed findings regarding consequences of pay gaps with meaningful implications for policymakers and entrepreneurs in China and other economies with similar cultural and institutional backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism Tribune / Lvyou Xuekan is the property of Tourism Institute of Beijing Union University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the question concerning whether tournament incentives motivate chief executive officers (CEOs) to be socially responsible. Design/methodology/approach: Data from all A-share Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges for the period from 2010 to 2015 are used. To draw inferences from the data, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and cluster OLS are used as a baseline methodology. To control for the possible issue of endogeneity, firm-fixed-effects regression, two-stage least squares regression and propensity score matching are used. Findings: A reliable evidence is found that tournament incentives motivate CEOs to be more socially responsible. Additional analysis reveals that the positive effect of CEO tournament incentives on corporate social responsibility performance (CSRP) is more pronounced in state-owned firms than it is in non-state-owned firms. The study's findings are consistent with tournament theory and the conventional wisdom hypothesis, which proposes that better incentives lead to competitiveness, which improves financial and social performance. Practical implications: The study's findings have implications for companies and regulators who wish to enhance CSRP by giving tournament incentives to top managers. Investment in social responsibility may reduce the conflict between executives and employees and improve the corporate culture. Originality/value: This study contributes to the existing literature by providing the first evidence that CEOs' tournament incentives play a vital role in CSRP. The study's findings contribute to tournament theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tournament-like promotion systems are the default in audit firms, which are generally internally owned professional partnerships. While awarding promotions in a contest-like fashion stimulates contestants' motivation and productivity, it may also upset an organizations' ethical climate and trigger ethically adverse behaviors. Since nearly all research on promotion tournaments in management has been conducted in public firms, little is known about how these incentive systems operate in professional partnerships. In this study, we analyze how the perception of the two controllable design parameters of promotion tournaments—the relative pay spread between winners and losers and tournament breadth in terms of the number of contestants that compete for a prize—affects audit firm behavior. Survey results provide evidence that the tournament's perceived breadth prompts adverse behavior, as it does in public firms. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the perceived pay spread has no significant effect on adverse behavior, but triggers desirable behaviors instead. Our study suggests that promotion tournaments indeed provide powerful incentives, but also that understanding the unintended consequences of these incentives on organizational ethical climates and behavior requires tournament theory to be contextualized when it is applied in new settings like internally owned professional partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests the implications of tournament theory using data on 100 U.K. stock market companies, covering over 500 individual executives, in the late 1990s. Our results provide some evidence consistent with the operation of tournament mechanisms within the U.K. business context. Firstly, we find a convex relationship between executive pay and organizational level, and secondly, that the gap between CEO pay and other board executives (i.e., tournament prize) is positively related to the number of participants in the tournament. However, we also show that the variation in executive team pay has little role in determining company performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the joint impact of trait competitiveness (i.e., the enjoyment of interpersonal competition and the desire to win and be better than others) and competitive psychological climate (i.e., the degree to which employees perceive organizational rewards as contingent upon comparisons of their performance against that of their peers) on objective and subjective career success. Based on tournament and person–environment fit theory, we assumed that the positive effects of trait competitiveness on different indicators of objective (i.e., salary, promotions) and subjective (i.e., career satisfaction, internal marketability, and meaningful work) career success are stronger under conditions of a highly competitive psychological climate. Moderated regression analyses using data from a 6‐month time‐lagged study of 340 employees working in diverse occupational fields in their early careers revealed joint effects of the two competition variables. For both objective and subjective career success, the effect of trait competitiveness was strengthened under conditions of a highly competitive psychological climate. We discuss the results by integrating theoretical reasoning from a tournament and person–environment fit perspective on the attainment of career success. Practitioner points: Organizations should be aware that competitive environments, and specifically their related perceptions, are only beneficial for some employees' career success.Within perceived highly competitive organizational contexts, personnel selection and development should consider competitive traits of employees when deciding about hiring and career planning.Career counsellors may consider perceived organizational climates and competitive personal characteristics when objective career success and subjective career success are of topic in the counselling process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research summary: Past inquiry has found that implementing complex competitive repertoires (i.e., diverse and dynamic arrays of actions) is challenging, but firms benefit from doing so. Our examination of the antecedents and outcomes of complex competitive repertoires develops a more nuanced perspective. Data from 1,168 firms in 204 industries reveal that complexity initially harms performance, but then becomes a positive factor, except at high levels. We use agency and tournament theories, respectively, to examine how key governance mechanisms-ownership structure and executive compensation-help shape firms' competitive repertoires. We find that the principals of agency theory and the pay gap of tournament theory are both important antecedents of competitive complexity, and an interaction exists wherein firms build especially complex repertoires when both influences are strong. Managerial summary: In boxing, the fight does not always go to the bigger or stronger person, or even to whomever throws the most punches-the fight is sometimes won by the boxer who is unpredictable, such as throwing an uppercut when the opponent expected a right hook. Similarly, when companies compete in the marketplace, advantage is afforded not only to those with more resources or who engage in more competitive activity, but also to those whose actions are unpredictable. In this study, we develop the notion of 'competitive complexity,' which describes the diversity and changing nature of a company's competitive moves. Implementing complex competitive repertoires can be painful in the short term but, if done correctly, can help company performance in the long run. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management & Innovation is the property of Wyzsza Szkola Biznesu-National Louis University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article relies on tournament and social comparison theorizing to understand how multiple concurrent pay structures and, thus, potential for comparison to multiple referents, affect turnover in the CEO's top team. Specifically, we explore how the concurrent effects of pay dispersion within the CEO's top team, pay disparity between the team and the CEO, and pay level in comparison to top teams at other firms in the industry affect turnover among members of the CEO's top team. Consistent with social comparison theorizing, we find that pay dispersion is positively associated with turnover within CEO's top teams. We also find that pay disparity has an effect consistent with tournament theorizing in which firms with greater tournament prizes (i.e., CEO salary gap) have lower turnover within their CEOs' top teams. Furthermore, we find that pay disparity interacts with both pay dispersion and pay level to affect turnover within CEOs' top teams. These results have theoretical and practical implications for CEOs' top-team pay design in organizations. Specifically, our findings imply that theoretical mechanisms associated with how firms compensate executives-and the inherent comparisons in which those pay structures result-work in concert to affect turnover within the CEO's top team. Hence, to understand the effect that compensation has on executives' subsequent responses, researchers and practitioners must consider multiple concurrent pay references simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relationship between the dispersion of executive pay and bank performance/valuation by examining two competing theories, the tournament theory (hierarchical wage structure) and the equity fairness theory (compressed wage structure). The key variable of executive pay dispersion is measured using a hand-collected dataset composed of 63 banks from OECD countries and 29 banks from developing countries. The dataset covers the period 2004-2012. By combining and modifying a translog profit function and a pay-dispersion model, we are able to address the potential problems of relying on reduced-form estimation. In our subsample of developed and civil law countries, where bank performance is measured by either Tobin's Q or by the price-to-book ratio, the overall impact of executive pay dispersion is mostly negative, and we find supporting evidence for the equity fairness theory, except for very high levels of dispersion. There is a non-linear effect, as banks perform best when there is either very low or very high executive pay dispersion. For developing country sample banks, greater executive pay dispersion has a negative impact on bank profit. In our subsample of common law countries, however, we find no evidence of a significant impact of executive pay dispersion on bank performance. We conclude that lower executive pay dispersion, a proxy for teamwork, is mostly effective in enhancing bank performance in a significant section of sample banks, i.e., civil law and developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic excessive turnover among information technology (IT) professionals has been costly to firms for decades with annual turnover rates as high as 24% even among Computerworld's '100 Best Places to Work in IT.' Prior information systems literature has identified two key factors affecting turnover: boundary-spanning roles and low promotability in one's current firm. We draw on tournament theory, which is primarily concerned with inducing effort in employees, to decompose promotability into two distinct constructs: the likelihood of promotion and benefit from promotion, and demonstrate that each has a distinct role in affecting turnover rates. Our key result is that a job ladder motivating IT professionals with large, infrequent promotions will lead to higher turnover than a job ladder with smaller, more frequent promotions. We describe the conditions under which rearranging the job ladder creates economic value for the firm. We also offer an explanation for the observation that jobs characterized by boundary-spanning activities have higher turnover, and show that such jobs are more sensitive to the effect of likelihood of promotion on turnover. We test our hypotheses on a detailed data set covering 5,704 IT professionals over a five-year period. We confirm that likelihood of promotion has the predicted effects on turnover of IT professionals. A one standard deviation increase in likelihood of promotion decreases turnover by over 99%, consistent with our prediction. The empirical analysis also confirms the predicted effects of boundary spanning activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research summary: Tournament theory suggests that a large gap in pay between CEOs and top managers can provide incentives to perform, but we argue that it can also elicit negative effort and even motivate the kind of behavior that leads to lawsuits. We posit that this negative effort is greater when firms have high levels of unrelated diversification because there is less operational interdependency, so tournament effects are stronger. We also contend that the influence of tournament incentives on behavior leading to lawsuits is weaker when environmental uncertainty is high. We discuss the consequences of these findings for research on fraud and tournament theory as well as the practical repercussions for firms, investors, and policymakers. Managerial summary: Each year, the press has a field day when companies announce the outsized compensation packages laid out for CEOs. Economists use 'tournament theory' to describe how high CEO pay motivates everyone else to work hard to get into the top job. The problem with this approach is that, yes, top managers work harder when the gap between their and the CEO's pay increases, but as that gap widens, it also incentivizes top managers to cheat or cut corners. As a result, we find that the gap between CEO and top manager compensation predicts the likelihood that shareholders will file a securities class action lawsuit against the company. This gap in pay is an especially good predictor of lawsuits for highly unrelated diversified companies and companies facing a low level of external uncertainty. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many environmental tax systems rely on self-reported emissions by firms. These emission reports are verified through costly auditing efforts by regulatory agencies that are constrained in their auditing budgets. A typical assumption in the literature is that the agencies allocate audit efforts randomly among otherwise identical firms (random audit mechanism). This paper compares the incentives on firms' emissions and self-reporting behavior under the random audit mechanism to the incentives under competitive audit mechanisms (CAMs). Under CAMs, higher reported emissions by a firm relative to other firms result in a lower audit intensity. This creates a reporting contest between the firms. The two CAMs under investigation apply different degrees of competitiveness in the reporting contest. I find that both CAMs lead to more truthful reporting, which is in line with the previous literature. Interestingly and novel to the literature, I find that some competition in reporting may induce fewer emissions compared with random auditing, while too much competition in reporting may induce comparatively higher emissions caused by firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relationship between top management team compensation disparity and corporate social performance. We argue that pay structures with high disparity are reflective of transactional, individualistic organizations that foster a shareholder orientation. In contrast, pay structures with low disparity are indicative of relational, cooperative organizations that foster a stakeholder orientation. Examining the effect of these attributes on corporate social performance, we find that corporate social performance is higher in low pay disparity firms than in high pay disparity firms. We discuss our contributions to executive compensation and corporate social performance research and suggest directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We integrate the seemingly contradictory theoretical predictions of behavioral and economic perspectives about the relationship between pay disparity and firm performance and show that tournament and social comparison theories are more supplementary than contradictory in nature. Our results show that high levels of firm performance will be found around either meaningfully low or meaningfully high levels of pay disparity. Additional findings indicate that this curvilinear relationship is weakened in the presence of both an heir apparent and high CEO power, and strengthened when top management team members are more eligible as CEOs. These findings suggest that factors that increase or inhibit social comparison or tournament perceptions among TMT members play a role in the strength of the curvilinear relationship between pay disparity and firm performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salary payments are important to us for understanding both the relationship and the causality between salary structures and team performance in labour market theory. Using salary data from the Korean Professional Baseball League (KPBL), this paper conducts Panel Granger tests to investigate the causality between pay and performance. Our empirical results show that the causality only runs from the dispersion of salary payment to team performance, but not vice versa. Moreover, the evidence also shows that total salary does not cause team performance, and vice versa. Therefore, payrolls cannot buy wins, and wins cannot bring payrolls in the KPBL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relation between pay dispersion among top executives and firm performance and executive turnover. I find that deviations from normal dispersion are associated with deterioration in firm performance and higher executive turnover. I also document that a positive relation between abnormal pay dispersion and executive turnover is driven by low-ranked executives. This study contributes to the existing literature by suggesting that abnormal pay dispersion is an important factor that influences managerial behavior in addition to raw pay dispersion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that financial analysts can be viewed as participants of two tournaments (the 'All-Star' tournament and the intrafirm tournament) and examine whether analysts are incentivized by the tournament compensation structure. Using data from 1991 to 2007, we find that interim losers are more likely to increase the boldness of their forecasts in the remainder of the tournament period than interim winners. This finding survives several robustness checks and is more pronounced when the interim assessment date is closer to the end of the tournament period, when analysts are inexperienced, and when the market activity is high. In addition, we show that interim losers' changes in boldness are less informative than interim winners'. Collectively, our findings suggest that viewing financial analysts as participants of tournaments provides a useful framework for understanding analysts' behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effects of several forms of wage inequality on service quality and employee effort. We suggest that two popular theories, tournament and fair wage/equity, are not necessarily competing. Each theory accurately describes aspects of employee behavior, but because of sectoral differences in organizational objectives and employee attitudes, tournament theory's predictions are relatively stronger in the for-profit sector, while fair wage/equity theory's predictions are relatively stronger in the nonprofit sector. Using an employer-employee matched data set of nursing homes linked to a federal regulatory database and a resident survey, we found that ownership moderates the relationship between wage inequality and service quality. Although wage inequality positively affects service quality in the for-profit sector, the reverse is true among nonprofit organizations. We also found that overall wage inequality in the workplace has a more pronounced influence on employee discretionary effort than does the employee's place in the distribution of wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests several predictions of tournament theory on executive compensation in the context of a transition economy. Using an unbalanced panel of 34,701 executives in 1,386 public listed firms in China during 1999 and 2006, the paper finds that (1) pay increases as executives move up the corporate hierarchy into higher ranks; (2) pay gap is the largest between the first- and second-tier executives; (3) pay dispersion increases with the number of tournament participants and the risk of the business environment; (4) state ownership of shares reduces pay, pay gap and the sensitivities of the contestant pool and business risk to pay dispersion; (5) board composition and independence, CEO duality and the independence of the supervisory committee all affect pay and pay dispersion. Overall, this paper shows that listed firms in China, as they become more and more market-oriented, have adopted a pay structure that is largely consistent with the predictions of tournament theory, and that it is important to consider both state ownership and corporate governance in analyzing executive compensation structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Criterio Libre is the property of Revista Criterio Libre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I use personnel records of a large German company to analyse the determinants of promotions from the perspective of tournament theory and efficient allocation of employees. Main findings are that less absenteeism, more overtime, longer contractual working time, higher education, higher entry age, and longer remaining tenure are correlated with a higher promotion probability, but female employees are less likely to get promoted. Surprisingly, the promotion probability is positively correlated only with less absenteeism and more overtime in the last three months before the promotion occurs. Explanations, why short-term performance seems to be more important in the promotion process than long-term performance, might be collusion among contestants, worker heterogeneity, and biased promotion decisions by supervisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taylor and Trogdon found evidence of shirking under some, but not all, draft lottery systems used in three different National Basketball Association (NBA) seasons. The authors use data from all NBA games played from 1977 to 2007 and a fixed effects model to control for unobservable team and season heterogeneity to extend this research. The authors find that NBA teams were more likely to intentionally lose games at the end of the regular season during the seasons where the incentives to finish last were the largest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply tournament theory to explain the process within which selection of named professorships takes place and a procedural justice test to justify winning the named professorship tournament. Specifically, we estimate the probability that management professors hold one of the highest rewards for academic research productivity, a named professorship, as a function of his or her research credentials, as measured by the number of articles published in a small core of elite management journals. Alphabetically, these are Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Operations Management, Management Science, Operations Research, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal. Although each of the eight journals is positively related to the probability of attaining a named professorship, the Academy of Management Review and the Academy of Management Journal emerge as the two most influential management journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consistency is sought after by professional golfers and commended by analysts, but tournament theory predicts that inconsistency is beneficial when the reward scheme is top heavy. Simulating a typical tournament and adjusting each player's standard deviation, the author finds that all players earn more prize money and win more tournaments when they are less consistent-even with a slightly worse average score. Players are found to have some control over the variability of their scores: playing safer with a substantial lead and playing riskier when in danger of missing the cut. Inconsistency is not appreciated, but it is rewarding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article observes that regular-season champions in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men's basketball often perform poorly in season-ending conference tournaments and examines two alternative explanations for this underperformance. We employ data on regular-season champions during the period 1990.2004 to test between competing models of "tanking" motivated by (a) fitness saving for the NCAA tournament and (b) a form of corruption. Our empirical results confirm that systematic underperformance does occur and indicate that corruption is a likely motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the organization of a civil-law judiciary—the German labour court system—shapes court performance. It is argued that civil-law judiciaries can be considered as internal labour markets in which the main incentive derives from career opportunities. Resulting hypotheses are tested on data for nine German Labour Courts of Appeal ( Landesarbeitsgerichte) over the period 1980–1998. Two performance measures are computed: the confirmation rate and a productivity measure. The confirmation rate captures how often decisions are upheld in an appeal at the Federal Labour Court. Court productivity is measured by a score derived via data envelopment analysis (DEA) and includes as outputs the number of finished cases and the number of published decisions. Regression analyses show: Courts employing more judges with a Ph.D. are more productive, but write decisions that are less often confirmed by the Federal Labour Court. Courts employing judges with higher ex ante promotion probabilities are less productive and write decisions that are less often confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work the impacts of top managers' relative rewards on firm performance are examined. What is suggested and empirically found is that greater disparities in interrank values of salary streams may lower the performance of more focused firms (such as single-product firms or related diversifiers). It is also suggested and found that higher gaps in interrank values of salary streams may boost the performance of less focused firms (unrelated diversifiers). In contrast, it is proposed and found that expanded differentials in interrank values of stock options may improve performance, regardless of the strategic profile of the enterprise. Moreover, it is contended and found that intrarank disparities in salary streams or options may adversely influence the performance of the more focused as well as the less focused firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]