Fairness of CEO Compensation: A Multi-Faceted and Multi-Cultural Framework to Structure Executive Pay

Executive compensation and its fairness to stakeholders are topics of heated debate on platforms ranging from news forums to financial markets. This book stimulates critical thinking on executive compensation and guides academics and practitioners on the key concepts by developing a multi-faceted and multi-cultural framework. It also presents the new ‘Fair CEO Compensation,’ which uses a scientifically developed and structured stakeholder-based approach to reach optimal and fair CEO compensation, without capping bonuses or variable pay by rules and regulations. Financial, non-financial, organizational, strategic, cultural, personal, and social aspects are all taken into account in the framework. In addition to implementation guidelines and real-world examples, the book presents a checklist for businesses to measure the fairness of their CEO compensation based on the suggested framework. Moreover, the author also provides a survey template to help businesses investigate theiremployees’ perception of the fairness of their CEO’s compensation.

About the Author

Mehtap Aldogan Eklund is a Doctor of Philosophy in Management (Ph.D. HSG) at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). Her dissertation was entitled “CEO Compensation of Listed Companies in Switzerland”. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, USA. She is also one of the regional governance partners at the International Center for Corporate Governance (ICfCG) in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Previously, she worked as an Associate Professor of Accounting and Finance at the Østfold University College, Norway, between August 2017 and August 2019. She was the co-founder of the Business and Governance (BUS-GOV) and the founder of the China-Norway Researcher Network (CNRN) research centres at the Østfold University College. She also worked as a visiting Professor at the Helsinki Business School (HELBUS), Finland, and at the International School of Management (ISM), Paris, France. Beforeher PhD study, she worked for seven years as an auditor in two of the Big 4 Auditing firms in Turkey, as well as in the Caribbean, the USA, and Luxembourg. Her areas of expertise are in corporate governance, executive compensation, financial accounting, international financial reporting standards (IFRS), and managerial accounting.