高管天价年薪上亿元之谜：是普通员工年均工资257倍

    CEO现在每年能够赚到1,500万美元的薪酬，大约是普通员工年均工资的257倍。

    这笔薪酬对我们绝大多数人来说高得令人难以置信。毕竟，CEO上千万美元的平均年薪几乎是一位拥有学士学位的普通工人终生收入的4.5倍。

    虽然高管薪酬在经济衰退期间大幅下跌，但肇始于20世纪70年代的上升趋势已经再次启动。2013年是CEO薪酬持续增长的第四个年头，高达8.8%的增速远远超过同期通胀率。

    公司法专家迈克尔•多尔夫在他即将出版的新书《不可或缺和其他神话》(Indispensable and Other Myths)中声称，CEO薪酬的涨幅已经远远超出了他们对公司和社会所做的真实贡献。颇具讽刺意味的是，这种不均衡正是公司董事会企图把高管薪酬与绩效挂钩所导致的结果。多尔夫认为，虽然绩效薪酬表面上讲得通，但这其实是一种有缺陷的理念，无法激励高管更加努力地工作，反而有可能抑制公司业绩的增长。他声称，如果一位工人从事的是像流水线作业这种“枯燥且重复的”工作，绩效工资可以产生预期效果。但如果把这种薪酬安排应用在从事创造性或管理类工作的员工身上，它就无法奏效。

    甚至更糟的是，绩效薪酬刺激工资持续增长，原因很简单：厌恶风险是人的天性，在其他条件均等的情况下，人们总是要求相对较少、但有保障的薪酬，而不是相对较多、但不一定能拿到手的薪酬。举例来说，普通人宁愿领取100万美元有保障的薪酬，也不愿领取50万美元基本工资，外加获取几率为50%的100万美元奖金。在这两个例子中，人们当然希望赚取100万美元，但他们往往会做出更稳妥的选择。多尔夫认为，这种倾向将促使高管竭力争取高薪保障，进而使得董事会的“绩效薪酬”无非是锦上添花而已。

    此外，那些爬到高管层级的人往往不需要外部因素激励他们努力做好工作。把工资和绩效挂钩其实会产生相反的效果，鼓励高管一门心思地提高那些将成功过于简单化的指标，比如公司股价。有时候，这种薪酬安排甚至鼓励高管赤裸裸地作弊。

    衡量一位CEO的“绩效”可能是公司董事会最难完成的任务之一。为了阐明这一点，多尔夫援引了通用电气公司(General Electric)前CEO杰克•韦尔奇的例子。韦尔奇1999年被《财富》杂志( Fortune)誉为“世纪经理人”。1981年，当韦尔奇接掌通用电气的时候，这家公司的市值仅为140亿美元。20年后，他退休时，这家公司的市值已经飙升至4,150亿美元。多尔夫写道：

    “杰克•韦尔奇的真正价值究竟有多大？没错，通用电气是在他担任CEO期间茁壮成长的，但有多少功劳应该记在韦尔奇的名下，而不是通用电气预先存在的人才、知识产权、工厂、市场地位和品牌声誉？整体市况或运气成分又发挥了多大作用？谁也无法信心满满地回答这个问题。将通用电气的股价飙涨仅仅归功于韦尔奇一人，似乎是一种极端化的立场。”

    当然，仅仅因为难以评估CEO对公司的贡献，并不意味着公司董事会应该放弃这种想法。问题是，公司董事会已经满足于通过薪酬方案来推动问责制这种错觉。当股价和其他简单的指标显示成功时，他们就支付天价薪酬，但很少惩罚业绩不佳的高管。

    很多时候，问责制的错觉恰恰为董事会所乐见。经济学家早就意识到公司所有人（股东）和实际控制人（董事会和高管）的分离所造成的问题。上市公司的大多数所有人拥有的股份数额不足以使他们对一家公司施加任何控制；对于这些所有人来说，抽时间来监管公司的管理工作也不划算。在这种情况下，董事会和高管完全可以牺牲公司所有人的利益，毫无顾忌地谋取一己私利。绩效工资正是为解决这个问题而设计的，但它最终只是一块遮羞布而已。多尔夫写道：

    “1993年，CEO平均薪酬已经从战后持续30年的稳定阶段（每年大约100万美元）大幅上涨。当时，每家公司薪酬最高的五位高管吸走了大约5%的公司利润。尽管这个比例听起来似乎很大，但短短十年后，它又翻了一番。”

    有些人认为，这只不过是自由市场正常运转的结果，即无形之手正在奖励那些对美国公司日益重要的工作岗位。但天价薪酬的捍卫者常常忘了一个事实：董事会并不总是在照看公司股东的最佳利益，尤其是当他们确定某位高管薪酬的时候——这位高管往往是他们的同僚，而且最初很可能就是这个人聘请这些董事加入董事会的。(财富中文网)

    译者：叶寒

    The average CEO now makes $10.5 million per year, or 257 times the amount his median employee pulls in.

    For the vast majority of us, these salaries are mind-boggling. After all, that $10 million the average CEO makes in a year is nearly 4.5 times more than what your typical bachelor-degree-holding worker makes in his entire lifetime.

    And though executive compensation fell sharply during the recession, the upward trend it had been on since the 1970s has once again resumed, with CEO pay increasing by 8.8% in 2013, a rate that’s far greater than inflation and the fourth straight year of increases.

    Corporate law expert Michael B. Dorff argues in his forthcoming book, Indispensable and Other Myths, that increases in CEO compensation have far outstripped what executives actually produce for their firms and society at large. Ironically, corporate boards’ attempts to tie executive pay to performance have caused this imbalance. Dorff argues that while paying for performance makes sense on its face, it’s actually a flawed philosophy that can hinder corporate performance rather than motivate executives to work harder. He argues that while pay for performance works when a worker is engaged in “boring and repetitive” tasks like assembly line work, it fails when it is applied to workers engaged in creative tasks or those that involve managing people.

    Even worse, pay-for-performance encourages escalating salaries for the simple reason that human beings are risk-averse — and, all else equal — will demand smaller but guaranteed payments to a larger payout that’s less certain. For instance, the average person would prefer a guaranteed salary of $1 million to a base salary of $500,000 with a $1 million bonus that the person has a 50% chance of capturing. In both instances, the person should expect to earn $1 million, but people tend to choose the more stable option. This dynamic, according to Dorff, leads executives to bargain hard for high pay guarantees, leaving the board’s “performance pay” to be nothing more than icing on the cake.

    Furthermore, those who rise to the executive level often need no outside motivation to succeed at their jobs. Indeed, pinning pay to performance can actually be counterproductive for these people, encouraging them to focus on metrics that oversimplify success, like a company’s stock price. At times, it even encourages executives to outright cheat.

    Measuring the “performance” of a CEO is likely one of the most difficult tasks for corporate boards. To illustrate this point, Dorff uses the example of former General Electric GE 0.15% CEO Jack Welch, who was dubbed by Fortune in 1999 as the “manager of the century” after leading GE from a $14 billion market cap in 1981 to $415 billion 20 years later when he retired. Writes Dorff:

    “How much was Jack Welch really worth? General Electric certainly prospered during his tenure as CEO, but how much of that was due to Welch as opposed to GE’s preexisting personnel, intellectual property, factories, market position, and brand reputation? How much was due to general market conditions or fortuitous circumstances? There is no way to answer that question with any confidence. Crediting Welch alone with the rise in GE’s stock price seems an extreme position.”

    Just because it’s difficult to measure a CEO’s contribution to a company doesn’t, of course, mean that a corporate board should just give up on the idea. The problem is corporate boards have settled for the illusion of accountability with compensation programs that pay big when stock prices and other simple metrics indicate success, but they do little to punish for poor performance.

    Much of the time, the illusion of accountability is all boards desire. Economists have long recognized the problem of separating between who owns a company (shareholders) and those who control it (the board and executives). Because most owners of publicly traded corporations don’t own a large enough share to exert any control over a firm or to benefit from taking the time to oversee its stewardship, boards and executives can enrich themselves at the expense of a firm’s owners. Pay for performance was supposed to solve this problem, but it ended up being nothing more than a fig leaf. As Dorff writes:

    “In 1993, when average CEO pay had already risen sharply from its thirty-year, postwar plateau of about a million dollars a year, compensation for the top five exectutives at each corporation absorbed some 5 percent of corporate profits on average…. As big as that number seems, though, that number doubled just ten years later.”

    Some suggest that this is simply the work of the free market rewarding what has become an increasingly important job for American corporations. But defenders of escalating pay often forget that boards aren’t always looking after the best interests of their shareholders, especially when it comes to deciding the pay of an executive who is in their peer group and is likely responsible for placing directors on the board in the first place.