評論
打印
Executive pay
高管薪資
The final reckoning
死后算賬
When bosses die in office, their true value is revealed
經(jīng)理意外翹辮子了，他們的真正價值才浮出水面
Worth every penny
一分錢一分貨
IN HIS book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Thomas Piketty argues that it is impossible to find an “objective basis” for the high salaries of senior executives in terms of their individual productivity: they pay themselves such exorbitant sums simply because they can. However, in a forthcoming paper in Management Science, an American journal, two academics claim to have found such an objective measure, and conclude that most bosses are not overpaid.
托馬斯·皮克提在他的《二十一世紀的資本論》一書中有這樣的論述，即就高級管理人員的的個人生產(chǎn)力而言，實在是找不到他們能獲得高額薪水的“客觀依據(jù)”：他們?yōu)樽约洪_出這么高的薪水，純粹就是因為他們有權(quán)力這么做。然而，在即將發(fā)表在《管理科學(xué)》的一篇論文中，兩位學(xué)者宣稱他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了一種客觀的衡量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，并由此得出大多數(shù)高管的薪水并沒有多付。
In their study, Bang Dang Nguyen of the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School and Kasper Meisner Nielsen of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology looked at how firms' shares react when the chief executive or another prominent manager dies suddenly. They identified 149 cases of this happening at American companies between 1991 and 2008.
該論文的作者分別是賈吉商學(xué)院的Bang Dang Nguyen和香港科技大學(xué)Kasper Meisner Nielsen，他們研究著眼于當(dāng)企業(yè)的總經(jīng)理或其他高管意外死亡后公司股價的變動情況。他們從1991至2008年間的美國公司中甄選出了149家發(fā)生此類情況的公司進行研究。
They deem a boss to be overpaid if he gets more than his peers at firms of a similar type and size, but fails to boost his company's stockmarket value by at least the amount of his pay premium. They then assume that when an overpaid boss dies, investors will expect his successor's pay to revert to the average, and will mark up its shares in anticipation of getting back the excess amount they had been handing to the deceased.
這兩位研究者認為，判斷一名總經(jīng)理薪資過高的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)是：如果一名總經(jīng)理的薪水高于與他所在公司同類型、同等大小公司的總經(jīng)理的薪資水平，但他給公司市值帶來的提升卻低于其薪資的溢價。他們繼續(xù)假設(shè)，若一名薪資虛高的經(jīng)理去世，股東們會預(yù)計他的繼任者薪資將回歸正常水平，于是就可以收回原先由死者多占有的那部分財富，進而抬高了股價。
So, if the shares rise on an executive's death, that means he was overpaid; if they fall, he was not. By this measure only 42% of the bosses studied were overpaid; furthermore, those with the most eye-popping rewards were found to be giving the best value for money, as measured by the share-price slump when they passed away.
所以說，如果一名經(jīng)理去世后，其公司的股價上升了，那就說明該經(jīng)理的薪資過高了；股價降低的話，則沒有。依據(jù)這種判斷方法，作為研究樣本的總經(jīng)理中薪資過高的比重只有42%了。此外，那些報酬高的令人咋舌的經(jīng)理人，他們給公司帶來的價值完全對得起他們的薪資—他們?nèi)ナ篮蠊竟蓛r往往會大幅下跌。
The study also reckons that of the increase in value that results from a firm hiring an executive, he gets 71% and the shareholders therefore get 29%. In the sense that investors at least get some positive reward from the relationship, executives as a whole are not overpaid.
研究還計算出，一家公司雇傭的高管為其創(chuàng)造的價值提升中，該高管獲得其中的71%，其他29%則是股東的收益。在這場雇傭關(guān)系中，股東是受益方，從這一層面講，整體上來說高級管理人員的薪資并不過高。
Followers of Mr Piketty are unlikely to be convinced. They would say that even when bosses add more value than the amount by which their pay exceeds the average, they are still overpaid because the average is itself excessive; and that it is inherently indecent for bosses to get such a big share of the gains from their relationship with their firms. But at least the study has added a bit of light to a debate that usually generates little but heat.
也許，皮特提的追隨者們不會就這么被說服。他們會說，即使高管們創(chuàng)造的價值要比他薪資高于平均水平
的數(shù)額還高，他的薪資仍是不合理的，因為這個平均水平本身就太高了；而且，一名從雇傭者那里撈走在收益中的這么大一部分，這件事本身就不很光彩。但不管怎樣，這項研究還是這個雷聲大雨點小的爭議領(lǐng)域的一場新雨。
