Whether voluntary or mandatory in nature, most recent corporate governance codes of best practice assume that board structural independence, and the application by boards of outcome-based incentive plans, are important boundary conditions for the enforcement of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) pay-for-firm-performance; that is, for optimal contracting between owners and executive agents. We test this logic on a large Australian sample using a system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach to dynamic panel data estimation. We find that Australian boards exhibiting best practice structural arrangements -those chaired by non-executives and dominated by non-executive directors at the full board and compensation committee levels -are no more adept at enforcing CEO pay-for-firm-performance than are executive-dominated boards. These findings suggest that policy makers' faith in incentive plans and the moderating influence of structural independence per se may be misplaced. Our findings also hold significant implications for corporate governance theory. Specifically, the findings lend further support to a contingency-based understanding of board composition, reward choice and monitoring; an approach integrating the insights afforded by behavioural approaches to Agency Theory and by social-cognitive and institutional understandings of director outlook, decision-making and behaviour.j oms_895 487..513

Managing Employee Performance and Reward critically examines contemporary theory and practice in these central fields of human resource management (HRM), providing a comprehensive overview of the key concepts and topics, and draws on a wide range of case studies to demonstrate the theories. The book provides an analysis of the crucial literature on remuneration and performance management, exploring the main theories, debates and practices. The book seeks to provide students with a thorough understanding of the debates associated with issues of work motivation, pay equity, performance management ethics; the methods of pay and performance management; the systems of performance pay; and the options and issues facing managers. It encourages students to form a critical understanding of the debates it raises by providing an overview of the alternatives.

F ar too little is known about how employees, as the subject of Human ResourceManagement (HRM), react to its practice. Both the performance-focused and critical streams of writing on HRM perceive the employee in instrumental terms, while neither stream provides a satisfactory means of accommodating competing conceptions of HRM itself. An emerging stream of employee-focused literature makes a credible attempt to assess employee reactions but it too is affected by conceptual and methodological limitations. With a view to addressing these shortcomings, this article employs a discursive framework of analysis which distinguishes between concepts (HRM ideas), objects (idealised human resources) and subjects (thinking and acting employees on whom HRM is practised). It argues that a meaningful evaluation of the discursive concept of HRM only becomes possible by analysing the primary discursive object of HRM (the employee) as a discursive subject. Drawing on the most promising insights offered in the employee-focused literature, including the notions of the psychological contract and organisational justice, the article proposes a series of research questions designed to assist researchers to be more methodical and reflexive in their efforts to recentre the employee as the primary subject of HRM.

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Based on data from 315 Canadian and Australian firms, this study examines the incidence of 13 specific forms of performance pay, along with factors that may affect their incidence. Overall, Canadian and Australian firms showed similar incidences of most forms of performance pay, with employee profit sharing the notable exception. Depending on the type and form of performance pay, various factors predicted the incidence of performance pay. As expected, firm size and unionization were among the most important predictors of individual and organizational performance pay, but neither factor predicted group performance pay. The results also indicated that high involvement firms in both Canada and Australia used more organizational performance pay than other firms, but not more group or individual performance pay. This study provides qualified support for convergence in international pay practices, but also highlights the continued importance of contextual and firm-level factors.