Board Leadership and Executive Compensation: Corporate Governance in India

Abstract

In India, the corporate landscape is dotted with family businesses and government through public sector undertakings (PSU). It is the feature with family business and PSU to have board leadership and head of management position with the same person in a majority of cases. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of board leadership in terms of chairman-CEO duality and chairman-CEO separation on executive compensation in Nifty 50 index companies. The study establishes positive relationship between duality of board chairman and CEO and their separation with executive compensation. An implication of this paper is that it addresses the issue of legislative response to board leadership in terms of good corporate governance practices.