Bøger i Strategic Human Capital Management serien

Consumer demands, technological developments, and competitive conditions are increasingly unpredictable, and the globalization of markets and the opportunities of the internet disrupt the ways business is done and firms are managed. Companies need to foresee and react to such changes, and to initiate them themselves. Not surprisingly, flexibility has become a key driver of business success. Flexibility is achieved through the ownership of resources that provide adaptive capabilities, and through the adequate coordination of those resources. In this dissertation, the role of human resources for firm flexibility is studied. Employees contribute to a firm's flexibility through providing the basis for the "informal organization" and through showing discretionary behaviors (i.e., organizational citizenship behaviors). Likewise, management and firm structures also have a positive impact on a firm's flexibility, through coordinating and developing human resources strategically. The three chapters of this dissertation examine how firm structures, human resource management, and human resources interact in the creation of flexibility.

Human resource management (HRM) research indicates that HRM activities interact and reinforce each other in their impact on people and organizations; they are thus designed and studied as holistic systems. In this dissertation, systems theory is utilized to explore the interactive nature of HRM effectiveness. In the first study, a causal model is developed that explains and elaborates on the assumed interaction effects. The second study integrates popular theoretical approaches of HRM effectiveness with systems theory, and develops a systems-behavioral model that explains how interaction emerges and manifests as an effect of the organization's management system. In the third study, regression analysis is compared to neural networks, which are increasingly recognized as a research tool for complex organizational problems. Neural networks are introduced and evaluated, and extended by tools that examine interactions empirically; moreover, an ideal-type research approach is presented that combines the benefits of regression and neural network-based methodologies. Through integrating theoretical, methodological and practical considerations, the dissertation provides a comprehensive overview on HRM system effectiveness, applicable methodological tools to conceptualize and study interaction effects , and useful insights on how to leverage interaction in management practice.

Top managers have a significant impact on organizations because they are responsible for the formulation and implementation of corporate strategies, have the visibility and influence to shape the opinions of internal and external stakeholders, and coin the culture of their organizations, affecting employees at every level of the organization. Research has focused on the drivers and consequences of top managers' actions, with a particular focus on executive compensation, but important questions remain unanswered. This dissertation contributes to the literature on top executives by examining the antecedents of executive compensation, the influence of executive compensation on executive behavior, and the interplay of executive compensation and top executive personality. The first study introduces the role of compensation benchmarking for determining executive compensation to the management literature. It finds that benchmarking leads to compensation convergence. The second study examines the impact of executive compensation complexity on firm performance. The results show that compensation complexity is negatively related to accounting-based, market-based, and ESG-based metric of firm performance. The third study explores the implications of relative performance evaluation (RPE) on the imitation behavior of firms. It finds that the introduction of RPE is positively related to the imitation of the strategic actions of peer firms. The fourth study contributes to the growing literature on the impact of corporate social performance (CSP) goals in CEO contracts. Specifically, it examines how and when CSP incentives influence the CEO's attention to corporate social responsibility topics. The final essay examines the role of CEO personality; it finds that differences in CEO personality explain differences in the level of strategic conformity.Taken together, the essays in this dissertation make a significant contribution to the scholarly discourse on the influence of top managers on their companies. The empirical evidence presented expands the current understanding of how top executives affect strategic firm behaviors, and it provides insights for policymakers, managers, and investors.

Executive compensation has inspired controversial debate in both academia and the general public, and many voices criticize that executive compensation designs fail to deliver desired outcomes. Although much research has been devoted to understanding the antecedents and consequences of executive compensation design, important questions remain unanswered. This dissertation contributes to the field by exploring a previously neglected aspect: executive compensation complexity. Given the absence of an established measure of executive compensation complexity, there is an incomplete understanding of how complexity enters executive compensation contracts and what the consequences are for managers and corporations. The essays of this dissertation aim to narrow this gap.The first study presents a novel measure of executive compensation complexity, which is validated and utilized to examine the antecedents of executive compensation complexity. The second study explores the consequences of executive compensation complexity and finds that complexity impairs firm performance, regardless of the performance metric chosen (accounting-based, market-based, or ESG-based performance metrics). The third study explores the link between compensation design dispersion and executive turnover and reveals that executives with riskier compensation packages and fewer performance goals are more likely to move. The fourth study provides experimental evidence on the effect of CSR Fit dimensions and organizational reputation.Taken together, the essays of this dissertation make a significant and valuable contribution to the scholarly discourse on executive compensation. By shedding light on the complex nature of executive compensation and its implications for managers and corporations, this dissertation advances the current understanding of executive compensation and provides insights for policymakers, managers, and investors.

Compensation contracts have become ever more complex and individualized, particularly in the executive compensation domain, where increasingly diverse stakeholder demands and governance requirements have led to the inclusion of more and increasingly interrelated components into compensation contracts. Even the compensation of lower-level employees has become complex as firms individualize employee compensation and use many different rewards simultaneously. Research has examined elements of compensation in isolation but has attempted to avoid the complexities of compensation. This dissertation examines the consequences of compensation complexity and compensation design dispersion and contributes to a better understanding of compensation and its consequences for firms and employees.The first study examines how the complexity of executive compensation contracts affects firm performance. It finds that CEO compensation complexity negatively affects accounting, market, and ESG (i.e., environmental, social, and governance) metrics of firm performance and explores mechanisms that help explain the relationships. The second study examines the effect of compensation design dispersion within top management teams and its impact on executive turnover. The results show that compensation design dispersion affects executive turnover, both directly and in interaction with relative pay level. The third study addresses the role of compensation design dispersion in the development of procedural justice perceptions. Using two experiments, this study shows that compensation design dispersion causes lower procedural justice perceptions, which appears to be less problematic for participants with relatively easier to understand contracts. In summary, this dissertation provides a nuanced overview of complex compensation design and compensation design dispersion. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the effectiveness of compensation as an incentive and sorting tool for organizations, and of the implications of compensation design for the functioning of teams.