Board control, performance and CEO compensation in Taiwan

Agency theory starts with the assumption that people act in their own self‐interest, and holds that under normal conditions, the goals, interests, and risks of two actors (principal and agent) are not identical. This means that the agent will not necessarily act according to the interests of the principal. CEO compensation is the type of control mechanism that companies employ to reduce the agency problem. This paper took 201 manufacturing companies in the year 1998 in Taiwan, and used the LISTREL 8 model to analyze the influence of company performance, scale, and board of director control over CEO compensation. The results indicate is that company performance, scale, and control by the board of directors all influence CEO compensation, with company scale the main factor, followed by company performance, and control by the board of directors. I also find that CEO compensation is higher when the board of directors' does not have effective control. Moreover, the board of directors control of a company is diminished when the CTO and chairman of the board are one person, and also when the number of internal directors is great. Conversely, the board of directors' control is increased when their ratio of stock ownership is higher.