Are CEOs Overpaid?
Alex Harken
11/5/2015
Rhetoric 1030
Abstract
As
students aspiring to be in the working world someday, it is important for us to
know how much money our supervisors will be taking home at the end of each
year. A survey was conducted to see how college students feel about what
current CEOs are making. The survey was analyzed and discussed. It was found
that students generally ere on the side of CEOs, feeling that they are not
overpaid. As a result of these findings, in the future CEOs might end up taking
even more home.
Introduction
It
is no doubt that in today’s society, CEO’s are considered some of the most
powerful men and women. They are put in charge of running entire companies,
where everyone is looking to them for guidance and leadership. However, is
their drive comprised of the desire to be successful, or the big paychecks they
get to take home at the end of the year?
In
an article written by the Washington Post, it was found that in the 1950s the
ration between CEO compensation and that have an average worker was 20:1. This
put the CEO well in front of that of the average worker and led to the rise of
many great companies. Today that ratio has catapulted its way up to 200:1. Have
the job duties of CEO’s changed that much? Another article by the Post cited
that some CEO’s have saved companies (i.e. Steve Jobs of Apple, Lou Gerstner of
IBM, and Lee Iacocca of Chrysler). These men deserve to be rewarded for their
extensive efforts for their respective companies. Most CEO’s do not need to
fill this purpose though.
We
know what part of our society is saying, but what about our future society? As a
majority of business students took part in this study, some may eventually be
working directly with CEO’s. Still others may be that “average” worker in a
company. How do college students fell about what CEO’s are being paid? Is it
even a current concern, or are we still in the phase where we do not have to worry
about things of this nature? A survey of a small sample can give us a glimpse
of the feelings towards the question “Are CEO’s overpaid?”
Methods
Participants:
20 University of Iowa students participated in this survey. Most were business
students in the Henry B. Tippie College of Business. Most participants were
also college freshman.
Data
Sources: A survey was created using www.surveymonkey.com.
Procedures:
Participants
were given access to the survey through an embedded version on a blog and some
were also emailed the survey. Participants were required to answer every
question on the survey and they were also only allowed to submit one response.
The survey consisted of a series of 6 questions with the pre-determined
responses of: yes, no, maybe, and unsure. There was also one open ended
question asking participants what they thought good qualities of a CEO were.
Results
Figure 1: Are CEO’s
overpaid?
This figure shows that the majority of participants
believe that CEO’s are overpaid. The next highest response was maybe. Followed
by five people saying “yes” CEO’s are overpaid. Only one person said they were
“unsure” if CEO’s are overpaid.
Figure 2: Are CEO’s high
salary required to get them to come work for a specific company?
In Figure 2, an observer can see that over half of
participant’s believe that in order for a CEO to want to work for a specific
company, a high salary will be required. Only one person thought this would not
be necessary, while seven respondents thought that it might be necessary.
Discussion
The results from the survey indicate that there might be
some general disagreement with what some of the public is thinking. In fact,
based on the survey, it seems most participants would agree with author Ira T.
Kay. Her article titled “Don’t mess with CEO Pay” attempts to shed light on the
fact that we should not be concerned with changing CEO compensation. She
highlights that “CEOs are not interchangeable and not chosen by lot; they are
an extremely important asset to their companies and generally represent an
excellent investment.”
In Figure 2, participants believed that the allure of a
high salary would be what attracted CEOs most. So if a high salary is going to
get the CEOs, can we really complain about some of them being over the top? If
a CEO knows they are valuable enough, they are going to get top dollar for
themselves. They are not going to sell themselves short. There seems to be a
contradiction among participants when it comes to this topic.
The level of knowledge about this topic obviously played
a factor in this survey. Surprisingly, not many participants ever responded
with unsure. But there were a few maybes, meaning they were not quite sure
which way to lean. In the future, I think this survey could be conducted with
multiple age groups. A distinction between a freshman survey, a sophomore
survey, a junior survey, and a senior survey (with the possibility of a
graduate survey) would enhance the data in a way so observers can see where
exactly participants start being more opinionated towards these topics. Or
maybe age has nothing to do with it and it is another factor. A future survey
could address these problems.
References
Kay, I. T. (2006, Don't
mess with CEO pay. Across the Board Vol.XLIII, no.1, , 23-28. Retrieved from http://sks.sirs.com
Samuelson, R. J. (2014,
Jun 23). The CEO aristocracy. Washington Post Retrieved from http://sks.sirs.com
Appendix
Short
Answer:
Question
1: What are qualities of a good CEO?
Multiple
Choice (Yes, No, Maybe, Unsure)
Question
2: Is their high salary required to get them to come work for a specific
company?
Question
3: Do you believe CEOs are overpaid?
Question
4: Does the size of the company affect what a CEO is paid?
Question
5: Does non-profit vs. for profit affect how much a CEO is paid?
Question
6: Does the CEOs field affect how much they will be paid?
Question 7: On average,
what percent of a company’s revenue do CEOs take home?
Overall I thought the report was good. The format and language for the most part were concise and clear which is good for this assignment. However, I did notice a few grammatical errors as I was reading the article. I would suggest going through you're paper again and fix any grammatical errors you see.
ReplyDeleteThe organization was formatted as required for the most part. The article was sectioned correctly and the article had good flow and transitions from section to section. However, the reference page and appendix were not formatted as two separate pages. I would go back and reformat your paper so it does so.
The quality and analysis of your survey was good. In your results section, you chose simple yet effective graphs for readers to see and interpret. The survey itself was good too. However, I didn't really feel like the open ended question served much purpose to you're report overall.
After reading your draft it seems like there are a few ways that you could improve your writing. One major way I think you could improve is by adding more of the information from your survey into your report. Another way I think you could improve is by going over your results section and changing some of your information because it seemed as if some of the information didn't match up with the information on your graphs. The final way you could improve is by fixing some of the small grammatical errors in your writing.
ReplyDeleteAfter I was done reading your draft I looked back at your appendix and I saw that there was a lot of questions that you asked on your survey that you did not mention in your report. It makes sense that some of this information would be left out because it is a short report and some of the survey questions could've been hard to incorporate into your writing, but I think if you mentioned some of the results of your survey in respect to the other questions that you asked students, then I think it would improve the quality of the report as a whole.
In the first paragraph of your results section you wrote, "This figure shows that the majority of participants believe that CEO's are overpaid. But in the graph above it clearly shows that the majority of the people answered no, CEOs are not overpaid. This could have been a simple mistake in your writing or the graph could've been created wrong, but fixing things like this will greatly improve the quality of your paper.
Additionally you could improve your paper by fixing some of the grammatical and spelling errors. There are a few times in your writing where it looks like you either spelled the word wrong or forgot an apostrophe or comma. For example, in the second paragraph of your introduction you wrote, " it was found that int he 1950s the ration between CEO compensation..." it is obvious you meant ratio, but an error like this could make it hard for the reader to follow. By fixing this mistake as well as a few others, your paper will flow much more smoothly.