Compensation and benefits

John and Peter are two salesmen for the XYZ corporation. John sells twice as much as Peter. John earns twice as much as Peter, right? Wrong. John may even earn less. The XYZ corporation’s sales compensation plan is not unique in the modern business world. In the past decade many companies have turned to sophisticated […]

I was just a year out of college, and interviewing for a sales assistant position at PaineWebber. One of my prospective bosses offered me $24,000. I countered with $27,000. He pulled out his calculator like a gun from a holster, punched in $3,000, divided it by 52, and in a clipped tone responded, “That’s only […]

Three questions firms should ask themselves when deciding whether to automate.

(Editor’s note: This post forms part of the month-long HBR Debate, “Finance: The Way Forward.” It is the third post on this week’s topic: “Who is regulation for — the individual or society?”) Who is regulation for? This is a question that always intrigued me ever since I got involved in my research passion: share […]

The financial crisis and the recession have turned up the heat on U.S. corporate boards, exposing them to intense criticism for their decisions on executive...

Let's put aside that executive compensation debate for a moment and consider instead what Sreedhari Desai is studying. Does sky-high pay lead to worse...

My former colleague at Fortune magazine, Shawn Tully, has been trying for a while to popularize an acronym of his devising: HENRYs, for high earners, not rich yet. Yes, it’s a stretch, but it describes a real phenomenon: Very successful households (two-income couples, mostly), on the young side, who are making $250,000-$500,000 a year but […]

The country’s recent reforms don’t go nearly far enough.

The gap between CEO compensation and that of the average worker continues to grow at an astounding rate. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, CEO compensation in the United States was approximately 40 times greater than that of the average worker in 1960 and is now over 400 times greater (a much larger gap […]

The white hot debate about executive compensation has focused almost exclusively on the "short-termism" of CEOs, other business leaders, and boards at...

How to forecast performance—and then tailor training and incentives

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Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and regular blogger for HBR.org, explains why women’s compensation and advancement to the highest ranks have failed to keep pace with their impressive inroads into the workforce.

Plus three reasons they quit.

Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian on fighting for — and taking — paternity leave

To shift strategy, change how you pay your team.

Samsung spends a billion dollars a year on marketing. Here’s how it knows it’s putting every dollar in the right place.

I was privileged to be having lunch with Jack Welch a while back, and took the opportunity to ask him what he thought the most pressing issue facing American...

Traditional strategies for employee retention are unsuited to a world where talent runs free. It’s time for some fresh thinking.

Using the results of a survey of 380 companies in 34 industries, this author examines three basic types of compensation plans: salary, commission, and combination (salary plus commission). Most companies in the study favored a combination plan, but such plans have some disadvantages to offset their obvious attractiveness. The author sets out the possible reasons […]