Harvey, C, Maclean, M and Price, M orcid.org/0000-0001-5692-178X (2020) Executive remuneration and the limits of disclosure as an instrument of corporate governance. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 69. 102089. ISSN 1045-2354
Abstract
Why does disclosure continue to be seen as a panacea for failings in corporate governance, despite mounting evidence that it is a weak instrument of control? Through a micro-historical study of the constitution and deliberations of the Greenbury committee, which placed executive remuneration disclosure at the heart of UK corporate governance, we demonstrate how disclosure was discursively constructed by elite business leaders as a primary requirement of accountability of agents to owners. Our research, conducted twenty years after the publication of the Greenbury recommendations in 1995, is based on oral history interviews with surviving members of the committee and its professional advisers, who came to lament that their efforts perversely had helped escalate rather than moderate top executive pay. We argue that disclosure is a poor surrogate for real engagement by owners in corporate governance, and propose four general conditions that, if satisfied, might lead to increased accountability.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | Crown Copyright © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Critical Perspectives On Accounting. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Accountability; Corporate governance; Disclosure; Executive remuneration; Greenbury Report; Transparency |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 17 Sep 2019 10:28 |
Last Modified: | 10 Jan 2021 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.cpa.2019.06.003 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:150896 |
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