Vergne et al (2018)

Vergne, JP, Georg Wernicke, Steffen Brenner, and Kristian Roed Nielsen. “Signal Incongruence and Its Consequences: A Study of Media Disapproval and CEO Overcompensation.” Working paper (Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada), 2018.

From the authors’ abstract: “We draw on the signaling and infomediary literatures to examine how media evaluations of CEO overcompensation (a negative cue associated with selfishness and greed) are affected by the presence of corporate philanthropy (a positive cue associated with altruism and generosity). In line with our theory on signal incongruence, we find that firms engaged in philanthropy receive more media disapproval when they overcompensate their CEO, but they are also more likely to decrease CEO overcompensation as a response… [Our] findings shed new light on the media as agents of external corporate governance for firms and open new avenues for research on executive compensation.”

Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3132772