Rörlig ersättning till VD : Hur påverkar det företagets lönsamhet?

Sammanfattning: Background: It is today common for companies to provide some sort of incentive for CEO's and senior management positions to motivate, retain and benefit employees within a company. This is in order to drive the goals of the CEO and management in the direction that is desired by the owner. Currently, the Swedish centre-right government has forbidden the use of such variable pay within state-owned companies. There are two different attitudes to variable pay, one that is in favour and one that rejects it. However most people agree on the fact that a well-functioning incentive scheme can be of great strategic importance for a company. Approach: has variable pay to CEO's had any effect on the company's profitability. Aim: the aim of the study is to compare companies who use variable pay to CEO's with companies that do not in relation to their profitability in terms of profit margins, yearly performance, returns on total capital and returns on equity. Method: the study uses a quantitative approach. The statistical methods that are used to answer the research question are linear and logistic regression analyses of 51 publicly owned companies in Sweden. The statistical analyses utilises an existing database (Affärsdata) which has information based on the companies’ annual report. Due to the fact that the database lacked information concerning incentive schemes, this information was retrieved manually from the company websites (annual financial reports). The research approach is deductive as we have used a range of theories which we thereafter test through our empirical analysis. Results: The results for the linear regressions show that variable pay to CEO has little or no connection to the degree of the company’s profitability. The logistic regressions show a positive significant relationship between variable pay and the company’s odds of being profitable or not. Conclusion: The study shows that variable pay to the CEO is unlikely to have a big impact on the degree of profit or loss for a company. It does however show that variable pay to the CEO is of importance in terms of whether the company makes a profit or not.