Recession Times
Though bonuses make an integral component of free market practices on human beings, continuing to pay them to executives by companies benefiting from US Government financial help as planned and as contracted is facing great criticism and opposition from politicians and media. The case of American Insurance Group is an obvious example of how refused normal bonus incentives have become after the capital market meltdown.
A possible solution against the criticism of overpaying executives in boom times and underpaying them in recession times is by linking bonus targets to an Operating Index. By doing so external effects (economic cycles) can be excluded from performance measurement. This makes incentive pay more fair or likely not certain as bonuses are based on performance relative to other companies in the peer universe.
While the notion of a fair system seems to be an equal deal, those who are outperforming by a large margin will feel slighted by this approach; Thus, a system based on individual company performance has been the standard.
Read more about this topic: Incentive
Famous quotes containing the word times:
“It seems to me that we do not know nearly enough about ourselves; that we do not often enough wonder if our lives, or some events and times in our lives, may not be analogues or metaphors or echoes of evolvements and happenings going on in other people?—or animals?—even forests or oceans or rocks?—in this world of ours or, even, in worlds or dimensions elsewhere.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)