November 22, 2011
Study: Bosses Who Don’t Play Golf are Paid 17% Less
– Broc Romanek, CompensationStandards.com
Here is an excerpt from this Economist article about this study:
Intriguingly, a recent study found that bosses who don’t play golf are paid 17% less on average than those who do. Could this be because the qualities that make a good golfer–a mixture of hyper-competitiveness with strategic thinking and coolness under fire–also make for a good chief executive?
Probably not. The same study found that although golfing bosses are paid more, they do not produce better results for shareholders. One explanation would be that they are buttering up members of the compensation committee by inviting them to play wonderful courses like Wentworth. More likely, the correlation is pure chance.