There is every incentive for every superior in the civil service to, as much as possible, assess his subordinates’ performance positively, as this would reflect well on himself. If his subordinates are doing well, then it must be due to his “leadership”. It is also a way for senior civil servants to “buy” loyalty from his subordinates, albeit using other people’s (ie the people of Singapore) funds; he “buys” loyalty by promoting his subordinates.

Yet another benefit of promoting your subordinates is that if your subordinates’ salaries rise, what happens to your own ? Obviously it has to go up further, in order to maintain the differential. This is one of the tricks that some bosses employ, and this works very well in our civil service, because it works will little budgetary constraints. Everyone gets more bonuses, and everyone (in the civil service) is happy.

In conclusion, performance-related pay (especially in the civil service) is just an excuse to pay yourself more money.

agree. a high pay does not eliminate the possibilty of corruption.
a uncorruptable person, if we do find one : ), will not accept corrupt gifts and money even if he is paid a meagre sum of S1 per month.

Then they will do just enough to justify keeping their job, and the performance relted pay will ceased to be effective.

It is in the nature of human beings henceforth from time immemorial validates the tenet of darwin on the survival of the fittest where there is constant push and pull among different species and even within a singular species for the space (be it physical or mental challenges, etc) to survive.

That is the reason why good system must be calibrated regularly by delibrate design to balance out the different competing needs so as to prevent any destructive outcome.

They go through great length of putting up such strong academic argument to hike their own pay and those who can be bought in to support them.

It is foreseeable that within the near certain with another win in the next GE, they will be back to ask for me. Someone once said to me: “Human greed has no boundary”. Nothing endures but change.

i concur with you guy.

“The performance actually become so extraordinary and out of this world that it reach a level that totally devoid of accountability, transparency and responsibility.”

I think their performance has pass the tipping point

Some wallstreet top management jacked up their pay to match the fake growth.
This created a false corporate performance. Could this not have contributed to the staggering CEO salaries worldwide?

Who knows the truth of all corporations?
if no one knows then who is to say only a few faked the growth?

So, what is a suitable CEO salary?
I feel that we should follow the world’s mightiest nation’s standard.
USA top talent, that one you know very well, is HAPPY to ACCEPT a salary much less than the other ‘CEO’s from somewhere in asia despite the fact that he has one of the world’s most difficult jobs.

I think its about CONTENTMENT, GREED and Accountability.
If one is not Content with high salary, he will ask for more even when it is already way way more than enough compensation to do a job.

if one is GReedy, no amount will satisfy him.

If one is not accountable but continues to justify higher and higher salaries using whatever nonsense reasons, he will never be satisfied and could even do a madoffi.

I feel it is more of a principal-agent problem, where pay is a part of an incentive system to align the interests of the principal (citizens) with the agents (leaders). The high pay fails to address this issue, as the interests of the citizens (especially the mid-lower class) in recent years have been glossed aside in the name of GDP growth.

As you can see, the wording is highly precise and nuanced. Briefly, I feel it is easy to manipulate (by ignoring the caveats of the claims) such technical findings to lend credence to a certain point of view.

And as with most social science papers where definitive empirical/reproducible data is elusive, I am sure the arguments in the paper itself are heavily contested.

It actually do as exemplified by our expensive clowns. The performance actually become so extraordinary and out of this world that it reach a level that totally devoid of accountability, transparency and responsibility.

The answer is a no-brainer.

I rest my case, your honorable mere mortalites.

and closing your mouth too = monkey

The first part (Dr Bernd Irlenbusch of LSE) effectively says (in short) “provision of incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance” without too much elaboration and period.

The subsequent part (V G Narayanan of HBS) effectively says it is not about “asking how much should chief executives be paid but how they should be paid”.

With much elaboration on Narayanan’s part and to summarise, “pay must be structured to attract the right executives and give executives effective incentives to lead their companies to great performance.”

In short, incentives must not be in such that executives can game the system for their personal benefits at the expense of the whole company (drowning all the other important stakeholders).

I think how ST operates, performs, behaves depends on the leadership team there. So, what are their BACKGROUNDs, i wonder?

The first paragraph states one stand:
New research by the London School of Economics has argued that, far from encouraging people to strive to reach the heights, performance-related pay often does the opposite and encourages people to work less hard.

“Damn those PAP dogs! Will someone please go regulate their pay?”, the blood-thirsty mobs scream.

Then halfway down the article, we find the following:
“It would be highly unfortunate if, as now seems possible, massive amounts of regulation and active government intervention were to be the dominant forces determining how American executives are compensated,” he suggested.

Initiatives such as caps on pay, shareholder “say on pay” and ceilings on ratios of CEO pay to worker pay, appointment of a “federal compensation Tsar” and labelling of incentive pay as pay that causes excessive risk all simply reduced innovation and hurt shareholders, he argued.

“Governmental and shareholder second-guessing on pay would create an environment of fear in which no board would dare try an approach that’s different from the herd’s or that is tailored to the company’s particular strategy,” said Narayanan.

“While compensation reform is needed, it must come from within–from executives and boards, acting in the company’s best interests,” he added.

And this comes from the same article. Of course, we can take the populist measure (first paragraph) and ignore the recommendations of this article (the subsequent parts).

Kudos to “personal censorship”. The art of closing your eyes and ears to the unpalatable parts of life and screaming “LIES LIES ALL LIES!”

faster?, top dollar (“up” market), is “better” for public sector jobs.

elites’ pay peg to top private sector posts, performance ler?