Uzay Sezer

My research interests lie at the intersection of strategic human capital, incentive designs, and workplace inequality. My dissertation delves into the factors influencing executive pay schemes and their implications, with a particular emphasis on highlighting disparities and inequities across various dimensions of compensation.

The literature predominantly examines compensation in terms of its monetary value. However, compensation schemes, particularly for higher-level employees, can be intricate and exhibit diverse characteristics, such as variations in vesting schedules and performance assessment criteria. This raises questions about the factors leading to these variations and how employees receiving complex and multifaceted compensation packages react not only to monetary differences but also to other dimensions of pay. My research stream explores these conjectures by investigating the antecedents and consequences of the distribution of monetary and non-monetary features in executive compensation packages.

My job market paper “Eyes on the Clock: Disparities in the Temporal Dimension of Compensation and Executive Departure” has been presented at the CCC Doctoral Conference in 2024, while my paper “Same Paycheck, Different Yardsticks: Gender Differences in the Performance Evaluation Criteria of CEO Compensation” is the Winner for the PhD Paper Prize in the 2024 Strategic Management Society conference.

JOB MARKET PAPER 

Extant literature shows that top executives often consider the size of their CEO’s compensation when deciding whether to leave an organization. While the size of the pay package is important, executive compensation is multifaceted, encompassing not only base salaries and bonuses but also long-term pay components with variable vesting schedules. This complexity introduces variability in both the amount and temporal dimension of CEO compensation, which raises a question: How do executives respond to the temporal dimension of their CEO’s compensation? This paper addresses this question by examining the impact of the CEO’s pay duration—the time until compensation benefits are realized—on the departure decisions of non-CEO executives. We find that longer CEO pay duration is associated with a higher rate of non-CEO executive voluntary departure, potentially because it signals a delay in promotion opportunities. To further investigate this mechanism, we show that responses to CEO pay duration vary based on factors affecting promotion expectancies. This study provides the first evidence of how the temporal dimension of CEO compensation—an often overlooked dimension of pay—affects the departure decisions of non-CEO executives. This essay has been presented at various conferences, including the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society annual conferences in 2023, and the CCC Doctoral Conference in 2024.

WORKING PAPERS

• Sezer AU., & Gutierrez C., – "Eyes on the Clock: Temporality of CEO Pay and Executive Departure" 
• Sezer AU., & Gutierrez C., – "Same Paycheck, Different Yardsticks: Gender Differences in the Performance Evaluation Criteria of CEO Compensation"
• Sezer AU., – "Taking Stock of Stocks: CEO Long-Term Payments and Corporate Litigation Length"
• Sezer AU., Gutierrez C., & Mannucci PV., – "A Time for Carrots and a Time for Sticks? Examining the Effects of Incentive Framing on Creativity"