Vorstandsbezüge – eine ökonomische Bewertung

In Germany there is much criticism concerning the amount of management board compensation of limied companies. This paper intends to resolve the question whether this criticism is justified on the basis of economic criteria, using approaches of business economics and HRM but also political economics, both from classical (labour theory of value) and from neoclassical (marginal product theory) perspectives. Moreover, approaches on the basis of behaviour and incentive as well as socio-economic approaches will be evaluated. However, all of these theoretical approaches are not apt to be applicable in practice. It is generally hardly possible to determine individuals’ contributions to value production in an enterprise based on the division of labour, neither with reference to ‘normal’ employees nor with reference to board members. For ‘normal’ employees, the social partners have been developing general (average) standards based on requirements and performance. This method, tried and tested in economic reality, is suggested for board remunerations as well. An alternative approach is a method based on the total economic situation of the enterprise which, however, requires a holistic procedure in terms of value production and stakeholders.