The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:31:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png The Limits of Using TSR as an Incentive Measure – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 The Limits of Using TSR as an Incentive Measure https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2015/10/13/the-limits-of-using-tsr-as-an-incentive-measure/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-limits-of-using-tsr-as-an-incentive-measure https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2015/10/13/the-limits-of-using-tsr-as-an-incentive-measure/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2015 14:37:08 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=71760?d=20151013112827EDT Posted by David N. Swinford, Pearl Meyer & Partners, LLC, on Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Editor's Note:

David N. Swinford is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Pearl Meyer & Partners, LLC. This post relates to research conducted by Pearl Meyer and the Cornell University ILR School’s Institute for Compensation Studies.

The widespread and growing use of total shareholder return (TSR) as an incentive measure is not the panacea many believe it to be. To test our point of view we wanted to explore one critical question: Does the inclusion of TSR measures in long-term incentive plans result in improved firm performance?

To find out the answer, Pearl Meyer collaborated with the Cornell University ILR School’s Institute for Compensation Studies to conduct original research on the use of TSR by S&P 500 companies over a ten year period.

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