Compensation in question. Executives who substitute cash for benefits create unintended regulatory and quality consequences.

When executives convert benefit dollars to cash, their compensation invites regulatory scrutiny.

Legitimacy, trustee incentives, and board processes: the case of public and private non-profit nursing homes.

Using a unique data set, this study explores how type of ownership (government/private) is related to processes of governance. The findings suggest that the neo-institutional perspective and the self-interest rationale of the agency perspective are helpful in explaining processes of governance in both government- and privately owned non-profit organizations. Due to adverse incentives and the quest for legitimacy, supervising governance bodies within local government-owned non-profit institutions pay relatively less attention to the development of high quality supervising bodies and delegate little to management. Our findings also indicate that governance processes in private institutions are more aligned with the business model and that this alignment is likely driven by a concern to improve decision making. By contrast, our data also suggest that in local government-owned institutions re-election concerns of politicians-trustees are an important force in the governance processes of these institutions. In view of these adverse incentives - in contrast to the case of private organizations - a governance code is unlikely to entail much improvement in government-owned organizations.

The future of voluntary governance.

Opinions about whether or not trustees should be paid waver between the belief that the need for sharpened board expertise demands compensation to the philosophy that payment is an affront to trustees' altruism.

A higher standard. Report tells Congress to let regulators strip tax-exempt status and go after boards that approve unreasonable executive pay.

It's time to give regulators the power to strip the tax-exempt status from charities that offer unreasonable executive compensation. That's the word from the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector's report to Congress. The report's 120 recommendations come amid increasing scrutiny of not-for-profits, and a spokesman for Sen. Chuck Grassley, left, says the Iowa lawmaker hopes to introduce legislation on the matter soon.