As you might expect, a number of sociologists have offered a very different take on executive compensation than the one that I’m inclined to embrace. Gabriel Rossman of UCLA very kindly shares the lay of at least some of the land:

You won’t be surprised to hear that there’s a big lit in sociology on executive compensation and that it tends to emphasize strategy, politics, symbolic meaning, and the combinations of these as compared to a null model of a competitive and efficient labor market for management. One of the most interesting ideas is that there’s a “leapfrog” or “rachet” mechanism built into how executive compensation committees and headhunter consultants define compensation at “comparable firms” and then either meet or exceed that compensation. This seems to happen for a variety of reasons, but mostly a combination of board capture and signaling. The two best things I know on this are DiPrete, Gregory M. Eirich, and Matthew Pittinsky AJS 2010 [which those of you with a JSTOR password can access here] and Khurana 2002 (Searching for a Corporate Savior). …
There seems to be some other things going on too. The one that’s most pertinent to Cuban’s comments is the financialization of the economy, which hooks into the issue that a lot of the compensation is on upside in the form of stock options — effectively firms are making management a residual claimant.

I’m grateful to Gabriel for the pointers.