Both practitioners and academics alike have directed increasing attention to the field of corporate identity. Despite significant contributions in the last several years towards understanding and identifying this concept, a definitive construct of corporate identity and its measurements does not yet exist. Much anecdotal literature and many case studies surround this area of study, but to date no research study has empirically tested the domain of this construct. This paper examines the definitions, models, and specific elements of corporate identity through a review of literature. Based on this review, a holistic corporate identity model is developed. This paper also discusses the challenges in developing the corporate identity construct.

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Considerable speculation but little empirical evidence exists concerning the relationship between compesnation schemes, the behavior of corporate decisionmakers, and the end-measure of increased stockholder wealth. A possibility exists that the short-term optimization of earnings, undertaken to maximize an executive's current bonus, could be undertaken at the expense of the longterm health of the firm.Behavioral biases created by short-term, bonus-based compensation schemes could provide a partial explanation for the slowdown in the long-term growth in productivity within the United States, as reported by Rappaport (1978), specifically in the areas of capital investment, improvements in labor productivity, and advances in technology. According to Rappaport, the United States has the lowest ratio of capital investment to GNP and the highest percentage of obsolete production capacity among the industrialized countries.In a survey of the development of managerial control practices, Kaplan (1984) calls for additional research to find remedies for the excessive focus on shortterm financial performance which is fostered by the traditional performance evaluation systems existing in many of the advanced countries, including the US. These schemes place heavy emphasis on current accounting measures, which could consciously or unconsciously bias the operating decisions of those who control the firm. The objective of this research is to provide empirical evidence on the proposition that short-run executive compensation schemes lead to short-run decisions, at least regarding expenditures which are discretionary.Recent studies concerned with the principal/agency relationship have incorporated the compensation variable in their models of agents' decisions relating to accounting choices (Watts and Zimmerman, 1978;Hagerman and Zmijewski, 1979;and Bowen, Noreen and Lacey, 1981). However, a severe construct validity issue exists because of their use of a zero-one dummy variable for management compensation. This constraint, especially in regression calculations, could have contributed to the insignificant results reported in these studies. The intent of the research reported here was to improve the construct validity of the compensation variable, and to treat it as the independent variable.

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