This research examines the results of the empirical literature on the relationship between non executive board compensation (and audit committees), corporate governance quality, and firm performance. In addition, we tackle a lack of research and investigate the sustainability of compensation systems in an applied two-tier system. Our sample comprises all DAX30, MDAX, SDAX, and TecDAX listed firms from the business years 2010 to 2015. We derive recommendations for practical and regulatory action to encourage a sustainable compensation of supervisory boards. In contrast to the US-american board system, there is no empirical evidence for the relationship between supervisory board compensation, corporate governance quality, and firm performance for the German two-tier system. Our results show that most firms in our sample do not incentivize their supervisory board and audit committee with a sustainable compensation system.