 How Do I Compare? The Effect of Work-Unit Demographics on Reactions to Pay InequalityJ. Adam Cobb, Keller Jr and Samir Nurmohamed ILR Review, 2022, vol. 75, issue 3, 665-692 Abstract: Prior research suggests that individuals react negatively when they perceive they are underpaid. Moreover, individuals frequently select pay referents who share their race and gender, suggesting that demographic similarity affects one’s knowledge of pay differences. Leveraging these insights, the authors examine whether the gender and racial composition of a work unit shapes individuals’ reactions to pay deprivation. Using field data from a large health care organization, they find that pay deprivation resulting from workers receiving less pay than their same-sex and same-race coworkers prompts a significantly stronger response than does pay deprivation arising from workers receiving less pay than their demographically dissimilar colleagues. A supplemental experiment reveals that this relationship likely results from individuals’ propensity to select same-category others as pay referents, shaping workers’ information about their colleagues’ pay. The study’s findings underscore the need to theoretically and empirically account for how demographically driven social comparison processes affect reactions to pay inequality. Keywords: pay inequality; pay deprivation; turnover; social comparisons; organizational wage-setting (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:75:y:2022:i:3:p:665-692 DOI: 10.1177/00197939211001874 Access Statistics for this article More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School |
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