The effect of horizontal pay dispersion on the effectiveness of performance-based incentives

Isabella Grabner () and Melissa A. Martin ()

No 06/2020, Department for Strategy and Innovation Working Paper Series from WU Vienna University of Economics and Business

Abstract: In response to general calls for increased transparency in society, pay transparency policies are growing in importance. Given that pay transparency unavoidably gives employees the opportunity to make comparisons between themselves and others, in this study we address the question of how these comparisons impact the incentive effects of performance contingent pay, and consequently their performance outcomes. Specifically, we empirically examine whether horizontal pay dispersion alters the effectiveness of performance-based pay contracts, which firms typically use to incentivize effort. Exploiting our unique access to a large healthcare provider, we document the moderating role of horizontal pay dispersion on the effectiveness of individual monetary incentives at generating increased individual performance. To provide a more nuanced understanding of the moderating effect of pay dispersion, we further examine the boundary conditions of the proposed interaction. In particular, we examine the differential effect of overall pay dispersion on employees that rank high versus low in the pay distribution and disaggregate overall pay dispersion into performance-related versus performance-unrelated pay dispersion. Our findings consistently show a positive moderating effect of pay dispersion when employees are more likely to consider the observed pay dispersion as legitimate, and a negative moderation effect when this is less likely the case. Our study strengthens the understanding of how individual level incentives function in the context of a multi-person firm setting. Our results document that individual incentives are effective, but also suggest that pay dispersion can have a significant influence on the incentive-performance relation. These findings provide some evidence that individuals are concerned not only with their own payout, but also with that of others, and that this concern has a significant impact on individual’s effort provision, and consequently performance.

Keywords: Incentive compensation; pay-for-performance sensitivity; social comparisons; pay dispersion; pay transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta and nep-hrm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://epub.wu.ac.at/7407/ original version (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (https://epub.wu.ac.at/7407/ [308 PERMANENT REDIRECT]--> https://epub.wu.ac.at/id/eprint/7407 [302 FOUND]--> https://research.wu.ac.at/en/publications/978c8319-ec46-4099-8421-9513a4f5533f)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wiw:wus055:7407

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department for Strategy and Innovation Working Paper Series from WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WU Library ().