EFFECTS OF COMPENSATION STRATEGY ON JOB PAY DECISIONS
This research summarizes an article that reported the results of an examination of variations in compensation levels among workers performing the same job. The article summarized is as follows:
Weber, Caroline L., and Rynes, Sara L. (1991). Effects of compensation strategy on job pay decisions. Academy of Management Journal, 34(1), 86 108. Compensation is the most visible indicator of the presence of inequalities among different groups of employed persons. Wage differentials have existed for as long as there have been industrial societies. These differentials are often perceived by the general public to be representative of legitimate work related differences between different jobs. In point of fact, however, wage differentials are often the product of disparate societal factors, which have combined to create wage differentials which bear little relationship to the work related differences between various jobs. These disparate societal factors range from overt discrimination, based on the personal characteristics of individual job holders, to supply and demand situations, and from traditional perceptions, which have not been adapted to contemporary society, to the relative strengths of organized groups.
Long ago, in most industrialized societies, interest groups began to exert pressures aimed at gaining wage equity for one or more classes of employees. The most successful of these interest groups were the organized labor unions, which, effectively, began in the late nineteenth century. In the United States in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the slogan "equal pay for equal work" became a familiar theme of interest groups seeking wage equity first for female workers, and later for minority group workers. Finally, in the 1960s, a significant piece of national legislation dealing with the problem was enacted into law The Civil ...