Article Abstract
Having limited information regarding how pay is distributed in their organization, employees often find it difficult to assess the fairness of their pay. Uncertainty management theory (UMT) posits that fairness uncertainty is aversive and that individuals experiencing it search for information to reduce this uncertainty. Pay information exchange – the communication of one's pay-related information to others in return for information from that other – provides a mechanism to reduce pay information uncertainty. We focus on third-party mediated pay information exchange (such as via Glassdoor and PayScale), an increasingly prevalent form of exchange. Drawing on UMT, we investigate why and when individuals exchange their pay information with such agents. Using data from a field experiment we find that (a) the willingness of employees to disclose their pay to a pay information exchange platform is influenced by perceived utility of a-priori information offered by the exchange partner, but that this relationship depends on the salience of fairness uncertainty to the employee, and (b) employer pay communication restrictiveness only attenuates the impact of disclosure willingness on actual disclosure when individuals engage in deliberative thinking about such restrictiveness and its possible consequences. We discuss the implications for theory and practice.
Journal of Organizational Behaviour, August 2023
About the researcher
Michelle Brown is a Professor in Human Resource Management in the Department of Management and Marketing. She undertakes research into performance and reward management.
Recent work on reward management examines the causes and consequences of pay secrecy/transparency for organisations and employees and the employee share participation decision making process. Research on performance management has investigated the framing and delivery of negative performance feedback.