'Industrial relations' employee satisfaction dependent on more than relative pay

August 27, 2008

A new study in the journal Industrial Relations reveals that employee well-being is dependent upon the rank of an individual's wage within a comparison group, as opposed to the individual's absolute pay.

Gordon D.A. Brown, Jonathan Gardner, Andrew J. Oswald, and Jing Qian asked undergraduates to rate how satisfied they would be with wages they might be offered for their first job after college. Subjects expressed feelings about each potential wage in the context of a set of other wages. Researchers also analyzed data from 16,000 employees who reported on workplace satisfaction.

Employees did not care solely about their absolute level of pay. Workers were more concerned with their income relative to the salary levels around them in their workplace. Individuals were not just influenced by relative income but by the rank-ordered position of his or her wage within a comparison set.

Source: Wiley

Rate this story - 2.5 /5 (2 votes)

rank
1
2
3
4
5

view popular

Other News

Museum: Galileo's fingers, tooth are found

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

18 hours ago | not rated yet | 5

(AP) -- Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum ...

Measure to change U. of Neb. stem-cell rule fails (AP)

Measure to change U. of Neb. stem-cell rule fails (Update 2)

Other Sciences / Other

18 hours ago | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

(AP) -- The University of Nebraska's governing board on Friday voted not to place tighter restrictions on embryonic stem cell research than those outlined under federal guidelines, which were expanded after ...

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin (AP)

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin (Update)

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

Nov 20, 2009 | 1.9 / 5 (23) | 23

(AP) -- A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading ...

Three of a kind: Revealing language’s universal essence

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

Nov 20, 2009 | 3.8 / 5 (10) | 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- On the surface, English, Japanese, and Kinande, a member of the Bantu family of languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have little in common. It is not just that the vocabularies ...

New insights into the life of the Maya

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

Nov 16, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (15) | 7

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ancient artifacts are almost always concerned with rich and powerful religious and political leaders, but new excavations of an ancient Maya site have unearthed a pyramid decorated with murals ...