Multiple salary comparisons, distributive justice, and employee withdrawal.

Summary

The paper "Multiple Salary Comparisons, Distributive Justice, and Employee Withdrawal" by Xu, Cropanzano, and McWha-Hermann, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in October 2024, explores the complex relationship between how employees perceive various salary comparisons, their sense of distributive justice, and their resulting withdrawal behaviors. Drawing upon the model of dispositional attribution and equity theory, the authors hypothesized that the impact of salary comparisons on perceived distributive justice follows a hierarchically restrictive schema. Specifically, they predicted that receiving a lower salary compared to a referent would have a more pronounced effect on perceived distributive justice than receiving a higher salary. This perception of justice, in turn, was expected to influence employee withdrawal, encompassing neglect, turnover intention, and voluntary turnover. Furthermore, the study proposed that the effects of salary comparisons are moderated by employees' "zero-sum construal of success," suggesting that individuals who view success as a finite resource would react differently to pay disparities. To test these hypotheses, the researchers conducted three distinct studies: a quasi-experimental study and two time-lagged field studies. Consistent with their predictions, the findings revealed that when employees faced incongruent salary comparison information (e.g., higher internally but lower externally), being underpaid compared to others significantly more strongly affected their perception of distributive justice than being overpaid. The subsequent decrease in perceived distributive justice was found to be negatively related to various forms of employee withdrawal. Moreover, the study confirmed that the impact of incongruent salary comparison information on distributive justice was more potent for employees who held a lower zero-sum construal of success. These findings offer significant theoretical and practical implications, deepening our understanding of the psychological mechanisms linking pay comparisons to workplace attitudes and behaviors. For organizations, the research underscores the critical importance of managing perceptions of pay fairness to mitigate negative outcomes such as employee turnover and reduced engagement, especially when employees have access to multiple, potentially conflicting, salary benchmarks.