Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
3-2024
Abstract
Past research suggests that when organizations communicate the benefits of their work for human welfare—that is, use a social impact framing for work—job candidates are willing to accept lower wages because they expect the work to be personally meaningful. We argue that this explanation overlooks a less socially desirable mechanism by which social impact framing leads to lower compensation demands: the perception among job candidates that requesting higher pay will breach organizational expectations to value work for its intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) rewards, or constitute a motivational norm violation. We find evidence for our theory across five studies: a qualitative study (Study 1), a hiring experiment with undergraduate students (Study 2), an online labor market field experiment (Study 3), a vignette-based simulation (Study 4), and a stimulus sampling study using multiple occupations (Study 5). Exploratory analyses find that the negative effects are unique to monetary (versus nonmonetary) job rewards. Together, results uncover a novel mechanism by which emphasizing work for the greater good leads job candidates to accept lower wages—one that reflects candidates self-censoring on pay from concerns about violating organizational norms rather than solely from a willingness to trade higher pay for potentially meaningful work. Our research contributes to understandings of how social responsibility messaging impacts workers’ perceptions of organizations and negotiation behavior. It also holds implications for emerging scholarship on managers’ implicit theories of employee work motivation.
Keywords
social impact, norms, motivation, negotiation, compensation
Discipline
Organizational Behavior and Theory | Organization Development
Research Areas
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources; Psychology
Publication
Organization Science
Volume
35
Issue
2
First Page
525
Last Page
549
ISSN
1047-7039
Identifier
10.1287/orsc.2023.1675
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences
Citation
HUSSAIN, Insiya; PITESA, Marko; THAU, Stefan; and SCHAERER, Michael.
Pay suppression in social impact contexts: How framing work around the greater good inhibits job candidate compensation demands. (2024). Organization Science. 35, (2), 525-549.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/7214
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1675