Incentives to move up: Effects of pay gaps between levels on employee performance

摘要

Employees of a certain rank are motivated by the pay gap between them and the levels above (upward comparison), and the pay gap between them and the levels below (downward comparison). In some cases, employees face multiple upward comparisons such as immediate and subsequent upward comparisons. We hypothesise that upward comparison matters more than downward comparison, and in the case of multiple upward comparisons, the immediate one matters more than the subsequent ones. We also hypothesise that the pay gap effect resulting from the upward/downward comparison ought to be non-linear in that performance increases with pay gap size at a decreasing rate. The results from two empirical studies, namely, a longitudinal field study and a laboratory experiment, largely support our hypotheses.