[Ias-public] The Institute for Analytical Sociology Seminar: Kinga Makovi, March 23, 14:30CET, online on Zoom

[Madelene Töpfer]

The Institute for Analytical Sociology Seminar

Venue: Online on Zoom (see Zoom link in the end of the email)


Thursday, March 23 @ 14:30CET

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Pay for Unequal Work? Uncertain Performance and Fairness in the Workplace

Kinga Makovi
New York University, Abu Dhabi


Abstract:
Most modern workplaces aim to compensate employees according to principles of fairness and meritocracy, whereby compensation is primarily determined by individual performance. Yet, in many organizations, work routinely involves collaborative tasks where individual contributions to teamwork are difficult to observe and evaluate. Prior research demonstrates that these settings are particularly ripe for decision-making biases, inducing pay differences due to characteristics other than performance. Therefore, how evaluators assess what is fair when they are uncertain about performance is the question we explore. We conduct a behavioral experiment (N = 2164) where American liberals and conservatives have to divide a bonus between two team members without knowing their individual contributions to the team. Instead, they receive information about two important contextual cues: the distribution of opportunities requiring high levels of effort between the workers and their race. We observe that liberals and conservatives give a higher proportion of the bonus to workers exposed to more tasks that require higher levels of effort, regardless of their performance, and liberals reward even more workers who voluntarily choose tasks that require higher levels of effort. Moreover, we find that the workers' race matters for liberals (but not for conservatives) mainly when opportunities are exogenously assigned to workers but not when they are chosen. More broadly, this study contributes to our knowledge of how pay inequality is shaped by structural conditions of inequality and their effect on cognitive mechanisms that help employers rationalize unequal pay.


Topic: IAS Seminars
Join Zoom Meeting
https://liu-se.zoom.us/j/65535789369
Meeting ID: 655 3578 9369




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Madelene Töpfer
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