Pay Communication, Justice and Affect: The Asymmetric Effects of Process and Outcome Pay Transparency on Counterproductive Workplace Behavior
Description
We examined the role of employee justice perceptions in explaining the distinct effects of two forms of pay transparency– process versus outcome pay transparency– on counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB). Study 1, a field study of 321 employees, revealed that process pay transparency is inversely related to CWB-O, with this effect mediated by greater procedural justice perceptions. In contrast, among employees perceiving their pay position as being lower than that of referent others, outcome pay transparency is positively associated with both CWB-O and CWB-I, with this effect mediated by reduced distributive justice perceptions. Study 2, using an online simulation-based experiment conducted on 394 employees and assessing actual deception behaviors, replicated and extended these findings. Specifically, when pay allocations were transparent (vs. secretive) and participant's pay was manipulated to be lower than that of teammates, participants reported lower distributive justice perceptions leading to heightened deception behaviors, with this effect mediated by a more negative emotional state. Analyses were done using MPlus 8.4. Files (.dat , and .inp , files are attached) for both CFA (Study 1) and path analyses (Studies 1 and 2). *-alt* files were used for testing alternative models reported in the papaer. R file and .csv file (Study 1) were used to compute alpha and omega values for ordinal indicators. Finally, *-omega* files (Study 2) were used to compute omegas in Study 2.