Organizational hierarchical position, perception of unfair pay, and job satisfaction: evidence from large nation-wide surveys in Poland
ISSN: 1746-5265
Article publication date: 12 July 2022
Issue publication date: 30 September 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The study examines the relationship between perceived unfair pay and job satisfaction and how this relationship is contingent on organizational hierarchical rank.
Design/methodology/approach
The proprietary data are from ongoing surveys of individual workers conducted by a major Polish human resource consulting firm. The pooled cross-section dataset is comprised of nearly 330,000 individuals working in the Polish labor market during 2015–2017. Drawing upon various theories, the authors formalize and test three hypotheses. The estimations are performed using the ordered probit method.
Findings
Ceteris paribus, job satisfaction is increasing with organizational hierarchical rank; perceived unfairness of pay is negatively associated with job satisfaction, and organizational hierarchical rank exacerbates this negative relationship by making it stronger for employees holding higher organizational positions.
Originality/value
First, prior research is mainly confined to studying pay satisfaction as a contributing factor to job satisfaction, and perceived fairness of pay was rarely considered. Second, very few studies examine the role of hierarchical level as a moderator in the relationship between organizational justice and workplace outcomes. Third, the authors add to the scarce empirical literature on job satisfaction for post-Communist Central and East European countries as only a limited number of such studies exist for Poland.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Larry W. Taylor for many helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The authors are especially grateful to two anonymous reviewers for excellent suggestions for strengthening this work. The authors thank the Sedlak & Sedlak (S&S) company, Poland’s oldest HR advisory firm, for providing the data for this study and note that S&S was not responsible for any data analyses or interpretations belonging to this work. The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose, and all views and errors are the authors' own.
Citation
Adamchik, V.A., Hyclak, T.J. and Sedlak, P. (2022), "Organizational hierarchical position, perception of unfair pay, and job satisfaction: evidence from large nation-wide surveys in Poland", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 17 No. 5, pp. 621-636. https://doi.org/10.1108/BJM-02-2022-0057
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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