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Using Porter’s (1980) generic strategy to define strategic positioning of law firms, this paper aims to explain why some law firms have more/less pay inequality than others do and examine the impact of pay inequality on law firms’ partners and the job satisfaction of their associates.

This paper uses data from The American Lawyer. The strategic positioning, compensation and job satisfaction scores of 614 firm-year observations of US law firms are hand-collected over the period from 2007 to 2016.

Non-equity partners at law firms with differentiation strategy (Porter, 1980) are more likely to build rainmaking ability than those at law firms relying on billable hours. As a result, law firms with differentiation strategy have a narrower pay gap between their equity and non-equity partners than those firms relying on billable hours. After controlling for the effects of strategy on pay inequality using two-stage and three-stage least squares models, this paper finds that a wider pay gap deprives associates of job satisfaction.

Considering strategic positioning, this paper validates why some law firms have more/less pay inequality and proves how pay inequality affects job satisfaction.

Purpose – We study the determinants of growing wage inequality in 16 OECD countries in the past two decades of the twentieth century. The main independent variables that we consider are those pertaining to labor market institutions, to international trade with less developed nations, and to deindustrialization.

Methodology – We specify a statistical model of pay differentials using first differences over five-year periods. The main estimation method used is weighted ordinary least squares. Where necessary, we use instrumental variables and two-stage least squares. We also undertake extensive robustness exercises, including a version of extreme bounds analysis and deleting each individual country from the analysis.

Findings – The determinants of wage inequality are different in the 1980s and in the 1990s. In the 1980s, growing wage dispersion is due to changes in the institutions of the labor market, including declining unionization and declines in the level at which wages are bargained collectively. In the 1990s, increases in pay inequality are due to increasing trade with less developed nations and weakening of social insurance programs.

Originality – This is the first study to report that the causes for pay inequality differed between the 1980s and the 1990s. It is also the first to document statistically that trade with the less developed nations systematically increases pay inequality in the developed world in the 1990s.

This study examines the relation between pay inequalities in top management teams and how efficiently firms convey valuation-relevant information to investors. Given that reward comparisons with reference groups create feelings of inequity, top management team pay inequalities can impair the information environment. This manifests into lengthier or less readable financial reports.

This paper employs an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model to test whether and how the pay distribution in the top management team is associated with the readability of the annual report. It also employs a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression model to further address the endogeneity concern. Lastly, it conducts cross-sectional analyses to examine heterogeneity in the observed relation.

Using the intra-firm pay gap as a proxy for pay inequality and file size, Bog Index and Fog Index of the 10-K filings as a proxy for financial report readability, the author finds that firms with larger pay gaps exhibit lengthier or less readable 10-K filings. The main findings are robust to the use of an instrumental variable approach. She finds some evidence that the relation is less pronounced when pay gaps are justified by explicit legal authority of CEOs or high ability of CEOs. The main results are robust to considerations of alternative explanations.

This paper adds a new dimension to the debate on pay inequality by studying pay gaps in the top management team and financial report readability. The author's findings have important implications for executive compensation policies and for corporate disclosure policies.

The state has an important role to play in reducing inequalities and a string of legislation from the Equal Pay Act of 1970 to the Equality Act of 2010 requires all companies, institutions and associations, as well as private and public services, to ensure equal treatment in access to employment. Yet political discourse has hardly focused on gender equality until very recently. Mandatory equal pay reporting was promoted as part of the Conservative 2015 election manifesto. Moreover, during David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party in October 2015, the Prime Minister claimed that it was impossible to have true opportunity without equality and made explicit reference to the problem of gender inequality. This chapter will thus examine the reasons why there are still high inequalities in terms of pay and prospects for women in Britain and how the 2008 crisis has impacted on women. It will also discuss a range of new policies to tackle gender inequality and consider whether this represents a discursive shift from vague notions of fairness to a decisive commitment from central government to tackle gender inequalities head on.

This paper investigates the extent, the determinants and the change in the gender pay gap in Vietnam in the period 2010–2016 in order to provide suggestions for policy adjustment to narrow gender pay inequality more effectively.

This study employs the propensity score matching (PSM) method to examine inequality in pay between female and male earners sharing identical characteristics. The analysis is conducted for both the full sample and various characteristic-based subsamples. This procedure is conducted for 2010 and 2016 separately to discover the change in gap and inequality during this period.

The matching results based on the data sets taken from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) 2010 and 2016 affirm that gender income inequality in Vietnam, though persisted, decreased significantly in 2016 compared to 2010, and was insignificant in many subsamples in 2016. In addition to the observable determinants including educational level, occupation, economic sector and industry, unobservable factors are proved to also play an important role in creating the gender pay gap in Vietnam.

The research findings suggest that policies aimed at mitigating gender pay inequality should take into account both observable characteristics and unobservable factors such as unobservable gender differences that affect wages and gender discrimination in pay.

This is the first study using a matching technique to investigate gender wage gap in Vietnam. With up-to-date data, longer research period and the superiority of the method used in dealing with sample selection bias, the results obtained are more robust, more detailed and reliable.

This study uses cross‐section and panel data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey to explore contextual influences on the relationship between performance‐related pay (PRP) and organizational performance. While it finds strong evidence that the use of PRP can enhance performance outcomes, it also determines that this relationship is qualified by the structure of workplace monitoring environments. In addition, it presents evidence that managers learn about optimum combinations of pay system and monitoring environment through a process of experimentation. Finally, although there exists a robust positive association in these data between use of PRP and pay inequality, it appears that these higher levels of inequality carry no performance penalty.

This chapter examines regulatory experimentation in relation to gender equality and the gender pay and representation gaps. The corporate sector has long promoted a voluntarist ‘business case’ for equality as part of their wider agenda to promote CSR, an approach that fits within the second web of rules. However, slow progress prompted governments to introduce proactive legislative measures such as gender pay gap reporting and gender quotas. At the same time, the traditional web of joint regulation continues to be relevant with trade unions using equal pay litigation to challenge the historical undervaluation of work by low-paid women and negotiate new collective pay structures to deliver tangible benefits to low-paid women. Union litigation in the UK local authority sector and the New Zealand care sector are compared. The chapter argues that the three webs are more usefully understood as complements rather than substitutes.

This chapter reviews work that examines the potential causes of inequality for women in employment in the UK. Amongst developed economies and based on mean hourly earnings, the UK has one of the highest gender pay gaps (ILO, 2018). The UK, therefore, illustrates some of the key theoretical and practical issues associated with greater gender equality that affect other countries to varying degrees. This chapter sets out key theoretical perspectives on gender inequality, summarizes important research, identifies research gaps and provides an agenda for future research. It highlights how there is no simple explanation for the disparities in pay between men and women; these disparities persist in the UK and elsewhere. Theories and empirical analyses, therefore, need to expand to identify other potential causes of gender inequality, extending ‘upwards’ to examine how the nature of firms varies across countries and ‘downwards’ to assess how union representatives influence equal opportunity policies in organizations.

Wages have been spreading out across workers over time – or in other words, the 90th/50th wage ratio has risen over time. A key question is, has the productivity distribution also spread out across worker skill levels over time? Using our calculations of productivity by skill level for the United States, we show that the distributions of both wages and productivity have spread out over time, as the right tail lengthens for both. We add Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, showing that the wage–productivity correlation exists, such that gains in aggregate productivity, or GDP per person, have resulted in higher wages for workers at the top and bottom of the wage distribution. However, across countries, those workers in the upper-income ranks have seen their wages rise the most over time. The most likely international factor explaining these wage increases is the skill-biased technological change of the digital revolution. The new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that has just begun seems to be having similar skill-biased effects on wages. But this current AI, called “supervised learning,” is relatively similar to past technological change. The AI of the distant future will be “unsupervised learning,” and it could eventually have an effect on the jobs of the most highly skilled.

Purpose – Ascertaining the extent to which the generalized decline in union density, as well as the erosion in centralized bargaining structures and developments in other labor institutions, have contributed to rising within-country inequality.

Methodology – Econometric analysis of a newly developed dataset combining information on industrial relations and labor law, various dimensions of globalization, and controls for demand and supply of skilled labor for 51 Advanced, Central and Eastern European, Latin American, and Asian countries from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, followed by an analysis of 16 advanced countries over a longer time frame (from the late 1970s to the early 2000s).

Findings – In contrast to previous research, which finds labor institutions to be important determinants of more egalitarian wage or income distributions, the chapter finds that trade unionism and collective bargaining are no longer significantly associated with within-country inequality, except in the Central and Eastern European countries. These findings are interpreted as the result of trade unionism operating under more stringent structural constraints than in the past, partly as a result of globalization trends. In addition, despite much talk about welfare state crisis, welfare states, historically the result of labor's power and mobilization capacity, still play an important redistributive role, at least in advanced countries.

Practical implications – Union attempts at equalizing incomes by compressing market earnings seem ineffective and impractical in the current day and age. Unions should seek to increase the workers’ skill levels and promote an egalitarian transformation of the workplace. This type of “supply-side” egalitarianism is not a new strategy for unions, but is very much embedded in the unions’ DNA.