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In this chapter we use data from industrial plants to find out whether seniority-based pay is used as a motivational device for production workers. Alternatively, seniority-based pay could simply be a wage-setting rule independent of incentives. Unlike previous papers, we use a direct measure of seniority-based pay as well as measures of monitoring devices and explicit incentives. We find that those firms that base their wages partly on seniority are less likely to offer explicit incentives. They are also less likely to invest in monitoring devices. We also discover that these companies are more likely to engage in other human resource management policies, which result in long employment relationships. Overall these results suggest that seniority-based pay is indeed used as a motivational device.

Why do employers pay seniority wages? The principal-agent theory stresses that employers might want to retain and motivate their employees by paying them a low entry wage and higher wage increases with longer tenure rather than productivity development. This contribution tests the empirical relevance of this seniority wage interpretation on the basis of German linked employer–employee panel data. It focuses on the role of works councils and unions. The theoretical hypotheses that predict a positive impact of both forms of employee participation (and their interaction) are confirmed. The chapter also gives an outlook on management options when seniority wages are no longer sustainable in the face of ageing workforces.

Given the popularity of online health communities (OHCs) and medical question-and-answer (Q&A) services, it is increasingly important to understand what constitutes useful answers and user-adopted standards in healthcare domain. However, few studies provide insights into how health information characteristics, provider characteristics and recipient characteristics jointly influence user information adoption decisions. To fill this research gap, this study examines the combined effects of physicians' certainty tone as information characteristics, seniority as provider characteristics and disease severity as recipient characteristics on patients' health information adoption.

Drawing on dual-process theory and information adoption model, an extended information adoption model is established in this study to examine the effect of attitude certainty on patients' health information adoption, and the moderating effects of online seniority and offline seniority, as well as patient motivation level—disease severity. Utilizing logit regression models, the authors empirically tested the hypotheses based on 4,224 Q&A records from a popular Chinese OHC.

The results show that (1) attitude certainty has a significant positive impact on patients' health information adoption, (2) the relationship between attitude certainty and information adoption is negatively moderated by physicians' online seniority, but is positively moderated by offline seniority; (3) there is a negative three-way interaction effect of attitude certainty, online seniority and disease severity on patients' health information adoption.

This study extends the information adoption model to examine the two-way interaction between argument quality and source reliability, as well as the three-way interaction with user motivation level, especially for health information adoption in the healthcare field. These findings also provide direct practical applications for knowledge contributors and OHCs.

Compensation influences applicants' perceptions of a position's attractiveness, but there has been limited analysis of how different compensation systems might reflect organizational cultures and influence organizational attractiveness. This article seeks to explore these issues.

An experiment was conducted in which 288 undergraduates reacted to scenarios describing a company that distributed salaries and benefits based on either merit or on seniority. Individual differences were also measured and analyzed. Analysis of variance and moderated regression were used to test the hypotheses.

Relative to seniority‐based compensation systems, the cultures of organizations relying on merit were perceived to be more aggressive, reward‐oriented, and less decisive. Unexpectedly, the psychological contracts of organizations using merit systems were generally perceived to be more relational and less transactional than those using seniority‐based systems. Individual differences were not related to attraction to the organization regardless of its compensation systems. Finally, individuals were least attracted to organizations that distributed both salaries and benefits based on seniority relative to those using a mixed compensation distribution system or one based entirely on merit.

The sample was composed of undergraduates who responded to a hypothetical job scenario. The scenario only included information about how salary and benefits are allocated. Future research should use more experienced samples that are considering actual positions.

Findings indicate how information about compensation systems might be used in job descriptions to encourage applicants.

This study was the first to find that merit/seniority‐based compensation systems for determining salary and benefits reflect different organizational cultures to job applicants and influence job applicants' attraction to organizations.

This paper examines the incidence of measurement error in wage data on the estimation of returns to seniority. Earnings surveys collect wage data through questions pertaining to earnings and hours over a given period of time (year, week) or through direct reports of hourly wages. Comparing results for different wage variables from the panel study of income dynamics (PSID), it is shown that estimated returns to seniority are very sensitive to the type of wage data used. Estimates based on yearly reports are typically twice as large as those using direct reports. Two sources account for this discrepancy. First, the inclusion of earnings from secondary jobs and overtime in the PSID annual earnings data tends to overestimate returns to seniority. Second, hourly wages computed from yearly measures include important measurement errors that tend to bias coefficients upward.

In reviewing the personnel management literature, this article argues that promotion has been a very neglected area, especially in Britain. Personnel management writers have tended to assume that most appointments are made by recruitment from the external labour market, even though many employers have shown a preference for the promotion of existing employees.

An article in the last issue of this journal examined the literature on seniority promotion systems, arguing that most personnel management writers had ignored promotion as a topic area, tending to assume implicitly that most appointments are made from the external labour market. And yet many employers preferred internal promotion to external recruitment. It was also possible to identify a number of pressures on management to adopt both an internal labour market and a seniority‐based promotion system. These pressures were thought to be particularly pertinent in the case of white‐collar employees.

This study aims to investigate whether and how corporate seniority culture (a form of high power distance or hierarchy), a typical feature of Confucian norms, affects the corporate innovation efficiency in emerging markets.

This study defines and measures seniority culture through the ranking method of independent directors in company’s annual report. Unlike most companies in the USA where directors are listed alphabetically, the ranking of directors in China is meaningful and reflects hierarchy. This study considers a firm with seniority if independent directors are ranked according to their status, including age, social position and political connection. Using data from Chinese listed companies between 2009 and 2013, this study conducts multiple regressions to examine the impact of seniority on innovative efficiency.

The empirical results show that seniority culture is negatively associated with innovative efficiency. Moreover, the negative association between a corporate culture of seniority and innovative efficiency is more pronounced in firms with more male executives and knowledge-intensive firms. Further analysis reveals that seniority culture expands pay disparities among different classes, hinders their enthusiasm to communicate and ultimately damages the corporate efficiency of innovation.

Corporate seniority culture is an essential factor that may hinder employee communication and inhibit innovation efficiency. Therefore, companies should break the identity barrier at different levels and advocate a culture of equality to promote information exchange and knowledge sharing among employees.

This study extends the field of literature on the determinants of corporate innovation efficiency and deepens our theoretical understanding of the negative impact of corporate seniority culture.

Since the success of online communities depend on physicians' participation, understanding factors that influence community participation and content contribution are critical for online health communities (OHCs). Drawing on the self-determination theory (SDT), an empirical model was proposed to explore the effects of social returns and economic returns on physicians' community participation, private content contribution and public content contribution, and the moderating effect of their online seniority. This paper aims to address these issues.

Empirical data of 4,343 physicians were collected from a Chinese OHC, and ordinary least squares (OLS) and negative binomial regression models were employed to verify the proposed theoretical model.

The authors’ results indicate that both social and economic returns have a positive effect on physicians' community participation and private content contribution, and their online seniority strengthens the positive effects of economic returns on community participation and private content contribution.

The authors’ research extends physicians' community participation by dividing content contribution into private and public, and enhances our understanding of the determinants of physicians' participation in OHCs by exploring the effects of social and economic returns, as well as the moderating effect of online seniority. Their findings contribute to the literature on e-Health and user participation, and provide management implications for OHC managers.

The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-11-2021-0615/