NY Times Article – “Psst, Your Salary is Showing”
Lisa Belkin’s article in the NY Times from 8/19/08 really struck a chord with me. I had long been using the metaphor of how buying a Saturn car has broken the paradigm of the whole stress inducing, car buying experience. When Saturn came onto the scene and buyers were treated with more transparency about the pricing with their “no haggle” policy, customers were able to finally drive away in their new automobiles without wondering whether someone else got a better deal.
The same goes for compensation inside organizations. When pay is not talked about openly, aren’t employees left to wonder after they get a pay increase whether they got a good deal…or did they just get screwed. Given the cynicism people tend to have with their employers, isn’t it much more likely that it will be the later?
I also liked the fact that Belkin included an interview with Edward Lawler, one of my all-time favorite scholars in the field of organizational effectiveness (and one of the few who has long looked to integration of compensation with organizational effectiveness). One of his early articles, from 1965 (yikes!), was titled “Should Managers’ Compensation be Kept Under Wraps” that was published in the Personnel Journal.
