Is Process as Important as Outcome? Empirical Evidence from the Chinese Context

Abstract

Although the relationship between pay level and pay satisfaction has been verified as one of the most robust relationships in the literature of pay satisfaction, scholars have not yet reached an agreement regarding its underlying mechanisms. The present paper aims to investigate the link between absolute pay level and pay level satisfaction by introducing both distributive and procedural fairness perceptions as mediators in accordance with fairness heuristic perspective. A sample of 298 employees from various types of organizations completed a survey, and a series of models were compared to evaluate if the hypothesized theoretical model fits our data. We also constructed bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals to test the hypothesized mediation effects. The suggested theoretical model is supported, and future research directions are discussed.

Keywords

pay level satisfaction / fairness perceptions / fairness heuristic theory / distributive fairness / procedural fairness

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Brill