Annotated Bibliography: Effects of Pay Transparency and Pay Secrecy

BELOGOLOVSKY, ELENA, and PETER A. BAMBERGER. “Signaling in Secret: Pay for Performance and the Incentive and Sorting Effects of Pay Secrecy.” Academy of Management Journal, vol. 57, no. 6, Dec. 2014, pp. 1706–1733. EBSCOhost, doi:10.5465/amj.2012.0937.

Belogolovsky and Bamberger explore pay secrecy and its effects on work performance. Specifically, pay secrecy giving managerial positions the flexibility to offer rewards to employees in order to incentivize them to be more productive. They ultimately find that pay secrecy might do more harm than good and offer solutions, “partial openness” and performing actions that will increase employee confidence. This article will be useful to me as it describes how pay secrecy can be utilized to boost worker productivity.

COONEY, SAMANTHA. “Should You Share Your Salary With Co-Workers? Here’s What Experts Say.” Time Magazine, 14 Aug 2018, https://time.com/5353848/salary-pay-transparency-work.

Cooney explores the pros and cons of pay transparency. She finds that pay transparency will lead to closing pay gaps and giving more authority in the actions of the workers rather than the hands of companies. However, she finds that pay transparency will also pit workers against each other as they can now openly compete for better pay as the information is open to them. This article will be useful to me because, like the one above, will give me insight into the pros and cons of pay transparency. 

FRIEDMAN, DEBRA S. (2014). “Pay Transparency: The New Way of Doing Business.” Compensation & Benefits Review, vol. 46, no. 5-6 , Feb. 2015, pp. 292–294. Sage Journals, https://doi.org/10.1177/1541204014560482. 

Debra S. Friedman explores how new government mandated pay transparency effects federal contracting companies in the U.S. They examine the relationship between the employed, the contractors, and the employer, the U.S Federal government. She finds that transparency will hold organizations accountable for pay distribution as contractors are now able to compare with one another. She concludes that in the future companies will have to prepare for pay transparency in order to survive and avoid scrutiny of its workers. This article will be useful to me because it gives a specific example of pay transparency in practice and its effects.

JANIĆIJEVIĆ, NEBOJŠA. “Pay secrecy: Pros and Cons.” Review Paper, 5 Feb 2016. SemanticScholar, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/351f/4830afa4f3f08b09cc37a5b43807bb276245.pdf?_ga=2.250979718.1404171673.1574381238-1382578936.1574381238.

Nebojša Janićijević dives into the Pros and Cons of pay secrecy. Notable disadvantages he found were misconceptions about compensation distribution leading to decreased worker productivity and confidence and that it enforces authoritative and paternal organizational structures that can negatively affect worker motivation. Excluding employees from important decisions and information can lead the employees to feel that managerial positions are not successfully doing their part. Advantages he found were that it allows managerial positions to have greater control over its employees, and are able to distinguish better workers from the crowd in collectivistic cultures. This article is useful to me because it offers direct comparison between the advantages and disadvantages of  secrecy. 

MODESITT, NANCY. “Why pay transparency alone won’t eliminate the persistent wage gap between men and women.” World Economic Forum, 5 Apr 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/why-pay-transparency-alone-wont-eliminate-the-persistent-wage-gap-between-men-and-women.

Nancy Modesitt explains why pay transparency can not close wage gaps on its own, specifically between men and women. The reasons she gives are that legislation for pay transparency are not good enough, limited research on pay gaps, and other factors that enable the pay gap. She also addresses the downfalls of pay transparency. This article will be useful to me as it refers to other sources with hard data about the pay gap and offers insight to pay transparency as part of the solution.

TROTTER, RICHARD G., SUSAN RAWSON SACUR and LISA T. STICKNEY. “The New Age of Pay Transparency.” Business Horizons, vol. 60, no. 4, Apr. 2017, pp. 529-539. ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681317300356#!.

Trotter, Sacure, and Stickney explore the opportunities and challenges of pay transparency, pay gaps in the U.S., pay secrecy policy and its relationship with U.S. law, and the forces that support pay transparency.  They conclude that, even though discrimination based on gender, race, and national orgin is illegal, pay gaps based on gender, race, and national origin are still apparent. They believe that pay transparency will increase worker knowledge and understanding leading to a decrease in the pay gap. This article is useful to me because it ties pay transparency directly to the pay gap and could be used as a transition.

WONG, KRISTIN. “Want to Close the Pay Gap? Pay Transparency Will Help.” New York Times, 20 Jan 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/smarter-living/pay-wage-gap-salary-secrecy-transparency.html.

Kristin Wong attempts to explain why pay transparency is able to close unfair wage gaps between workers. She offers anecdotes from workers, professors and professionals as they share their thoughts, sentiments and frustrations. This article is useful to me because it gives me evidence in quotations that this is an issue affecting real life people.