임금 격차와 조직 생산성에 있어 토너먼트 구조요인 영향 검증

This study examines that the effect of pay dispersion on organizational productivity by focusing on tournament theory. For several past decades, even though numerous studies explored whether dispersed pay scheme is really effective or not in terms of individual performance and organizational effective, previous research has showed the mixed results regarding the relationship between pay dispersion and organizational performance. In order to reconcile the inconsistent findings, some studies examined the possibility of inherent nonlinearity in the main effect of pay dispersion, whereas other studies delved into various situational factors to influence the patterns of the main relationship . By contrast, this study revisits the main arguments of tournament theory and investigates the situational contexts to realize the positive effect of pay dispersion on organizational performance in order to resolve the contradictory findings. In particular, building on tournament theory, we predict pay dispersion per se will increase organizational productivity. In addition, we particularly focus on the structural aspects as the critical situation factors for realizing the positive effects which tournament theory argues. More specifically, drawing on tournament theory, structural aspects are classified into the possibility to move to the upper tournament (promotion probability) and the number of tournament (the number of job level). Based on these classifications, this study hypothesizes the motivational effects of pay dispersion on organizational productivity will be more stronger when the possibility to move to the upper tournament (the promotion probability) is higher or the number of tournament (he number of job level) is less. The analytic results with the HCCP(Human Capital Corporate Panel) dataset showed that pay dispersion increased organizational productivity and the small number of job level strengthened the positive relationship between pay dispersion and organizational productivity as we predicted. However, in direct opposition to our prediction, high promotion probability rather weakened the positive relationship between pay dispersion and organizational productivity. The unexpected finding related to the promotion probability may be caused by the dilution effect in that higher promotion probability lowers scarcity value and ultimately decreases motivational effects due to pay dispersion. Based on these findings, we suggest theoretical and practical implications of this study and several limitations for future research in the discussion part. Theoretically, this study has implications by exploring the conditions to achieve the positive effect of pay dispersion as tournament theory predicts. Practically, this study suggests firms should adopt or enforce the pay dispersion policy by considering that the effects of such pay system can be fully different depending on organizational contexts.