Reward Fairness: Slippery Slope or Manageable Terrain?

determining how to reward employees. It must balance market competitiveness, internal equity, organizational performance and individual performance considerations. Notably, issues of “fairness” underlie each of these areas. No matter how sophisticated their design, reward programs, policies and practices that are not perceived as fair will not successfully attract, retain and engage employees. Justice and equity are related concepts that have long been associated with perceptions of pay fairness. Specifically, reward fairness and the related constructs of pay justice and equity have been found to be strongly related to employee attitudes, including: pay satisfaction (Cowherd and Levine 1992; Folger and Konovsky 1989; Lee, Law, and Bobko 1999; Miceli and Mulvey 2000; Shaw and Gupta 2001; Tekleab, Bartol, and Liu 2005); commitment (Cohen and Gattiker 1994; Dulebohn and Martocchio 1998); intention to quit (Miceli, Jung, Near, and Greenberger 1991); and perceived organization support (Miceli and Mulvey 2000). Perceptions of reward fairness also have been found to impact employee Reward Fairness: Slippery Slope or Manageable Terrain?