Peter Valet

The Impact of Within and Between Occupational Inequalities on People's Justice Perceptions Towards Their Own Earnings

This paper investigates justice perceptions of employees towards their own earnings. Earnings are decomposed into three components: (1) In returns based on human capital endowments, (2) in returns based on individual residual differences and (3) in returns based on differences between occupations. The legitimacy of these earnings components is measured via the justice assessments of employees. Based on theoretical models from justice research and class theory it is hypothesized that earnings inequality resulting from human capital factors is evaluated as just, whereas residual inequality and occupational inequality are perceived as unjust. The hypotheses are tested by using data from a German longitudinal panel study (SOEP) of the years 2005 to 2011. These data allow studying changes of individual earnings and justice evaluations in a household panel over the time span of six years (with four biennial measurement points). The findings support our hypotheses indicating that losses or gains in earnings which are due to changes in human capital endowments do not affect justice perceptions of own earnings. Losses or gains stemming from changes of a persons earnings position within the occupational group or the position of a persons occupational group within the earnings hierarchy of a society, however, affect justice perceptions remarkably. Thus, we can show that justice evaluations of own earnings do not solely depend on compensation for individual investments but also on residual differences in earnings within and between occupational groups.

Macht Ungerechtigkeit krank? Gesundheitliche Folgen von Einkommens(un)gerechtigkeit

Theoretical research on inequity and social justice as well as experimental research indicate that perceived injustice may cause stress and thus may have negative effects on health. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) of the years 2005 to 2011, this study investigates if perceptions of earnings (un)fairness impact employees’ health. The analyses show that a change in the justice evaluation of one’s earnings coincides with a change in one’s health: Earnings that are evaluated as unjustly low are associated with a decline in subjective health. The analysis indicates that this effect is not due to respondents’ actual earnings or occupational position, but that the perception of one’s earnings as unjustly low appears to have an independent effect on respondents’ health. The study, moreover, shows that low-skilled employees, employees in temporary employment, and those with low gross hourly wages are particularly prone to perceive their earnings as unjustly low.

Social Structure and the Paradox of the Contented Female Worker: How Occupational Gender Segregation Biases Justice Perceptions of Wages:

This article provides a structural explanation for the paradox of the contented female worker. Although they are generally aware that they earn less than men, women usually perceive their wages as more just. This article argues that men and women do not differ in how they perceive their wages, yet the gendered segregation of the labor market will constrain the availability of preferred same-gender referent standards in some occupations. Random- and fixed-effects analyses of longitudinal data of the German Socio-Economic Panel covering the years 2009 to 2015 (N = 26,362) reveal that the paradox is only detectable in occupations with a considerable number of female referents. However, as soon as women move into a male-dominated occupation, the paradox vanishes. These results contradict the view that men and women generally differ in how they perceive their wages and indicate that gender differences in justice perceptions can be explained by the structural embeddedness of employees in certain occupations.

Relative Standards and Distributive Justice: How Social Comparison Orientations Moderate the Link between Relative Earnings and Justice Perceptions:

Theories of distributive justice claim perceptions of justice have a comparative basis. They suggest the degree to which individuals perceive their earnings as just or unjust depends on the degree to which their earnings differ from those of similar others. Drawing on recent research on social comparisons, we argue social comparison orientations—the general tendency of individuals to compare themselves with others—moderate the link between relative earnings and justice perceptions. The empirical analysis is based on large-scale survey data for 3,744 German employees. Structural equation analyses confirm the relevance of social comparison orientations for the justice evaluation process. Individuals who earn less than similar others tend to perceive their earnings as more unjust if they also report an orientation toward social comparison. In contrast, relative earnings are less important for justice perceptions if individuals do not compare themselves with others. Our findings may explain why people in similar situations often differ substantially in their justice perceptions.

Rules, relations, and work

Classic theory is ambiguous regarding what is most meaningful for workers and workplaces. Are bureaucratic rules most consequential by providing predictability, as suggested by Weber, or problematic, owing to assaults on autonomy? And what of proximate social relations, seen as fundamental in ethnographic, resistance, and justice accounts? This article’s analyses, which draw on a unique sample of approximately 2,500 German workers across heterogeneous contexts, reveal pronounced effects of horizontal and vertical social relations on worker (i.e., satisfaction and fairness) and workplace (i.e., commitment and effort) outcomes. These effects, which hold for high- and low-status workers, exist beyond independent, mediating, or conditional associations with rules and have differing implications for women versus men. The authors discuss the importance of their findings for work, organizational, and inequality literatures and call for greater attention to relational dimensions of work-life, their frequent disconnect from bureaucratic structures, and the consequences for organizations and the individuals within.