Equity theory, internal equity of salary, external equity of employees and personal equity.
I. Introduction With the advent of the era of knowledge economy, the human factor has increasingly become the key factor for organizations to achieve their strategic objectives, and the compensation management of organizations plays a very important role in the process of achieving their competitive advantages and strategic objectives. It is not only of theoretical significance but also of practical value to explore the application of fairness theory in modern enterprise salary management, so that employees' investment in education, skills, work experience, efforts and time can be effectively balanced with external and internal returns such as salary, welfare, sense of accomplishment, sense of identity, work challenges and career prospects.
Second, the theory of fairness The sense of fairness in distribution refers to people's personal judgments and feelings about whether the distribution of resources or rewards (especially the distribution of their own interests) is fair and reasonable. It is a powerful incentive factor and has a great influence on people's positive performance in their work. The theory of studying people's sense of distributive justice is called fairness theory, which belongs to one kind of incentive theory. The most famous research abroad is J.S. Adams' equity theory. Equity theory, also known as social comparison theory, is an incentive theory put forward by American behavioral scientist Adams. This theory focuses on the sense of fairness that individuals gain by comparing with others.
The basic view of fairness theory is that when a person has made achievements and got rewards, he not only cares about the absolute amount of his own rewards, but also cares about the relative amount of his own rewards. Therefore, he has to make various comparisons to determine whether his remuneration is reasonable, and the results of the comparison will directly affect his enthusiasm for future work. The formula can be simply stated as follows: the remuneration of the parties refers to the remuneration of the parties; (1) the remuneration of the parties refers to the remuneration of the parties now; (2) the remuneration of the parties now is the remuneration of the past; (3) when the equation is established, the parties feel fair. Otherwise, it will cause psychological imbalance and create a sense of injustice. If the left end is smaller than the right end, it will cause dissatisfaction worse than the reference or worse than before; If the left end is bigger than the right end, you will feel uneasy and guilty because you have no income. (If the past returns and contributions of the parties are taken as reference, formula () can be combined into formula (). Adams' research shows that in order to weaken the perceived injustice and its corresponding level of tension and anxiety, individuals will choose several actions from the following methods:. Individuals can increase or decrease their investment to achieve what they think is fair. For example, if individuals think that their remuneration is too low, they can restore their sense of fairness by reducing product quality, reducing working hours and frequent absences. Individuals can restore their sense of fairness by changing production. Many managers try to enhance enterprise cohesion by ensuring that working conditions are improved, working hours are reduced and work remuneration is increased without changing employees' efforts. . Individuals will misinterpret their own input and output psychologically. Different from actually changing input and output, individuals can misinterpret it in their consciousness, thus achieving psychological balance. For example, individuals who feel unfair can misinterpret the difficulty of their work (which is a piece of cake for me) or emphasize the importance of their work (which is really very important). . Individuals can leave their jobs or ask to be transferred to other departments. Individuals do this in the hope of restoring psychological balance, seeking a sense of fairness in the new environment, and thus adjusting their mentality. . Individuals can reduce the sense of injustice by updating new reference objects. For example, students in a key high school didn't get the admission notice from Peking University, so they comforted themselves that maybe a financial institution like Southwestern University of Finance and Economics is more suitable for them. 6。 Individuals may misinterpret the input and output of others. Individuals can think that others as reference objects really work harder than themselves, really pay more than me, and deserve more in return. Adams believes that in management, organizational leaders must attach great importance to the negative impact of unfair and unreasonable phenomena in work and treatment on people's psychological state and behavioral motivation, and strive to be fair and reasonable in task allocation and evaluation of wages, funds and work performance, thus mobilizing people's enthusiasm.
Third, the manifestations of fairness Applying the fairness theory to salary management, we can get the following three forms of fairness: internal fairness, external fairness and employee personal fairness. (A) Internal Fairness The so-called internal fairness is the internal consistency in salary management. The internal fair standard for determining salary mentioned here is not based on the personal characteristics of employees engaged in this work, but on the work itself. This means that the relative level of salary in an organization should be based on some combination of job content or skills required for the job. In short, internal fairness emphasizes the payment according to the relative contribution of various jobs to the overall goal of the organization. To achieve the goal of internal fairness, the salary system should at least have the following characteristics:. The more knowledge and skills you need to complete this work, the more rewards you will get; . The worse the environment you are engaged in this kind of work, the higher the reward you should get for this kind of work; . The greater the contribution to the overall goal of the organization, the more rewards this kind of work should get. For example, the salary level of hotel chefs must be higher than that of ordinary hotel service personnel. Obviously, this is because the job of chef is far higher than that of ordinary waiter in terms of skills, working environment and contribution to the organization. But in fact, the determination of salary structure in many enterprises is not very reasonable, which affects the enthusiasm of employees. (II) External Fairness The so-called external fairness emphasizes the competitiveness of the company's salary level compared with other organizations. This external competitiveness focuses on the relative wage level between organizations. Obviously, the external market environment is an important factor affecting salary. In order to maintain the external competitiveness of the company's salary policy, the salary level of the company's core employees should be higher than that of other companies, or keep consistent with other companies, otherwise it will be difficult for the company to avoid brain drain and the company's survival crisis. An obvious fact is that the salary of some state-owned enterprises is far from the market level, and the actual salary of high-quality employees is lower than or even far below the market level. State-owned enterprises have become talent training centers for foreign-funded enterprises and private enterprises. Many college students and graduate students work in state-owned enterprises for two years, and when they become "skilled workers", they fly to foreign-funded enterprises and private enterprises with high salaries. It can be seen that the salary policies of some state-owned enterprises have not achieved external fairness and lost their external competitiveness. (III) Personal Fairness of Employees The so-called personal fairness of employees refers to whether fairness is established when comparing the salaries of employees engaged in the same work in the same organization. Fairness among employees requires that the salary of each employee in the organization match their respective contributions to the organization; Internal consistency emphasizes the role of work itself in salary decision; Employee's personal contribution factors emphasize the influence of employee's personal characteristics on salary decision. Therefore, the company's salary policy should also reflect the influence of individual differences of employees in salary decision. This is particularly important in today's fierce competition for talents. Facing the fierce competition for talents, more and more state-owned enterprises reform their own salary system, and implement performance-based salary system, profit-sharing system and negotiation salary system to attract and retain outstanding talents. I think this is a correct development direction. Only by fully embodying fairness in salary can enterprises retain outstanding talents and play their role.
Four. Equity theory embodies the equity concept of salary management in enterprise salary management and must run through the whole salary system. Only starting from the whole system, it is possible to realize the fairness of employee identity, which is embodied in the following aspects: (1) The role of job analysis and personal performance appraisal in the fairness theory is that it gives each employee an abstract "reference", that is, the system reference. Employees don't need to compare with the actual others, but measure their achievements according to their responsibilities, work content and treatment in job analysis, adjust and control their behavior, and achieve a satisfactory state. The effect of job analysis as a system reference also needs personal performance evaluation to ensure. Personal performance appraisal means that the human resources department evaluates the effectiveness and behavior of personal tasks according to the work standards in job analysis, and gives feedback to employees' performance in order to improve their work, and at the same time provides rewards and punishments and training basis for managers, reflecting fairness. (2) When people with similar abilities are placed in the same position, employees tend to compare with the nearest people when choosing reference people, that is, first compare with similar professionals in the same team, workshop and company, and then make a wider social comparison, in which some factors such as company status and region will be automatically considered. If people with different abilities and qualifications are put in the same position, there will be an unfair feeling in the recent comparison. In this case, on the one hand, people with strong ability feel that the pearl is cast in the dark, and they have a strong sense of loss. On the other hand, people with poor ability feel the psychological pressure from people with strong ability and feel guilty. Working together for a long time will inevitably lead to the growth and spread of unfairness and affect the enthusiasm and potential of employees. Therefore, putting people with similar abilities in the same position as far as possible is an effective way to maintain fairness. (3) Expand the scope of "getting" and increase the fair proportion. In the theory of fairness, "getting" generally refers to salary, which is mainly composed of material rewards such as wages, bonuses and welfare in enterprise distribution. However, on the basis of meeting employees' physiological and safety needs, employees pay more and more attention to professional titles, job importance, professional achievement, further training and spiritual rewards. Add these factors into the overall salary (including basic salary, additional salary, indirect salary and benefits, supplies subsidies, extra subsidies, promotion opportunities, development opportunities, psychological income, quality of life, personal factors, etc.). Strengthening them can improve the fair proportion of the parties without increasing physical compensation and changing the "reference person", so that people who feel weak tend to be psychologically balanced. The so-called "money makes courage, words add color" and "money is not enough, words together" are simple management proverbs, which confirm the importance of spiritual reward to employee motivation. (4) It is objective to compare employees with opportunity fairness instead of formal fairness, but the comparison process is subjective. Different people have different understandings of "getting" and "paying", and the selection criteria of "reference person" are also different. It is impossible to get an absolutely fair result. Smart managers can often give employees a sense of fairness in the result of incomplete fairness, so the sense of fairness is more important than fairness. This is not a mystery, but a kind of leadership art. In the eyes of the younger generation who advocate themselves and emphasize competition, fairness in results and form are not conducive to giving full play to their talents. It replaces substantive unfairness with superficial fairness, which makes the company's resources misplaced, wastes human capital and talent capital, and easily leads to the dilemma of "bad money driving out good money" and brain drain. Fair opportunities make it easier for employees to accept even unfair reality. Only by emphasizing fair opportunities, reasonable procedures, open processes, standards and results in practical work, and consciously accepting public supervision, can employees' sense of fairness be truly improved. (V) Creating a good corporate culture atmosphere and shaping corporate culture refers to the * * * common values, behavioral norms and ways of thinking formed by enterprise staff groups in the activities to achieve corporate goals. The connotation of corporate culture construction is effective communication with employees, including soliciting employees' opinions on major business decisions. This not only truly reflects the openness and democracy of enterprise factory affairs, but also helps to improve the overall quality of employees and fully mobilize their enthusiasm and creativity. Therefore, it is of decisive significance to create a fair cultural atmosphere in enterprises.
The meaning of verb (verb's abbreviation) fairness theory The meaning of fairness theory construction is a subjective cognitive concept of individuals, but individuals have subjective judgments on the understanding of comparison contents and the choice of comparison standards. Managers can influence employees' subjective understanding through institutional innovation: first, establish an organizational evaluation system that employees identify with and integrate into their personal comparability standards; The second is to help employees understand their input and output objectively, and internalize the organizational evaluation system into individual evaluation criteria for employees; At the same time, the fair, open, just, open and inclusive organizational culture is the carrier and trust for the effective realization of this fair theoretical model. Fairness theory has a great guiding role in the process of enterprise incentive. Its theory itself is simple and clear, but its content is profound. Only on the basis of in-depth study of its spiritual essence and flexible application in management practice can we fully mobilize the enthusiasm of employees, give play to their potential and obtain the greatest benefits for enterprises.