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AN EVALUATION OF JAQUES’ STUDIES OF PAY IN THE LIGHT OF CURRENT COMPENSATION RESEARCH 1
Author(s) -
GORDON MICHAEL E.
Publication year - 1969
Publication title -
personnel psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.076
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1744-6570
pISSN - 0031-5826
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-6570.1969.tb00339.x
Subject(s) - compensation (psychology) , psychology , equity (law) , work (physics) , foundation (evidence) , pay equity , replication (statistics) , social psychology , statistics , law , economics , political science , mechanical engineering , labour economics , engineering , mathematics
Summary E lliott Jaques’ work in the area of compensation is evaluated for two major reasons: first, to ascertain its methodological fitness and meaningfulness; and, second, to discuss the impact of his work on the course of psychological research on pay. It is concluded that, although Jaques is the first psychologist to have attempted to bind theoretically a number of vaguely related concepts such as job analysis, equity, level of work, and pay curves, his pay technology has not achieved its goal due to a poor methodological foundation. Replication of Jaques’ studies is virtually impossible because his instruments and concepts are poorly defined. Furthermore, some of the hypothesized relationships among the constructs contained within the model appear inconsistent. However, Jaques’ work is valuable because it has served as a first approximation to a general program of research on pay. Furthermore, his work has highlighted a number of important, fundamental issues which investigators who research pay must ultimately resolve. Several of these issues are discussed.