PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

While it is generally agreed that individuals compare themselves with others when assessing their earnings, little is known about the duality/interaction of contextual and individual forces with regard to justice evaluations. This study combines a proposition of judgment theory, i.e. range-frequency theory, with sociological justice theories and examines, in an organizational setting, whether employees base their justice evaluation of their own earnings on the income distribution they are surrounded by and/or their personal ranking within the income hierarchy. It argues that both the range of incomes in the organization as well as the person’s ranking influence how a person evaluates their income. The empirical analysis is based on 636 full-time and part-time employees in Germany who participated in a factorial survey that was integrated into a larger representative survey study of German employees. Respondents were asked to evaluate their income after they were given information on the incomes of others and their personal position/rank in the income hierarchy. In line with the theoretical reasoning, this paper finds that employees base their justice evaluations on both range and rank. It finds the effects to be equally strong and both effects add to each other in terms of absolute values.