Do You Get What You Deserve? Factors Affecting the Relationship between Productivity and Pay.

The authors thank Robert Szafran for helping make some of the data available, and Nancy Langton for her immense assistance with the data files. Marshall Meyer and three anonymous-reviewers made suggestions that were very helpful in developing the arguments and clarifying the analysis. Using a sample of 5,645 academics in more than 200 colleges and universities across all academic fields, this study investigated factors that affected the strength of the relationship between productivity, measured by publication, and pay. The fundamental argument was that factors that tended to reduce uncertainty or ambiguity in the evaluation and salary-determination processes would increase the effect of productivity on pay. The results indicated that productivity had a larger effect on pay in departments that (1) had stronger norms emphasizing research, (2) were located in private and higher quality institutions, (3) were in institutions that were governed by collective bargaining agreements, (4) were characterized by more research collaboration and more social contact among the faculty, (5) were in academic fields with more highly developed scientific paradigms, and (6) had chairpersons with shorter, fixed-length terms. The pay-determination process differed in expected ways between universities and four-year colleges. Even in contexts in which productivity could be readily assessed and in which merit was emphasized, the effect of performance on pay was comparatively small.'