READING 16
Equity and Workplace Status: A Field Experiment by Greenberg (1988)
Please refer to the printed reader, Readings in Social Psychology 3/e, for the text of this article.
Overview
Being rewarded for one’s work helps to maintain motivation and commitment, but, as Chapters 3 (The Social Self), 7 (Attitudes), and 13 (Business) make clear, the effects of reward on motivation are complex. According to equity theory, for example, people want rewards to be equitable so that the ratio between inputs and outcomes should be the same for the self as it is for co-workers. Thus, if you feel overpaid or underpaid and cannot change the situation, you will experience distress and try to restore equity—perhaps by working more or less. Studying workers in a large insurance firm, Greenberg (1988) measured changes in productivity among those who were temporarily moved to offices that were larger, smaller, or equal to their rank within the company. Did office size affect performance, as predicted by equity theory, in an actual office setting? As you read this article, think about the implications of equity theory for motivation not only in the workplace but in close relationships and educational settings as well.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Why did the workers who were placed in offices of higher-status coworkers improve their performance? Why did the workers who were placed in offices of lower-status coworkers perform less well? Why was the effect stronger in the second situation?
2. What other non monetary factors affect perceptions of equity in the workplace? What non monetary factors affect perceptions of equity in intimate relationships (see Chapter 9)?
3. What would the effects have been like if the reason for the office reassignments had been different? What if the reassignments had been for a much longer period of time?
4. One might speculate that workers who had the chance to get a taste of the high-status office would feel deprived when they returned to their regular office, and that their performance would drop below their original level. But the results show that their performance did not drop below their original level. Why do you think this was the case?
5. What impact would giving everyone wonderful offices have on performance and perception of equity? Do you think randomly assigning people to offices would be effective? Given limited space and resources, how would you try to maintain equity and peak performance from your employees?
6. Is equity important in your life as a student (in team sports, group projects, grades, part-time or full-time jobs, intimate relationships, etc.)? How does your boss, instructor, or coach try to maintain equity, and how do you try to do this with others? Does equity seem more or less important than simply the total amount of rewards you get? Does equity play more or less of a role in social relationships than in working relationships?
Answers to Critical Thinking Questions
1. According to Greenberg, workers placed in higher-status offices came to view themselves as overpaid or over rewarded. This inequitable state led to dissatisfaction, and as a result, workers increased their productivity in order to bring it in line with the status of the office. Similarly, workers placed in lower-status offices felt underpaid or under rewarded. Unsatisfied with this situation, they decreased their productivity accordingly. The effect was stronger in this second situation for a few reasons. First, more of a discrepancy is required to bring about feelings of overpayment than to elicit feelings of underpayment. Second, the underpayment manipulation had a stronger effect on participants. Specifically, it had a greater, more reliable influence on job satisfaction ratings than did the overpayment manipulation. Given that equity theory proposes that behavioral responses to inequity result from dissatisfaction, these data help explain the asymmetry in the observed results.
2. A novel facet of the present study is that it operationalizes reward in nonmonetary terms. In addition to office status, other potential nonmonetary influences on equity in the workplace might include factors such as parking access, benefits, vacation usage, equipment quality and availability, and scheduling flexibility. In intimate relationships, equity considerations are typically nonmonetary in nature. Perceptions of relationship equity include a wide range of one’s own contributions and benefits, as well as those of one’s partner. Time, attention, empathy, support, and other considerations all factor into perceptions of relationship equity.
3. Greenberg emphasizes the importance of the fact that workers were told they would be reassigned to new offices because of a refurbishing project. Had workers been under the impression that the reassignment was part of an attempt to see how new offices would affect their productivity, they may very well have behaved in a different manner. Specifically, Greenberg cites previous research that indicates workers will respond to an obvious attempt to manipulate equity with across-the-board reductions in productivity. Greenberg also suggests that the present study does not shed light on the question of how long the effects of office status would persist. One possibility, however, is that concerns about inequity would be even greater if workers knew they were going to experience the inequity for a longer period of time. As such, participants in the present study may have been even more motivated to address inequities if the reassignments had lasted longer than two weeks.
4. The finding that workers reverted to their original level of productivity once they returned to their original offices demonstrates the power of equity theory. One may have predicted that workers assigned to a higher-status office would be disappointed and upset upon returning to their original workspace. But the present findings demonstrate that concerns about equity seem to be more powerful than simple social comparisons. Being underpaid or even overpaid violates the very idea of equity, and this inconsistency seems to have a greater influence on workers than even concerns about having the biggest office or highest salary possible. One of the most interesting aspects of equity theory is that people are not only dissatisfied with underpayment, but with overpayment as well.
5. Randomly assigning workers to offices does not seem like a good idea in light of the present findings. Random assignment would inevitably lead to some workers feeling over rewarded and some feeling under rewarded, which would not lead to a net gain in worker productivity. Assigning everyone to wonderful offices would be an interesting strategy. Such a step might very well lead everyone to feel overpaid, thereby increasing productivity. This strategy would be also consistent with the idea that a happy worker is a good worker. One has to wonder, however, if managers and other high-status employees would eventually come to resent the fact that they did not have nicer offices that their subordinates. If this were to occur, high-status employees might begin to underperform in order to remedy their perceptions of underpayment. The precise influence of office status on productivity is complicated, but an ideal strategy may very well be to give all workers offices that are high-status enough to increase productivity, all the while maintaining equity by coordinating office and worker status.
6. Equity considerations are relevant to a variety of real-life domains, including intimate relationships, classroom interactions, sports team performance, and others. Answers to this question will certainly vary by individual. In general, though, equity is related to both social and working relationships, yet it is easier to think of social relationships in which equity is not a primary concern. Consider, for example, parent/child relationships or long-term romantic relationships. Working relationships, on the other hand, by their very nature seem more inextricably tied up with concerns about equity.
Links For Further Investigation
This study’s focus on equity in the workplace is also the topic of much debate in the business world: Are men and women paid equally for doing the same jobs? Is there racial equity in job hiring and promotion decisions? What accounts for some of the apparent inequities in the system? The website of the National Committee on Pay Equity, tackles many of these issues by providing statistics, analysis, and research summaries.
Of course, worker productivity is also of great interest to businesses. For an article detailing some of the factors that impede productivity in the contemporary American workplace, see For specific suggestions as to how to improve workplace productivity, including tips related to the present discussion of equity, go to