Let’s Talk About Pay Secrecy
For all the controversy over executive compensation, the average person is unaware of how basic pay structures affect regular workers, but we have good reason to start paying attention. Nancy Day of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, who published “Pay Equity as a Mediator of the Relationships Among Attitudes and Communication About Pay Level Determination and Pay Secrecy” in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, found that communicating openly about pay can be, in her words, “a really good thing”: when pay transparency is apparent in an organization, employees tend to feel that they are paid fairly, and they show higher levels of satisfaction and commitment. Dr. Day joined Editor Ken Thompson on the JLOS podcast to discuss her findings. Click here to play or download the podcast interview or subscribe on iTunes by following this link.
Nancy Day is associate professor in human resources and organizational behavior at the Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. She has a Ph.D. in social psychology with an emphasis in organizational psychology from the University of Kansas. Her research focuses primarily on compensation, rejection sensitivity, and diversity. In additional to JLOS, Day has published in such journals as Personnel Psychology, Human Resource Management, Employee Relations, Personnel 
Review, The Journal of Managerial Issues and The Journal of Management Education. Day has taught human resources and organizational behavior courses in the undergraduate, MBA, and Executive MBA programs. Prior to her appointment at the Bloch School, she was a consultant in compensation, performance management and on other human resource issues. She belongs to and has served in a number of professional associations, including the Academy of Management, the Midwest Academy of Management, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and WorldatWork (formerly the American Compensation Association).
Ken Thompson, Ph.D., is professor and the former chair of management at DePaul University, where he has been on staff since 1986. He has co-authored four books, contributed to six others, and has been published in a number of journals including the Academy of Management Executive, Organizational Dynamics, Journal of Social Psychology, Human Relations, and the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies where he is senior editor.
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