Effects of dependence, dependency threats, and pay secrecy on managerial pay allocations.

Using an in-basket exercise, we examined the pay allocations of 117 bank managers when dependence on subordinate expertise, dependency threats in the form of a pay demand, and pay secrecy were systematically varied. Results supported expectations that dependency threats would lead to higher pay raises in the high dependence but not in the low dependence condition. Because we used an alpha level of .05, the prediction that these effects would be enhanced under conditions of pay secrecy was not significant; however, because p?=?.07 for the pay secrecy condition, a second study was conducted to further explore the pay secrecy issue. This second study, involving a separate sample of 120 bank managers, assessed the possibility that pay secrecy would have the expected enhancing effect when the study situation incorporated visible, potentially negative consequences for the pay allocator if pay raises were influenced by dependence and dependency threats. Contrary to expectations, high dependence and high dependency threats had the anticipated positive effects on the pay allocations only when pay was open. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)