NATIONAL CULTURE AND THE FACTORS AFFECTING PERCEPTIONS OF PAY FAIRNESS IN KOREA AND THE UNITED STATES

Factors other than job performance might affect judgments about pay fairness for employees doing the same job, and the strength of these factors may differ across national cultures. This study uses a multivariate, policy‐capturing approach to compare the way that characteristics of employees—seniority, education, family size, individual job performance, and work effort—affect judgments about the fairness of pay received by employees in Korea and the United States. Regression models of the determinants of judgments about pay fairness by Korean and U.S. nationals were estimated. Korean pay fairness judgments were found to be relatively more sensitive to differences in seniority, education, and family size, and American pay fairness judgments were relatively more sensitive to variations in individual job performance and work effort.