Legitimacy mediates the relationship between worker characteristics and success of wage claims, except for gender

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 17: Discrimination Contexts

Abstract

Individual negotiations have become increasingly important in determining wages. Because high-status actors are more likely to initiate negotiations and have their demands granted, individually negotiated wages contribute to wage inequality. Making a claim for higher pay is risky, and workers will take that risk only if they think their claim is likely to succeed. Relational inequality theory argues that claims for desired organizational resources are granted only when they are viewed as legitimate. Thus, perceived legitimacy works as a central mechanism that translates the claims made by workers into a successful or unsuccessful outcome. We test this mechanism using a factorial survey experiment (FSE) in which we manipulate status and productivity markers in a hypothetical negotiation for higher pay between a worker and their supervisor. Based on this FSE conducted among about 2,600 workers in Germany in January 2026, worker characteristics (including both diffuse status markers and markers of individual productivity), company productivity, and the size of the wage claim itself, shape the perceived success probability of a claim. In line with expectations, these effects are mediated by the perceived legitimacy of the wage claim. Importantly, perceived legitimacy does not mediate the effect of the vignette person’s gender. The expected lower success of women in wage negotiations, thus, does not reflect personal beliefs about women being less deserving. Instead, workers in Germany may assume women's claims are less successful because they hold beliefs that others find women's claims less convincing. If workers in Germany generally expect wage claims made by low-status actors – even if they are perceived as legitimate – to be less successful, this helps to explain why some groups, e.g., women, make fewer and less successful claims.

Authors

• Jule Adriaans, Bielefeld University

• Laura Luekemann, Bielefeld University

• Carsten Sauer, Bielefeld University