Gender, legitimacy, and the limits of institutional regulation: The initiation of wage negotiations in Germany

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 22: Organizational Mechanisms of Gender Inequality

Abstract

Wage negotiations are a key mechanism through which earnings inequalities emerge, particularly as pay-setting increasingly includes individualized components. While prior research shows that institutional contexts shape negotiation outcomes, less is known about how they influence who initiates wage negotiations in the first place. This study examines how institutional arrangements structure negotiation agency and whether they regulate different status characteristics (i.e., productivity signals, occupational position, and gender) in similar ways.
Drawing on relational inequality theory, we conceptualize negotiation agency as shaped by expectations of legitimacy: employees are more likely to initiate wage claims when they anticipate these claims will be viewed as legitimate by decision-makers. We analyze three legitimacy dimensions: working hours as a productivity signal, occupational position as an indicator of organizational status, and gender as a diffuse status characteristic shaped by widely shared beliefs about competence and entitlement.
Using data from the 2026 German BI-SOLID survey (N=2,320 employees), we estimate logistic regression models to examine how institutional settings (i.e., collective pay arrangements, employee representation, and employment in public-sector organizations) condition the translation of legitimacy into negotiation agency.
Results show that institutional arrangements selectively regulate inequalities: Collective pay-setting, employee representation, and employment in public-sector organizations attenuate productivity- and occupation-based differences in negotiation initiation. In contrast, gender differences persist across institutional contexts, indicating that institutions are less effective in moderating inequalities rooted in implicit status beliefs.
The findings demonstrate that inequalities arise not only from unequal negotiation outcomes but already from institutionally structured differences in who develops the agency to make wage claims. They highlight both the potential and the limits of institutional regulation—particularly with regard to gender, where inequalities remain comparatively resistant across institutional settings.

Authors

• Laura Lükemann, Bielefeld University

• Jule Adriaans, Bielefeld University

• Carsten Sauer, Bielefeld University