IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/rwp08-066.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Relational Accounts: An Answer for Women to the Compensation Negotiation Dilemma

Author

Listed:
  • Bowles, Hannah Riley

    (Harvard U)

  • Babcock, Linda

    (Carnegie Mellon U)

Abstract

Women face a compensation negotiation dilemma in which they have to weigh the economic benefits of asking for higher pay with the social risks of defying prescriptive sex stereotypes (Bowles, Babcock, & Lai, 2007). In four experiments, we show that enhancing the legitimacy of women's compensation requests does not eliminate the social risk of asking, and that eliminating the social risk of asking is not sufficient to legitimize their requests. We identify strategies for overcoming the compensation negotiation dilemma using "relational accounts" that simultaneously explain why the negotiating behavior is appropriate under the circumstances and affirm concern for organizational relationships.

Suggested Citation

  • Bowles, Hannah Riley & Babcock, Linda, 2008. "Relational Accounts: An Answer for Women to the Compensation Negotiation Dilemma," Working Paper Series rwp08-066, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp08-066
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=5998&type=WPN
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Blackaby & Alison L Booth & Jeff Frank, 2005. "Outside Offers And The Gender Pay Gap: Empirical Evidence From the UK Academic Labour Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(501), pages 81-107, February.
    2. David Blackaby & Alison L Booth & Jeff Frank, 2005. "Outside Offers And The Gender Pay Gap: Empirical Evidence From the UK Academic Labour Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(501), pages 81-107, February.
    3. Tinsley, Catherine H. & O'Connor, Kathleen M. & Sullivan, Brandon A., 2002. "Tough guys finish last: the perils of a distributive reputation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 621-642, July.
    4. Bowles, Hannah Riley & Babcock, Linda & Lai, Lei, 2007. "Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 84-103, May.
    5. O'Connor, Kathleen M. & Arnold, Josh A., 2001. "Distributive Spirals: Negotiation Impasses and the Moderating Role of Disputant Self-Efficacy," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 148-176, January.
    6. Ronald S. Burt, 1998. "The Gender Of Social Capital," Rationality and Society, , vol. 10(1), pages 5-46, February.
    7. Bowles, Hannah Riley & Babcock, Linda & McGinn, Kathleen L., 2005. "Constraints and Triggers: Situational Mechanics of Gender in Negotiation," Working Paper Series rwp05-051, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bertrand, Marianne, 2011. "New Perspectives on Gender," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 17, pages 1543-1590, Elsevier.
    2. Brett, Jeanne & Thompson, Leigh, 2016. "Negotiation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 68-79.
    3. Benjamin Artz & Amanda H. Goodall & Andrew J. Oswald, 2018. "Do Women Ask?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 611-636, October.
    4. Hart, Einav & Schweitzer, Maurice E., 2020. "Getting to less: When negotiating harms post-agreement performance," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 155-175.
    5. Bowles, Hannah Riley, 2012. "Claiming Authority: How Women Explain Their Ascent to Top Business Leadership Positions," Working Paper Series rwp12-047, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Hart, Einav & Schweitzer, Maurice E., 2022. "When we should care more about relationships than favorable deal terms in negotiation: The economic relevance of relational outcomes (ERRO)," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    7. Bowles, Hannah Riley, 2012. "Claiming Authority: How Women Explain their Ascent to Top Business Leadership Positions," Scholarly Articles 9830355, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    8. Maria Kravtsova & Aleksey Oshchepkov, 2019. "Market And Network Corruption," HSE Working papers WP BRP 209/EC/2019, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    9. Clément Bosquet & Pierre‐Philippe Combes & Cecilia García‐Peñalosa, 2019. "Gender and Promotions: Evidence from Academic Economists in France," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(3), pages 1020-1053, July.
    10. Chen, Jihui Susan & Liu, Qihong & Billger, Sherrilyn M., 2012. "Where Do New Ph.D. Economists Go? Evidence from Recent Initial Job Placements," IZA Discussion Papers 6990, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Nitzan Peri-Rotem, 2019. "Gendered Career Pathways among Doctoral Graduates in the United Kingdom," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-14, November.
    12. Bosquet, Clément & Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Garcia-Penalosa, Cecilia, 2013. "Gender and competition: evidence from academic promotions in France," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 58350, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Joan Daouli & Eirini Konstantina Nikolatou, 2015. "The Market for Ph.D. Holders in Greece: Probit and Multinomial Logit Analysis of their Employment Status," South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, Association of Economic Universities of South and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea Region, vol. 13(1), pages 47-74.
    14. Laura Hospido & Luc Laeven & Ana Lamo, 2022. "The Gender Promotion Gap: Evidence from Central Banking," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(5), pages 981-996, December.
    15. Ludwig, Sandra & Fellner-Röhling, Gerlinde & Thoma, Carmen, 2017. "Do women have more shame than men? An experiment on self-assessment and the shame of overestimating oneself," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 31-46.
    16. Astrid Kunze, 2008. "Gender wage gap studies: consistency and decomposition," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 63-76, August.
    17. Bowles, Hannah Riley & Babcock, Linda & Lai, Lei, 2004. "Do You a Favor? Social Implications of High Aspirations in Negotiation," Working Paper Series rwp04-033, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    18. Castillo, Marco & Petrie, Ragan & Torero, Maximo & Vesterlund, Lise, 2013. "Gender differences in bargaining outcomes: A field experiment on discrimination," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 35-48.
    19. James Walker & Anna Vignoles & Mark Collins, 2010. "Higher education academic salaries in the UK," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 12-35, January.
    20. Shingo Takahashi & Ana Maria Takahashi, 2009. "Gender Promotion Differences in Economics Departments in Japan: A Semi-parametric Duration Analysis," Working Papers EMS_2009_09, Research Institute, International University of Japan.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp08-066. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ksharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.