VARIATION IN COMPENSATION DECISIONS BY MANAGERS - AN EMPIRICAL-INVESTIGATION

We used a policy-capturing approach to study 3,104 pay allocation deci sions of 97 managers (54 men, 43 women) working for a large nonprofit organization with a pay-for-performance policy. Subordinates' performa nce, the consistency in subordinates' past job performance, the import ance of the subordinates' jobs in meeting managerial goals, and the de gree of disruption that would occur if subordinates quit significantly affected managerial pay allocations. A major proportion of the varian ce across the managers was accounted for by sampling error and criteri on unreliability. The subjects' explicit rankings of the four subordin ate-related factors did not correspond highly with the rankings of the ir regression weights.