Between-firm Inequality and Informal Social Relations

Employer investment, social closure, peer networks: substantial research highlights differences in informal social structure across workplaces. Yet, studies of pay inequality between firms have largely neglected these differences, in favor of more easily measurable features like firm size or ownership structure. We show how three types of workplace social relations shape firm pay setting: employer relational investment; social closure as a source of bargaining power; and amenity ties that lock workers into jobs despite low pay. To operationalize these concepts, we draw on text data from a large archive of job reviews. Variance decomposition analyses show that differences in social relations account for up to 20\% of overall inequality in between-firm pay premiums and 7\% of residual inequality. Differences in informal social organization, and not just formal organization, predict pay differences between firms.

雇主投入、社会封闭（social closure）与同伴网络：既往诸多研究均揭示了不同职场间非正式社会结构的差异。然而，针对企业间薪酬不平等的相关研究却普遍忽略了这类差异，转而优先采用更易于量化的特征，例如企业规模或所有权结构。我们揭示了三类职场社会关系如何影响企业薪酬制定：一是雇主关系型投入，二是作为员工议价能力来源的社会封闭，三是即便薪酬微薄仍能将员工绑定于岗位的非薪酬便利纽带（amenity ties）。为将上述概念操作化，我们依托来自大型职场评论档案的文本数据开展研究。方差分解（variance decomposition）分析结果显示，社会关系差异可解释企业间薪酬溢价（pay premiums）整体不平等的高达20%，以及残差不平等的7%。非正式社会组织而非仅正式社会组织的差异，能够有效预测企业间的薪酬差异。