The Signal Effects of Pay Increase on Career Advancement and Emotional Exhaustion: an Approach by Social Information Process Perspective

Classic motivational theory contends monetary reward will give rise to a positive impact on work outcomes. In the present study, I postulate pay raise has a stressful impact on employees. It derives from the signal effect of pay raise to imply the prospect of individual employee during a certain period of time in an organization which in turn affects the feeling of being emotionally exhausted. A burnout syndrome is emerging across a bulk of companies while they spare no efforts in productivity improvement. These bring about some employee management problem such as work deviant behavior, poor work performance, and diminished organizational commitment. The current study tests how important, but long been ignored factor, pay increase combined with employees’ direct leader relates to career advancement opportunity and emotional exhaustion. Drawing on social information processing theory and related literature, this study proposes how contextual factors affect one’s evaluation on career advancement opportunity. The importance of this study is to extend the scope and content of burnout theory from the angle of compensation and reward. For example, there is a paucity of current research exploring how pay factors affect burnout while pay and pay increase, critical stressors of psychological well being, have substantial impact on career success. As well, the study investigates the mediating role of career advancement opportunity in the relationships between the antecedents (pay increase and supervisor support) and emotional exhaustion.

Project ID:PF10007-1073
External Project ID:NSC100-2410-H182-002