CONTINGENCIES IN THE EFFECTS OF PAY RANGE ON ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

The degree of pay spread can influence many organizational level outcomes (e.g., workforce productivity and organizational performance), but empirical studies are inconsistent about the directionality of the effect. We argue that it is not simply the width of the pay range but also the factors responsible for the width that explain the effects of the pay range on employee and organizational outcomes. We expect that when wider pay ranges are attributable to the use of performance-based pay, the effects of the pay range on performance are positive, but narrower pay ranges attributable to performance-based pay reduce this effect substantially. By contrast, wider pay ranges attributable to politically based pay should have negative effects on performance, and this effect should be weakened when the pay ranges are narrower. Data from a sample of motor carriers generally support our predictions. Although wider pay ranges have positive effects, the results reveal a complex pattern of relationships among the basis of pay allocations and pay range width on the one hand and workforce productivity and organizational performance on the other. Implications for future compensation and strategic human resource management research are discussed.     

Radical Scepticism Without Epistemic Closure

This paper contributes to the current debate about radical scepticism and the structure of warrant. After a presentation of the standard version of the radical sceptic’s challenge, both in its barest and its more refined form, three anti‐sceptical responses, and their respective commitments, are being identified: the Dogmatist response, the Conservativist response and the Dretskean response. It is then argued that both the Dretskean and the Conservativist are right that the anti‐sceptical hypothesis cannot inherit any perceptual warrants from ordinary propositions about the environment—and so the Dogmatist response founders. However, if this is so Epistemic Closure lacks any clear rationale. There is therefore good reason to agree with both the Dretskean and the Dogmatist that perceptual warrants for ordinary propositions about the environment are enough in order for those propositions to enjoy a positive epistemic status—and so the Conservativist response founders. However, the Conservativist is nonetheless right that a warrant for the anti‐sceptical hypothesis is needed. For contrary to what much of the recent literature suggests, the radical sceptic need not appeal to Epistemic Closure in order to cast doubt on the legitimacy of our beliefs in ordinary propositions about the environment: there is a Pyrrhonian version of scepticism that, though equally radical, is consistent with failure of Epistemic Closure. For this reason, the Dretskean response is insufficient to answer scepticism.     

PRIEST AND THE BISHOP

Abstract:  According to metaphysical realism, there may be features of reality which we cannot conceive. If this thesis of cognitive closure is inconsistent, then, pace dialetheism, metaphysical realism proves incoherent. Recently, Graham Priest has revived Berkeley's idealist argument meant to show that cognitive closure is inconsistent. If cogent, this argument poses a threat to metaphysical realism. I argue that while Priest's reconstruction of Berkeley's argument may be seen to be paradoxical on one interpretation of 'conceive', that interpretation is not the intended one. On the intended interpretation, the argument fails and hence leaves metaphysical realism unassailed.     

Safety is more than the antonym of risk

abstract   Even though much research has been devoted to studies of safety, the concept of safety is in itself under-theorised, especially concerning its relation to epistemic uncertainty. In this paper we propose a conceptual analysis of safety. The paper explores the distinc-tion between absolute and relative safety, as well as that between objective and subjective safety. Four potential dimensions of safety are discussed, viz. harm, probability, epistemic uncertainty, and control. The first three of these are used in the proposed definition of safety, whereas it is argued that control should not be included in a reasonable definition of safety. It is shown that strictly speaking, an objective safety concept is not attainable. Instead, an intersubjective concept is proposed that brings us as close as possible to an objective concept.