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1、毕业论文题目：XX企业薪酬管理及对策研究英文文献原文：Wage and Salary Administration and Wage Theory: A ReconciliationBy MAURICE C. BENEWITZMANY INDUSTRIAL WAGE and salary administrators believe that they can determine wage and employment levels for their firms by use of criteria different from those of economic wage theory.
2、Industrial programs differ from the approach of marginal theory mainly in their failure to employ the economic criterion of value productivity of labor. This paper will contend that revenue (or value) productivity does, nevertheless, dominate the activities of operating firms with respect to wage ra
3、tes and employment levels. Therefore, it will be argued, wage theory describes more fully the forces affecting firm decisions than does wage and salary administration analysis.Both the wage theorist and the business firm seek to determine:1. relative wage structures within the firm;2. the absolute d
4、ollar wage which will be paid for each type of labor employed in the firm;3. minimum labor cost per unit of output (for whatever output is chosen) within the limits imposed by techniques and availability of of other sources;4. the proper level of employment within the firm.The operating firm and the
5、 firm in the economic model determine these magnitudes in similar ways if allowances are made for the restrictions placed upon the businessman by lack oi data, presence of frictions, and the like. This similarity of solutions is not always apparent, however, because functions which are combined in a
6、 single process in the economic model are scattered among a number of administrators in the medium- or large size firm.In the model, the entrepreneur hires labor and other resources, directs the production process, decides upon the combination of products to be produced, engages in the sale of produ
7、ct, and undertakes future planning for these procedures. All of these activities are involved in the determination of wage rates and the level of employment.These procedures are scattered among a number of administrators in the medium- or larged firm. Administrators of particular firm activities may
8、 not be aware that the overall operation of the firm closely adheres to the theoretical model.In this paper the relationship between wage theory and the whole of the operating firms activities will be demonstrated. Wage and salary programs will first be examined. Then the method of setting wage rate
9、s and employment levels in theory will be discussed. The apparent discrepancies between methods will be set forth, and finally, a reconciliation between the theoretical and operating methods will be suggested.Wage and salary administration, it should be noted, accepts as given the wage rate or the s
10、upply function for each type of labor in the market. Industrial wage programs make no attempt, even implicitly, to explain the supply conditions or to answer those questions about wages and labor allocation which depend upon such an explanation. This is true despite the fact that industrial relation
11、s practitioners appear to believe that their functions include the setting of wages. Wage theory does attempt to explain the nature oi the supply relationship or, at least, to take account of variations in supply. It seeks to solve a larger set of problems. But even in theory, supply relationships a
12、re assumed to be parameters for the individual firm. In this paper, the theoretical model will be limited to the level of the firm. Given wage rates or given supply relationships will be assumed so that the solutions under theory and under wage and salary administration can be compared.Solution in t
13、he Operating FirmWAGE AND SALARY ADMINISTRATION seeks to achieve equitable relative wage structures within the firm, a wage structure which is comparable with those of similar firms, and minimum unit labor costs for given outputs. (The firm is, of course, not interested in minimization of unit cost
14、for any one factor. However, if it is assumed that labor is the major controllable factor in the short-run, then minimization of unit labor costs iot whatever output is chosen turns out to be the best method of minimizing unit cost.)Salary Administration and Wage TheoryUnder wage and salary administ
15、ration, internal equity in the wage and salary structure is achieved by use of job analysis and job evaluation, to describe jobs and then to arrange them in order of their importance within the firm. After analyzing every job in the plant, factors common to all, such as skill requirements, working c
16、onditions, and effort requirements, are then selected as norms used in the evaluation process by which the jobs are ranked. The relative importance of the jobs is established by comparison of all jobs against these norms. This relative order is the firms job structure.Pricing of this job structure t
17、ranslates the relative position of jobs in the structure into dollar terms and makes the firms wage structure comparable to those of similar firms. The usual pricing procedure employed is the wage survey which establishes the basic rates (or range of rates) paid for particular kinds of work in the s
18、ame labor market. The wage survey is undertaken only for a relatively small number of key jobs and the data are reduced to a least-squares line, relating job evaluation points of surveyed jobs and wage-rates of these jobs. The wage-rates for non-surveyed jobs are determined by finding the wage-rate
19、associated on the trend line with the evaluation points of each particular job. If the key jobs are well chosen and the survey is properly conducted, the wage structure should be similar to that of all other firms using the same types of labor in an area or labor market.Within the firm, the wage and
20、 salary structure deals with the relative differences between jobs as shown by differences in the compensation of the various jobs. In contrast, the labor cost structure of the firm deals withthe expenditure on labor per unit of output for different products and for varying outputs of a single produ
21、ct.One of the basic aims of the wage and salary program is prediction of total labor cost for budgeting purposes. To achieve this end, specific, and often different, methods are used to compensate different groups. This occurs because in practice the measurement of the productivity of variousgroups
22、presents differing problems. In the case of direct production workers, for example, the wage paid can be associated with the output of the individual or group in at least an approximate manner and budgeting can be based on planned output. But even where measurement is possible;the units in which pro
23、ductivity is measured may differ. Thus, the contribution of direct production workers is measured in terms of output while contributions of salesmen are usually measured in dollar volume of sales. Such differences in measurement units make necessary varying methods of payment. For other groups of em
24、ployees the compensation problem is complicated by the difficulty of direct unit measurement of the contribution. Executives and some indirect production employees and office employees are examples. In such cases, the budget is sometimes established first, and incentive scales are set against the pr
25、oduction norms shown in the budget. Of course, such compensation procedures do not aid in planning the budget.Reduction of labor costs is another important wage and salary function. When productivity increases, labor cost per unit oi output is reduced. Incentive pay methods related to output are nee
26、ded if increases in productivity are to be encouraged by monetary means. As noted above, such incentive methods can be applied to some groups in the firm but are difficult to apply to others. W. H. Knowles has shown that the choice among incentive systems cannot be made on any scientific grounds.The
27、 Solution in the Economic ModelHow DOES THE THEORIST approach the solution of the same problems? The economist operates under the simplyifing assumption that the value of the output of all types of labor can be measured in the same way. He reduces the value of the product of all workers to a single,
28、 homogeneous measure, marginal revenue product, the increase in the total value of the firms output resulting from the output of the last labor unit employed. To derive this measure in actual business practice would involve several difficult problems. One problem, which has already been discussed ab
29、ove, is the difficulty of measuring the output contribution of many types of labor employed in the firm. In addition, the valuation oi the product depends upon estimates of the value the output will have when it is placed upon the market at some time in the future. The use of the marginal revenue pr
30、oduct concept as a measuring device would be difficult in business practice because of these and other problems inherent in its construction; but the concept is theoretically useful.In place of a wage structure designed to achieve equity, the economist substitutes a wage structure based upon the pro
31、duction contributions of the various kinds of labor employed. The quantities of the different typesof labor hired within the model firm are varied until the marginal revenue product of each type employed equals its wage rate. In the short-run, when the labor force of the plant is not completely vari
32、able, this result may not be entirely achieved. The firm in the model will attempt to approximate it as closely as possible. (The criteria used in job analysis and job evaluation to achieve an internally equitable job and wage structure include skills, physical working conditions and so on; but they
33、 do not include revenue productivity of labor.)In the economic model, the comparability of wage structures of employers in the same labor markets is the result of the impact of the forces of supply and demand upon all employers. (In the case under discussion, the supplyschedules for employers are as
34、sumed to be given; only the demand schedules are to be explained in the following discussion.) In the wage and salary program, on the other hand, comparability of wage structures between firms is achieved through the wage survey; that is, equalization appears to be a policy decision rather than a re
35、sult of market forces.A Contrasting of MethodsBOTH THE BUSINESSMAN and the economist are agreed that wages are ultimately based on the value of production. When the supply schedule of labor is accepted as given, the economist seeks to explain compensation of labor on the basis of the following facto
36、rs; physical output of labor, market demand for goods produced (which determines the value of physical product), effectiveness of other resources, and a host of other variables which help to determine the demand schedule for labor. In short, this explanation is based on value productivity in the fir
37、m, industry, and society. In contrast, the wage and salary administrator does not attempt to explain the forces which determine the nature of the demand schedule for labor of various types. This schedule in fact exists for the firm and is roughly equated to the given supply relationships, but the wa
38、ge and salary administrator handles only a portion of the information needed to construct the demand schedule. Under wage theory, the firm managers in the model adjust production so as to equate the marginal revenue product of each grade of labor to the market wage or to the marginal costs of hiring
39、 one more unit of labor. In the short-run, such adjustment results from changing the number of persons employed, speed of the work process, or the product mix produced. In the long-run, more basic adjustments may be achieved by revamping the production process so as to change the utilization of vari
40、ous kinds of labor or other resources.In the firm found in the economic model, therefore, wages serve as a guide to the proper number of employees to hire. Furthermore, the productivity in each firm helps to set the market demand schedules for the various grades of labor and, thus, the market wage r
41、ate. Within the firm, this process also serves to minimize per unit labor costs for whatever output is chosen (assuming labor to be the major controllable factor in the short-run.) Just as the basic wage rate and any differentials and incentives paid under an actual wage and salary program do not ap
42、pear to be nearly so directly related to productivity as they are in the economic model, neither does the employment level appear to be so directly associated with the wage for each labor grade. Under job evaluation programs found in industry, and in the wage surveys conducted, productivity is not m
43、easured. In fact, the task standard is set through time and motion study or by use of standard data only after the wage rate has been determined. The measurement, when made, is usually in terms of physical product rather than value product. Incentive payments are related to increased physical produc
44、tivity in most cases, and the amount of increased pay is related to the base rate. Thus, even in the case of incentive pay, there is only a distant relationship between payments made and value productivity. This is also true in the case of fringe adjustment. It would not appear that the wage and sal
45、ary administration method can explain why a given wage is paid as well as wage theory does.It would also appear that the wage and salary administration method cannot determine the number of workers of each grade to hire because of the lack of value productivity data to compare with cost. The economi
46、st equates the marginal revenue product of each grade of labor to the appropriate wage rate or marginal cost schedule in order to find that level of employment of each group which is most profitable. It does not appear that considerations concerning the demand schedule influence the employment level
47、 or wage-rates of the firm in actual business practice.A Reconciliation of MethodsTHIS ANALYSIS SEEMS to show that wage and salary administration cannot perform either of the important functions which wage theory is assumed to accomplish:1. the explanation of wage levels on the basis of productivity
48、 and the value of output in the economy as a whole;2. the explanation of the level of employment for each labor gradeon the basis of comparisons between the costs of hiring labor and the returns from the use of labor.If wage and salary administration cannot do these things in at least the rough-and-
49、ready way which is applicable to the non-theoretical business community, it would appear to be a costly, and not overly useful management technique. If, however, wage and salary administration actually provides the firm with data which substantially enhance the efficiency of the firms operations, then the economist must be able to show the relationship between wage and salary administration and wage theory. Otherwise present wage theory must be an inadequate explanation of even an
