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Fair Pay Practices in Small Ventures: The Interplay of Founder Competency and Racial Identity

Hee Man Park et al.

Compensation & Benefits Review2026https://doi.org/10.1177/08863687261421264article
ABDC C
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

Small business entrepreneurs face challenges in attracting investors and stabilizing their ventures, yet many adopt socially responsible HRM practices beyond shareholder demands, legal compliance, and union contracts. What drives these choices remains underexplored. Drawing on upper echelon theory, this study examines how CEO founders’ social-emotional skills and race predict the adoption of fair pay practices. We further suggest that access to market salary data and pay equity information (fair pay knowledge) serve as cognitive mechanisms linking founder characteristics to compensation decisions. Survey data from 125 women entrepreneurs in the U.S. indicate that higher responsible decision-making competency is associated with greater fair pay knowledge, which in turn predicts implementation of fair pay practices. Notably, after accounting for human capital, social-emotional skills, and firm revenue status, Black, Indigenous, and people of color reported lower adoption of fair pay practices, largely due to reduced fair pay information access relative to their White counterparts.

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Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/08863687261421264

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{hee2026,
  title        = {{Fair Pay Practices in Small Ventures: The Interplay of Founder Competency and Racial Identity}},
  author       = {Hee Man Park et al.},
  journal      = {Compensation & Benefits Review},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/08863687261421264},
}

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Fair Pay Practices in Small Ventures: The Interplay of Founder Competency and Racial Identity

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.