Zaitseva Tatyana Vyacheslavovna

In recent decades, the issue of compensation fairness has become one of the central topics in both academic and applied research. Given the expansion of the public sector in the Russian economy, increasing geopolitical risks, and growing competition, ensuring fair compensation in state organizations has evolved from a matter of managerial discretion into a strategic imperative.
From a theoretical perspective, compensation fairness can be analyzed through various conceptual frameworks. Theories such as Equity Theory, Relative Deprivation Theory, and Social Comparison Theory highlight the profound psychological mechanisms through which perceptions of fairness influence employee behavior. Furthermore, Organizational Justice Theory expands this discourse across four key dimensions — distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational — creating additional analytical perspectives.
These theoretical frameworks served as the foundation for a secondary analysis of research data on critical challenges in ensuring compensation fairness within Russia’s public sector organizations, as well as for summarizing findings from a study conducted among employees of a Chinese state-owned rail transit corporation. The results demonstrate that fairness should not be viewed merely as an abstract managerial ideal but rather as a dynamic evaluative system that bridges formal organizational structures with employees' subjective perceptions. This linkage fosters psychologically critical factors for organizations — trust, work motivation, and resilience to external challenges.