PurposeThe study examines the relationship between perceived unfair pay and job satisfaction and how this relationship is contingent on organizational hierarchical rank.Design/methodology/approachThe proprietary data are from ongoing surveys of individual workers conducted by a major Polish human resource consulting firm. The pooled cross-section dataset is comprised of nearly 330,000 individuals working in the Polish labor market during 2015–2017. Drawing upon various theories, the authors formalize and test three hypotheses. The estimations are performed using the ordered probit method.FindingsCeteris paribus, job satisfaction is increasing with organizational hierarchical rank; perceived unfairness of pay is negatively associated with job satisfaction, and organizational hierarchical rank exacerbates this negative relationship by making it stronger for employees holding higher organizational positions.Originality/valueFirst, prior research is mainly confined to studying pay satisfaction as a contributing factor to job satisfaction, and perceived fairness of pay was rarely considered. Second, very few studies examine the role of hierarchical level as a moderator in the relationship between organizational justice and workplace outcomes. Third, the authors add to the scarce empirical literature on job satisfaction for post-Communist Central and East European countries as only a limited number of such studies exist for Poland.

Purpose: The article focuses on the assessment of knowledge workers’ relation with superiors, internal communication, perceived autonomy and feeling of appreciation. The goal of the article is also to extend current knowledge of the perception of cooperation between employees. The authors were able to identify interdependencies among the researched variables and the impact of COVID-19 on peoples’ professional situation. Design/methodology/approach: The article presents the results of a CAWI survey conducted on a large sample of 2778 specialists and managers in Poland. The researchers used the purposive sampling method to reach the population of white-collar workers who experienced remote work or remote cooperation with their colleagues. Findings: The empirical study showed that in most cases superiors passed the test and were positively evaluated by their subordinates. The correlation analysis also showed that certain positive qualities of a manager go together and are positively correlated with professional situation assessment during the COVID-19 period. Research limitations/implications: The study describes the results in a large sample; however, the sampling method was not probabilistic and therefore we cannot use statistical inference for the general population of working specialists in Poland. Originality/value: The value of the article is the presentation of the up-to-date opinion of almost 3 thousands specialists employed in Poland. The text plays an important role in recording the influence of the pandemic on Polish employees.

Social responsibility is a multidimensional construct which manifests itself in many areas of human life – in both the private and professional spheres. In business, people’s individual attitudes are often the starting point for organizational activities. Even the most ethical business behavior, if not matched by changes on the part of individuals, will not create a change on a larger scale. Thus, personal social responsibility can be defined as a key element of corporate social responsibility (CSR), because the implementation of this idea in business depends on the behavior of the individuals working in the company. The main purpose of the article is to investigate published knowledge concerning the concept of personal or individual social responsibility (PSR or ISR) and the personal or individual social responsibility scale. The authors made a systematic literature review, analyzing full-text scholarly articles published between 2000 and 2021. International databases and journal libraries – EBSCO, JSTOR, Mendeley, Wiley Online Library, Web of Science, and Scopus – were searched using the logical phrases “personal social responsibility,” “individual social responsibility,” “personal social responsibility scale,” and “individual social responsibility scale.” The analysis shows that the concept of individual/personal social responsibility is considered in the literature in various contexts, though few works are available on this concept and even fewer describe its indicators. Using keywords relevant to the area, 14 publications were selected for analysis. This leads to the conclusion that there is a research gap in this area, which the authors intend to fill in the course of further research.