The levels of base pay and incentive pay used by small firms to compensate professional employees with general and specific human capital
基于人力资本理论，研究了小企业中专业员工的固定工资和激励工资与其人力资本水平的关系，发现人力资本与固定工资正相关，但与激励工资关系不明确，尤其是职位特定经验与激励工资负相关。
Drawing on human-capital theory, we propose divergent associations of professional employees’ base pay and incentive pay with their levels of human capital in the small business context. Based on secondary data on 3,750 professional employees representing 65 small firms, we found that, whereas human capital has a positive relationship with base pay, the relationship between human capital and incentive pay is less apparent. Specifically, we found that the relationship between incentive pay and position-specific experience is negative. Our findings suggest that small firms may use higher incentive pay to initially attract talent. Yet, the incentive pay does not grow as professional employees gain firm-specific experience. Moreover, the incentive pay significantly falls as professionals gain more position-specific experience, and this negative relationship is stronger in small firms with higher sales productivity. Further, firm longevity shows a moderately significant positive relationship with base pay; however, the findings show that firm longevity is negatively related to incentive pay.