Shirli Kopelman, Center for Positive Organizations

Shirli Kopelman discusses pay injustices on popular podcast

March 29, 2018


Negotiations expert Shirli Kopelman offers advice on addressing perceived pay unfairness.

Talking about compensation is seldom easy, especially if you feel you are being paid unfairly. Michigan Ross Professor Shirli Kopelman, in a new episode of Harvard Business Review’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, delves into questions from listeners about the challenges and opportunities around perceived pay injustice.

Kopelman, the author of Negotiating Genuinely: Being Yourself in Business, along with Dear HBR: hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn, discusses compensation challenges in the workplace — for example, an employee who believes a poor performer is overpaid and a manager who struggles with a misguided salary structure.

Kopelman highlights how positive and negative emotions are an important resource, in response to a question about an unfulfilled promotion promise.

“Waiting is frustrating. Counterintuitively, your frustration, refocused, could motivate you to proactively pursue the topic,” says Kopelman, who advised initiating a conversation.

Kopelman is a professor of management and organizations and former faculty director of research and business practice at the Center for Positive Organizations.


This story was originally published as a Ross Thought in Action article.