Research Landscape of Pay Dispersion and Enterprise Performance in China: A Visualization-Based Analysis

The pay dispersion is considered to have an important impact on enterprise performance. Scholars have conducted research based on different perspectives such as tournament theory and behavior theory, and have different views on the relationship between the two. Despite the wide range of discussions, researchers have failed to reach a consensus on this phenomenon due to different theoretical perspectives. In order to pay attention to the frontier hot spots and understand the research status of this field in the Chinese context, this study reviews the existing domestic and foreign literature. After the study, CiteSpace was used to visualize 1705 articles from 2014 to 2024 from CNKI to further verify the conclusions of the review. It is found that the current academic attention in this field in China has a downward trend after reaching its peak in 2020, but the new hot spots not only focus on the research in the Chinese context, but also show certain policy orientation. At the same time, the related research has the problem of single measurement dimension of pay dispersion, and the pay dispersion between ordinary employees has not been fully discussed.