TITLE:
Mechanisms of Digital Transformation Affecting Corporate Internal Pay Gap: A Literature Review
AUTHORS:
Yibo Wang, Jiming Yu, Yaheng Wang, Jinyi Zhang, Hui Jia
KEYWORDS:
Digital Transformation, Internal Pay Gap, Intra-Firm Pay Allocation, Corporate Governance, Mechanism Research
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.17 No.10,
October
13,
2026
ABSTRACT: Digital transformation has brought about fundamental changes in enterprise value creation and factor allocation, and has also profoundly affected the internal pay gap. However, the academic community has not yet reached a consensus on the logical mechanism and impact effects of digital transformation on the internal pay gap within enterprises. This paper focuses on examining the relevant concepts, indicators and transmission logic of digital transformation and internal pay gap, analyzes its micro-operation mode from the perspectives of expansion and convergence, and examines the characteristics of heterogeneous constraints from four aspects: property rights nature, industry category, company size and degree of marketization. The research results show that the digital transformation of enterprises has a dual effect of “internal pay dispersion” and “fair distribution”. Existing research is lacking in various aspects such as dynamic mechanisms, variable selection, heterogeneity analysis, and endogeneity processing. Based on this, this paper proposes possible directions such as nonlinear dynamic mechanism analysis, multi-scenario heterogeneity analysis, and detailed pay structure analysis. The research results of this paper are conducive to supplementing the relevant theories on intra-firm pay allocation in the context of the digital economy and providing appropriate methodological hints for firms to coordinate efficiency, fairness and governance.