The Political Economy of Rewards Management: A Critical Framework for Resource Allocation in Organizational and Political Systems

Abstract

This review article examines how principles of rewards management, as detailed in the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation's guide Implementing Total Rewards Strategies (Heneman, 2007), provide a microcosmic framework for analyzing the fundamental political science question: Who gets what, when, and how? By integrating classical political economy (Smith, 1776; Ricardo, 1817) with dependencies theory (Cardoso & Faletto, 1979; Dos Santos, 1970), we demonstrate how organizational reward systems function as allocation regimes that reproduce, negotiate, and occasionally transform broader structural inequalities. This analysis reveals rewards management as applied political economy, bridging theories of value, power, justice, and governance.