---
title: Four kinds of relationships, and why pay design goes wrong
description: "Fiske's four relational models: communal, ranking, equality, market. All four exist in one company. Pay fails when one relationship's rules are used in another."
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/covers-2026-11/four-relational-models-and-pay-design-cover-en-m.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

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[日本語](https://nobusato.jp/ja/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design)[English](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design)[中文](https://nobusato.jp/zh/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design)

Organizations & Hiring

In this article

1. [Four relationships, four rulebooks](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design#s1)
2. [All four in one company](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design#s2)
3. [Three pay tracks, three relationships](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design#s3)
4. [Back to the method](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design#s4)

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2. [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en)
3. [Organizations & Hiring](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/organizations-hiring)

# Four kinds of relationships, and why pay design goes wrong

Pay goes wrong when the four relationships cross wires

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)5 min read

Contents4

1. [Four relationships, four rulebooks](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design#s1)
2. [All four in one company](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design#s2)
3. [Three pay tracks, three relationships](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design#s3)
4. [Back to the method](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-relational-models-and-pay-design#s4)

**Series「People Don't Follow the Org Chart」** · Part 9 of 13 · Part 3 · Why people put in effort  
Prologue：[The people who aren't on the org chart](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/people-not-on-the-org-chart?hsLang=en)

A company introduces a "mutual-aid bonus" for people who stay late to help colleagues. The idea is to encourage collaboration. Three months later nobody helps for free anymore. Everyone is working out what each favor is worth. The company decides its employees have become mercenary. They haven't. The company swapped one kind of relationship for another, and the old one didn't survive the swap.

## Four relationships, four rulebooks

In 1991 the anthropologist Alan Fiske proposed that every human relationship runs on one of four elementary models. Each has its own rules, and none converts into another.

Communal sharing means you give according to need and keep no accounts. Families work this way, and so do tight small teams. The rule is "we are one." Authority ranking distributes by position. Those above get more and carry more, as in armies and grade systems. The rule is "who is above whom." Equality matching is tit for tat, settled one for one, like taking turns paying, or the favor ledger. The rule is "even." Market pricing converts everything by ratio, so everything has a price. Wages, trade, bonuses. The rule is "what is it worth."

Fiske's key observation is that people feel it as an offense when one relationship's rules are used inside another. Pay your mother for dinner after a family meal and she is hurt, because you turned communal into market. Ask a subordinate to take turns buying and it lands badly, because you turned ranking into equality. The theory has been replicated across cultures. The arguments are mostly about the edges, whether four models cover every case or hybrids exist. Hardly anyone questions the four distinctions themselves.

Pay goes wrong when the wires between four relationships cross

For each of Alan Fiske’s four relational models (1991): which of my three pay tracks maps to it (grade sets base pay, role sets responsibility pay, results set the bonus), and where the article’s three failures crossed the wires

Communal: “we are one”Help inside the team. No track touches it. Failure: a mutual-aid bonus turned it into market pricing, and three months later nobody helped for free

Authority ranking: “who is above whom”Grade → base pay. Given by position, not moved by short-term results. Failure: seniority grades, ranking rules where responsibility should be priced

Equality matching: “even”The favor ledger between people. Kept off the pay tracks

Market pricing: “what is it worth”Results → bonus; role → responsibility pay, on the border with ranking. Failure: “everyone the same,” communal logic on pay, and high-value people leave

Once a relationship turns into another, it rarely turns back. Before a pay change, check which relationship it touches.

Figure 1. A company that paid a mutual-aid bonus for helping colleagues found nobody helping for free three months later, because carrying one relationship’s rules into another breaks pay, so tie base pay to ranking, responsibility pay to the border of market and ranking, and the bonus to market pricing, and keep every track away from communal sharing inside the team.

## All four in one company

An organization isn't one relationship. It's four, stacked on top of each other, each governing different things.

Inside a team, daily life is communal. Whoever is free helps, and nobody keeps score. The grade system is ranking. People above earn higher base pay and carry more responsibility. Favors are equality matching, the kari and kashi of [the favor ledger](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/the-favor-ledger?hsLang=en). Bonuses and salary negotiations at hiring are market. What is this person worth? What is this result worth?

Having all four is fine. The trouble starts when the wires cross. The mutual-aid bonus turned the team's communal relationship into market pricing, and once it turns, it doesn't turn back. The reverse mistake is common too. A company sets pay by communal logic, "everyone the same, no special treatment," and loses the people with high market value. They know what they're worth elsewhere.

## Three pay tracks, three relationships

I design pay on three tracks. The person's grade sets base pay, the role sets responsibility pay, and results set the bonus. Fiske explains why the three have to stay apart. Each one maps onto a different relationship.

Base pay by grade is authority ranking. It is distributed by position, it stays stable instead of swinging with short-term results, and it tells people where they stand in the organization. Responsibility pay by role sits on the border between market pricing and ranking. It is what one responsibility module is worth in the market, paid to whoever carries it. The bonus by results is pure market pricing, output converted by ratio.

And none of the three touches the communal relationship inside the team. No mutual-aid bonus, no score for "team spirit," no turning help for a colleague into money. Communal sharing works because nobody keeps accounts. The moment you keep one, it's gone.

This matters more in Japan. Communal relationships in Japanese organizations are usually stronger than in the West (the cohesion of the [place](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tate-society-and-matrix-management?hsLang=en)), so touching them with market logic causes a bigger backlash. Ranking, meanwhile, is often too strong, with grades set by seniority instead of responsibility. That's another crossed wire. Ranking rules are being applied where market pricing belongs.

## Back to the method

In the patterns layer of my organizational diagnosis, I check which relationship's rules each of a company's systems runs on, and then look for crossed wires. Most pay problems show up at this step. The person in [A 50% raise and he still left](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/a-50-raise-and-he-still-left?hsLang=en) left because the company was using market pricing to solve a ranking problem.

Think of your company's most recent pay reform. Which of the four relationships did it touch?

**In this series**  
Previous：[Add people, and each one pulls less](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/ringelmann-effect-add-people-pull-less?hsLang=en)  
Next：[Motivation is a design decision](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/motivation-is-a-design-decision?hsLang=en)

The responsibility track is most useful when someone is rehired at 60 and the role has to be rebuilt. I went through that case in [rehired at 60 in Japan](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/rehired-after-retirement-age?hsLang=en).

Author

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

Launching in Japan, starting with people and systems. I write about building organizations, sales teams and technology organizations in Japan, in English, Japanese and Chinese.

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)[Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

## Read next

1. 01[Universe 25: The Mice Had Food. They Ran Out of Roles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/universe-25-role-scarcity?hsLang=en)8 min
   
   Universe 25 stopped growing at 2,200 mice with shelter for 3,840. Calhoun blamed a shortage of social roles. What that ...
2. 02[Lifetime Employment Is Not a Japanese Tradition](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/lifetime-employment-is-not-tradition?hsLang=en)8 min
   
   An American coined the term in 1958, large firms built it to keep skilled workers, and under one in ten had it in 2006. ...

[Column guide: Organizations & Hiring](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/guide-organizations-and-hiring?hsLang=en) · [Glossary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/glossary?hsLang=en) · [The method behind the articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en)

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