3 Why might disclosure be a ‘prescription for disaster’? As we have seen, the issue of relative pay equity is a pivotal facet of employee perceptions of the fairness or unfairness of how and how much they are paid. Equity theory also tells us that real or imagined differences in effort/pay ratios are key to employees’ perceptions about distributive fairness. For this and other reasons, many now argue that traditional policies of pay secrecy are both unfair and counterproductive and that the best approach to managing pay perceptions and comparisons is that of full disclosure/transparency.