Chapter 1
Total Rewards and Strategic Compensation
Why the compensation philosophy is a strategy document, not an HR one.
Rewarding and Retaining Talent · California Edition
A working compensation textbook that meets students where the field actually operates. California pay-scale disclosure, wage-and-hour rules, and 2026 exempt salary thresholds are integrated throughout, not tucked into an appendix.
The compensation text I wanted to hand my own students on the first day.
Most compensation textbooks are national in scope and California-adjacent at best. In practice, if you are teaching compensation to undergraduates or MBA students on this coast, you are stitching together a national text plus a stack of PDFs on SB 1162, the exempt salary threshold, wage-and-hour compliance, and the DFEH enforcement landscape. Students end up learning national compensation theory and then re-learning it under California rules the week they take a job.
This textbook fixes that. California pay-scale disclosure, the current exempt salary floor, wage-and-hour rules, and the enforcement trends are integrated into every chapter where they apply. National theory is still there. The book just treats California as a serious teaching case rather than an appendix.
In California, your pay is already public. Build it to survive the daylight.
The book is used in undergraduate and graduate compensation courses and by working HR professionals studying for SHRM and CCP credentials. It is available now on Amazon KDP.
Ten chapters mapping to a standard undergraduate or graduate compensation course, taught the way the field actually works.
Why the compensation philosophy is a strategy document, not an HR one.
Federal, state, and local compensation law with California treated seriously throughout.
SB 1162, exempt salary thresholds, wage-and-hour compliance, publicpay.ca.gov, and the enforcement patterns students walk into.
Equity theory, compression, and the reason your veteran quits when the new hire starts at more.
Lead, lag, or match. How to choose on purpose and what each choice costs.
The methods that survive scrutiny in a pay-transparency environment.
Short-term, long-term, and the incentive that quietly rewards the behavior you did not want.
Health, retirement, and the parts of the paycheck the paystub does not show.
Documenting a defensible pay system before someone asks you to.
AI, remote work, and pay transparency as three converging forces reshaping the compensation manager's job.
Review copies and adoption materials go out the same week you ask. Tell me the course, the term, and roughly how many seats, and I will send what you need to evaluate the book for your syllabus.
Thomas J. Norman, Ph.D. is a Professor of Management at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where he teaches compensation, management theory, and industrial-organizational psychology. He is also a Gallup-certified executive coach working with C-suite leaders on integrating AI into growing companies.
He is the author of a Management textbook (also for the undergraduate classroom) and the forthcoming More Capable trade book series (Judgment Call, Lead What Lasts, and Unreplaceable).