So what explains their finding? Could it simply show that companies that dole out exorbitant CEO pay — often places with poor corporate governance or where savior CEOs have been lured in to right the ship — are also bad places to work?

Chamberlain doesn’t think so. Even though some studies have shown that people are pretty clueless about how much CEOs actually make, he says they are probably clued in to whether their top boss is making more than he or she is worth. “My take is people are paying attention,” he says. High CEO pay, he believes, “affects their perception of CEO quality. You can’t command high CEO pay while letting the culture of the company languish … They will know if it’s very large or if it’s reasonable.”

That trend could continue with a new SEC regulation set to take effect next year. It will require most publicly traded companies to disclose the ratio between the CEO’s compensation and the pay of the company’s median worker, drawing even more attention to the gap between the two, and the size of the payday at the top.