Category Archives: Fairness

Want teamwork? Then get pride – with fair treatment and leaders who demonstrate the right values

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Topic: Fairness, Leadership, Teams
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (NOV 2010)
Article: Cooperating when “you” and “I” are treated fairly: The moderating role of leader prototypicality
Authors:  David De Cremer, Marius van Dijke, and David M. Mayer
Reviewed By: Bobby Bullock

More and more research is examining how teams work together to achieve common goals.  One aspect of teams that is important for successful outcomes is the extent to which team members engage in cooperative behavior (rather than self centered).   A new model presented by De Cremer, Van Duke, and Mayer (2010) indicates that cooperation amongst team members is highest when a) members feel that both they and their fellow members are receiving procedurally fair treatment from their leader, and b) the leader him/herself embodies the team’s values and norms.  While that may seem like a mouthful, listen up: this new research may just provide that extra piece that’s missing from your teamwork puzzle.

It’s definitely a good thing for an employee to feel that he or she is being treated fairly, but sometimes that is not enough.  De Cremer et al. (2010) found that individual cooperation was highest when an employee felt that the team leader treated both her and her coworkers with procedural fairness (i.e., allowing all to express their views, consistent application of procedures).  However, this effect was only significant when the leader herself was perceived as a prototypical leader (i.e., a leader that represents a group’s ideal values and identity).  In comparison, when leaders did not represent group norms, their expression of procedural fairness led to much lower cooperation.

Why is this?  One word was thrown around to explain these effects… pride!  When all employees in a group are treated fairly by a leader that embodies ideal values, pride is arguably at its strongest and so is the degree of cooperation and helping behaviors among team members. 

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Third-Party Reactions to Injustice at Work

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Topic: Fairness
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEP 2010)
Article: Dual processing and organizational justice: The role of rational versus experiential processing in third-party reactions to workplace mistreatment
Authors: Daniel Skarlicki and Deborah Rupp
Reviewed By: Bobby Bullock

Any time an employee is a victim of mistreatment, there are a myriad of individuals who can become aware, including friends, co-workers, and even strangers.  And when it comes to justice in the workplace, even employees that are not directly mistreated can become motivated to inflict retribution.  This can happen even if they are completely unaffected by the event.  Why?  The deontic model of justice (Cropanzano, Goldman, & Folger, 2003) proposes that when people become aware of the mistreatment of others, they can experience very real and sometimes strong negative emotions.  It is proposed that this reaction is due to the violation of social and moral “norms” of behavior.  A recent study by Skarlicki and Rupp (2010) explored factors that could affect this tendency for third-parties to carry out justice and retribution on behalf of a mistreated coworker.  What they found was this:  third-party employees who process the event on an emotional, “gut” level are more likely to react to an injustice than their rational counterparts.  However, if someone has a strong Moral Identity (e.g., sees him/herself as highly moral – kind, honest, etc.), they are more likely to react regardless of whether they are intuitive versus logical.  For details of the study, read on:

First, the researchers examined if the use of a particular “processing frame” over another would moderate a third-party’s reaction to injustice.  Processing frames are essentially ways to process information and can include experiential processing and rational processing.  Experiential processing happens at a more subconscious level, and includes people’s emotional and “gut” responses as information on which to base future behavior.  Rational processing happens in the more conscious, or deliberative part of the mind.  It involves the use of logic and the weighing of evidence to make decisions and guide behavior.  Skarlicki and Rupp (2010) found that people who were primed to be open to their intuition and feelings were much more likely to seek retribution against someone who mistreated another person (a fictional stranger in this case) than those primed to think rationally and analytically.

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Cheated Employees: Less Organizational Commitment and Less Creativity

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Topic: Fairness Organizational Commitment Creativity
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (July, 2010)
Article: Psychological Contract Breaches, Organizational Commitment, and Innovation-Related Behaviors: A Latent Growth Modeling Approach
Authors: T.W.H. Ng, D.C. Feldman, S.S.K. Lam
Reviewed By: Ben Sher

Okay, here’s the deal. Employees make assumptions about what they owe their employers and what their employers owe them in return. This is called a psychological contract. According to Ng, Feldman, and Lam (2010), when employees think this psychological contract is being violated, they may feel less organizational commitment and become less innovative.

So what does happen when employees feel bamboozled? According to the authors, two things happen. First, employees will naturally begin to feel less emotional attachment to the company. This is not revenge; it’s just an inevitable emotional reaction. Secondly, employees will indeed have some interest in getting back at the employer as long as they can keep their jobs.

That sounds ominous. So, what do the employees do about it? Basically, they become less creative. The authors explain that there are two ways an employee can be creative on the job. Employees can solve problems and they can implement ideas. Problem solving is difficult to measure, so instead the authors measured idea implementation. They defined this as anytime an employee shared a new idea with a colleague or superior, or anytime an employee either worked to implement those new ideas or helped others to implement them. When employees perceived psychological breaches, they ended up engaging in less of these innovative behaviors. Because the study included employees from a wide variety of jobs, the authors concluded that the complexity of the job makes no difference, and innovation will always suffer.

A key finding of this study is that this decrease in innovation continued over time. Employers may mistakenly think that breaking psychological contracts won’t have lasting consequences and that employees will eventually forgive and forget. This is a mistake. Because the authors were able to identify the role psychological contract breaches have in reducing organizational commitment, or the overall attitude employees have towards their employers, it is easy to understand how innovation will continue to decrease over the long run. Employers should be warned of these consequences, and should be encouraged to fix the situation and give employees what they believe they are owed.

Ng, T.W.H., & Feldman, D.C., & Lam, S.S.K. (2010). Psychological Contract Breaches, Organizational Commitment, and Innovation-Related Behaviors: A Latent Growth Modeling Approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 744-751.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys: A Measure of Race and Gender. A Measure of Performance? Not So Much

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Topic: Fairness, Diversity, Performance Appraisal

Publication: Academy of Management Journal
Article: An examination of whether and how
racial and gender biases influence customer satisfaction

Authors: D. R. Hekman, K. Aquino, B. P.
Owens, T. R. Mitchell, P. Schilpzand, & K. Leavitt

Reviewed By: Katie Bachman


Balance  There’s this great
line in the 1980 movie, 9 to 5, when Jane Fonda says to Dabney Coleman: “You’re a sexist,
egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” and he replies: “So I have a few
faults; who doesn’t?” Keep that in mind when you think about the Average Joe on
the street, filling out a survey. Untrained raters don’t rate accurately—that’s
why they need training! Customer satisfaction surveys are the epitome of using
untrained raters to measure employee performance.

For organizations
attempting to become more customer service-oriented, customer satisfaction
surveys seem like a good way to measure performance. You might get an accurate
rating if you’re White and male, but minorities and women can be hurt by these
types of ratings. Bias seeps into the rating process, which is a big time legal
no-no, particularly if such ratings are used as criteria for promotion and
compensation. In three separate studies—two in the field and one in the
lab—researchers determined that women and minorities were consistently rated
lower on customer satisfaction, even when performance was the same. Obviously,
this relationship was even stronger when the rater held negative attitudes
toward these groups. Additionally, the negative ratings given to minority and
female employees also affect customer ratings of the organization. It’s not
enough that customers like your employees a little less for being non-White or
female, they also like your company a little less.

Why is this happening?
Anonymity probably has something to do with it. Surveys almost never ask
customer raters to identify themselves so people feel freer to let their
attitudes affect their judgments. Also, there’s a lack of standards and
training for most of these surveys. Raters without training may rely on their
gut reactions more so than individuals trained to focus on observed behavior.

So what does this mean
for an organization? Customer satisfaction surveys need to be taken with a
grain of salt and probably not used for employment decisions. Customers will rate identical work
as less satisfactory if a woman or minority performs it (no word in this
article about the double whammy: female minorities). If you are going to use
them, customer satisfaction surveys should be tailored to ask for behavioral
episodes, not gut reactions and should only be used in conjunction with other,
less biased measures of employee performance.

 

Hekman,
D. R., Aquino, K., Owens, B. P., Mitchell, T. R., Schilpzand, P., &
Leavitt, K. (2010). An examination of whether and how racial and gender biases
influence customer satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 238-264

Workplace Fairness: Crucial for Powerful Supervisors

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Topic: Decision Making, Fairness, Trust
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (May, 2010)
Article: The Role of Authority Power in Explaining Procedural Fairness Effects
Authors: M. van Dijke, D. De Cremer, D.M. Mayer
Reviewed By: Ben Sher

Of course it always pays to be fair to your employees, right?  Not always, suggests research by van Dijke, De Cremer, and Mayer (2010).  They explain that there are distinct advantages to treating people fairly, but only if the supervisor possesses a high level of power. If the supervisor possesses low power, it may not actually matter.

Here’s how it works.  When a supervisor makes decisions that seem fair, they will be seen as more trustworthy.  When that happens, employees will view the supervisor as more charismatic and as a more legitimate authority.  The employees will also be more motivated to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), which is when employees use extra effort to accomplish organizational goals.

But here’s the catch: this only applies to supervisors who seem powerful. Employees who feel they are treated unfairly might wonder if the supervisor could have done anything different. When the supervisor appears to be powerful, the answer is invariably yes.  If that happens, they will be less likely to trust the unfair supervisor who may seem exploitive and self-serving.

But if the supervisor does not appear powerful, employees may think the supervisor is merely following orders and therefore not to blame. In that case, they may trust the supervisor regardless of whether they are fair. The authors explain several important implications of this study.  First, power is not as bad as it is commonly portrayed.  Power can be used to help encourage organizational citizenship behaviors, and these behaviors will only decrease in response to unfairness.  Second, high power equals high stakes and high accountability.  Challenging conventional wisdom, this study suggests that people in powerful positions cannot do as they please, and are held to a higher standard.  On the other hand, supervisors who have relatively low power are not held to a high standard and have greater freedom.

Still, the researchers caution that low power supervisors should not take this as invitation to do as they please.  Low power supervisors may not receive as much feedback on the perceived fairness of their decisions and may not realize they are being unfair.  When job applicants or clients who are not familiar with the company mistake them for high power leaders, they will be ill-equipped to meet the higher standards expected of them.

Van Dijke, M., De Cremer, D., Mayer, D.M. (2010). The Role of Authority Power in Explaining Procedural Fairness Effects. Journal of Applied Psychology,95, 488-502.

Organizational Citizenship: more than a matter of “scratching backs

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Topic: Citizenship Behavior, Fairness
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (MAR 2010)
Article: Paying you back or paying me forward: Understanding rewarded and unrewarded organizational citizenship behavior
Authors: M.A. Korsgaard, B.M. Meglino, S.W. Lester, & S.S. Jeong
Reviewed By: Bobby Bullock

When employees go above and beyond at work (organizational citizenship behaviors), we like to imagine that they go that extra mile because of personal strength or drive.  For many years though, it was believed that employees displayed organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) because they expected some sort form of payback down the line (i.e., “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine”).

So, would employees still go that extra mile if nobody noticed their good deeds?  According to a recent study by Korsgaard, Meglino, Lester, and Jeong (2010) the answer is, YES! Korsgaard et al. (2010) explained that OCBs can be provoked by either expected reciprocity  or the obligation to reciprocate.

Expected reciprocity happens when individuals engage in helpful behaviors out of self interest because they expect the favor to be returned in the future (i.e., I’ll scratch your back because I know you will scratch mine later). An obligation to reciprocate occurs when individuals act to benefit others out of an obligation to “pay back” a previous favor (i.e., you scratched my back, now I’ll scratch yours).

While the former is motivated by self-interest, the latter is motivated by other-interest. Korsgaard et al.’s findings suggest that individuals who are other-oriented are more likely to return favors even when nobody is watching.  On the other hand, individuals who are lower in other-orientation (and thus more self-interested) are more likely to display OCBs only when their good deeds can be observed and lead to future benefits.

Based on these findings, organizations can take at least two approaches to increasing
OCBs in the workplace:

1.) Create a meaningful or pleasant atmosphere that instills a sense of psychological obligation in its workers. This should lead to more OCBs as individuals who are high in other orientation will seek to “return the favor.”

2.) Clearly state the potential benefits of OCB. This will create an environment where even those who are low in other orientation will display more OCBs because they can see the future self-benefit. How’s that for some back-scratching?

Korsgaard, M. A., Meglino, B. M., Lester, S. W., & Jeong, S. S. (2010). Paying you back or paying me forward: Understanding rewarded and unrewarded organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(2), 277-290.