Tag Archives: fairness

The Relationship Between Weight and Salary: Bad News For All Kinds of People

Reply

Topic: Fairness, Gender, Selection
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAN 2011)
Article: When It Comes to Pay, Do the Thin Win? The Effect of Weight on Pay for Men and Women
Authors: T.A. Judge, D.M. Cable
Reviewed By: Ben Sher

Does career success have anything to do with what you look like?  According to a recent study by Judge and Cable (2011), the answer is yes. 

From the same people who explained that height may influence salary (Judge & Cable, 2004), now it seems weight can also influence salary.  Drawing from cultivation theory, or the idea that people are slowly drawn to accept social norms promoted by the media, they say it literally pays to be the “ideal” weight. 

So what exactly is the “ideal” weight?  Not surprisingly, the answer is different for men and women.  The authors say underweight men are actually punished with smaller salaries, presumably because they have violated gender-role norms by being too skinny.  Men are paid more with increased weight, up to the point of obesity, when salaries start to gradually decline.  For women, a very different pattern emerged.  Underweight women had the highest salaries, and salaries decreased with additional weight gain. 

But not all weight gain is equal.  In one study, the salary decrease between average versus underweight women was twice the decrease between average weight women and overweight women.  According to the researchers, this is because the media has long been portraying increasingly thinner women as being ideally attractive, and the workplace has discriminated accordingly.  Once women violate this ideal and become average weight, they may already be seen as “letting themselves go” so any further weight gain isn’t as detrimental.  

Continue reading →

Is Bad Behavior from an Employee the Consequence of an Unfulfilled Organizational Promise?

Reply

Topic: Counter-Productive Work Behavior, Fairness, Trust, Workplace Deviance
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology (WINTER 2010)
Article: Psychological contracts and counterproductive work behaviors: employee responses to transactional and relational breach
Authors: J.M. Jensen, R.A. Opland, and A.M. Ryan
Reviewed By: Allison B. Siminovsky

Counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) are those actions undertaken by the employee that are detrimental to the overall work environment.  The reasons for engaging in such behaviors and the means of expressing them differ from situation to situation, and as a result it can be difficult for organizations to pinpoint exactly what the causes of CWBs may be.  This article seeks to find antecedents for CWBs in organizational breaches of the psychological contract, or the employee’s inherent expectations about how the reciprocal relationship between employer and employee ought to be.   In other words, does deviant workplace behavior result from perceived organizational injustices and mistreatment?

The current study examines the possibility of numerous types of CWBs occurring as the result of a perceived breach of the psychological contract and achieved several significant findings.  For example, it was found that when employees are moved to retaliate to feeling a lost sense of their employers caring about them, they are most likely to engage in abuse behaviors, which include threatening and undermining one’s co-workers. 

Continue reading →

Do Organizations Ask What They Shouldn’t Ask in Job Applications?

7

Topic: Fairness, Recruiting
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment (DEC 2010)
Article: Science-practice gap in e-recruitment
Authors: A.L. Garcia-Izquierdo, H. Aguinis, and P.J. Ramos-Villagrasa
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

The gap between the science of HR and its practice in actual organizations is well known.  Sometimes, the practice of HR outpaces the research (e.g., organizations implement systems that are “hot” in the popular press, but not well understood or under researched), while in other cases, the practice of HR lags well behind the research…and sometimes even the law!

In a recent study, Garcia-Izquierdo et al. (2010) analyzed online job applications of over 60 publicly traded organizations – first in Spain in 2005, and again in 2009.  According to the authors, Spain provides a natural setting to study the science-practice gap in IO psychology because employment legislation regarding Equal Employment Opportunity is still ongoing (unlike in the U.S.).  Specifically, these dates were chosen due to recent legislation changes in 2007 (e.g., an Act prohibiting sex-based discrimination).  

Common information that was required of job applicants included age or date of birth, nationality, gender, marital status and place of birth.  About 20% of companies in 2005 even asked job applicants for personal photographs (this increased to 25% in 2009).  Overall, the percentages of companies asking applicants for such information did not change significantly from 2005 to 2009. 

Continue reading →

Third-Party Reactions to Injustice at Work

Reply

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.

Continue reading →

Cheated Employees: Less Organizational Commitment and Less Creativity

5

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.

Illegitimate Tasks – You Want Me to do What!?

Reply

Topic: Counterproductive Work Behavior
Publication: Applied Psychology: An International Review (JAN 2010)
Article: Illegitimate tasks and counterproductive work behavior
Authors: N.K. Semmer, F. Tschan, L.L. Meier, S. Facchin, & N. Jacobshagen
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

The research on counterproductive work behavior (CWB) suggests that it often represents a form of retaliation in response to unfairness. In other words, when employees perceive unfairness in the workplace, they get even by engaging in behaviors that damage the organization or its employees.

Extending this line of research, Semmer and colleagues (2010) uncovered an interesting predictor to CWB: illegitimate tasks. Illegitimate tasks are tasks that are assigned to employees that undermine their professional identities. That is, employees have jobs and professions that involve a set of “normal” or “typical” tasks. This also implies that some tasks and/or duties should not be expected of certain employees (e.g., assigning a medical doctor to repair an air conditioner).  According to Semmer et al., the assignment of illegitimate tasks (either unreasonable or unnecessary tasks), can undermine employees’ professional (and perhaps social) identities and possibly lead to CWB. As expected, Semmer et al. found that when employees perceive that they are  assigned illegitimate tasks at work they are more likely to engage in CWBs targeted toward organizational members or the organization itself.

Clearly, managers should be careful when delegating tasks to certain employees. If employees view these work assignments as unreasonable or unnecessary given their profession, then they will be more likely to engage in CWBs.

Finally, since many supervisors are focused on the big picture (i.e., the overall goals of the organizational unit) they may simply be unaware that this phenomenon takes place. Clearly then, it is important to communicate to managers that employees do appraise tasks as being  legitimate/illegitimate which can potentially lead to counter productive behaviors. Nevertheless, some tasks MUST be completed. Semmer et al. suggest that if supervisors demonstrate their willingness to complete such tasks, then their employees may be less likely to view them as illegitimate.

Semmer, N.K., Tschan, F., Meier, L.L, Facchin, S, & Jacobshagen, N. (2010). Illegitimate tasks and counterproductive work behavior. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 59(1), 70-96.