When do we need procedural fairness? The role of trust in authority.

On the basis of fairness heuristic theory, the authors argue that when information about whether an authority can be trusted is not available, people will resolve the question of how they should interpret the decisions of the authority by relying on perceived procedural fairness. As a consequence, people who do not have information about authority's trustworthiness react more positively toward the outcomes of authority's decisions if the authority is using fair as opposed to unfair procedures. However, when people know that the authority either can or cannot be trusted, they are less in need of procedural fairness information, yielding less strong effects of procedural fairness on people's reactions. The findings of 2 experiments support the authors' line of reasoning. It is concluded that people especially need procedural fairness when information about an authority's trustworthiness is lacking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of authority power in explaining procedural fairness effects.

Building on fairness heuristic theory, fairness theory, and trust development models, we argue that unfairly enacted procedures decrease followers' trust in the authority particularly when authorities have high power over their followers. Moreover, we expected trust to mediate procedural fairness effects on followers' attitudes (authorities' legitimacy and charisma attributed to authorities) and organizational citizenship behavior. Procedural fairness effects on these variables, as mediated by trust, should therefore also be stronger when authority power is high. The results of a single- and multisource field study and a laboratory experiment supported these predictions. These studies support the role of authority power as a theoretically and practically relevant moderator of procedural fairness effects and show that its effectiveness is explained through trust in authorities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of trust in authority and procedural fairness on cooperation.

The present research examined the effect of procedural fairness and trust in an authority on people's willingness to cooperate with the authority across a wide range of social situations. Prior research has shown that the presence of information about whether an authority can be trusted moderates the effect of procedural fairness. If no trust information is available, procedural fairness influences people's reactions. This is not the case when information about the trustworthiness of the authority is present. In the present article, it is argued that information about whether the authority can or cannot be trusted may also moderate the effect of procedural fairness in predicting levels of cooperation. Assuming that the use of fair procedures by authorities that cannot be trusted is less influential than is the enactment of procedures by trustworthy authorities, it is predicted that trust in authority moderates the influence of procedural fairness on cooperation in such a way that procedural fairness has a positive effect on cooperation primarily when trust in authority is high. Results from 4 studies (2 experimental studies and 2 field studies) provide supportive evidence for this interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Moderating Influence of Procedural Fairness on the Relationship Between Work-Life Conflict and Organizational Commitment.

To help employees better manage work-life conflict, organizations have introduced various initiatives, which have met with mixed results. The present studies examined the utility of a procedurally based approach to understanding employees' reactions to work-life conflict. The authors examined whether the fairness of procedures used by organizational authorities to plan and implement decisions moderates the (inverse) relationship between work-life conflict and employees' organizational commitment. Three studies using different methodologies showed support for the moderating role played by procedural fairness. That is, the tendency for greater work-life conflict to lead to lower commitment was significantly less pronounced when procedural fairness was high rather than low. Theoretical contributions to the work-life conflict and organizational justice literatures are discussed, as are practical implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: Motivated reasoning, group differentiation, or anger?

When people have strong moral convictions about outcomes, their judgments of both outcome and procedural fairness become driven more by whether outcomes support or oppose their moral mandates than by whether procedures are proper or improper (the moral mandate effect). Two studies tested 3 explanations for the moral mandate effect. In particular, people with moral mandates may (a) have a greater motivation to seek out procedural flaws when outcomes fail to support their moral point of view (the motivated reasoning hypothesis), (b) be influenced by in-group distributive biases as a result of identifying with parties that share rather than oppose their moral point of view (the group differentiation hypothesis), or (c) react with anger when outcomes are inconsistent with their moral point of view, which, in turn, colors perceptions of both outcomes and procedures (the anger hypothesis). Results support the anger hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Holding parents responsible: Is vicarious responsibility the public's answer to juvenile crime?

Parental responsibility laws hold parents accountable for the delinquent behaviors of their children even when parents' actions are not the direct cause of an offense. Despite the prevalence of these laws, we know little about their perceived fairness. Is it reasonable to make parents vicariously responsible for outcomes they could not have foreseen and if so, under what circumstances? Our series of three studies addressed those questions by systematically examining the impact of various situational and dispositional factors on public opinions regarding parental responsibility. Respondents attributed most of the responsibility for a crime to the child, and attributions of responsibility to the parents varied as a function of the child's age. Case characteristics including the type of crime committed and the described parents' actions versus inactions did not consistently influence responsibility attributions. We conclude that people feel rather lukewarm about the notion of vicarious parental responsibility and this indifference may be related to issues surrounding the laws' enforcement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identifying international assignees at risk for premature departure: The interactive effect of outcome favorability and procedural fairness.

Two studies examined factors that predict expatriate managers' tendencies to think seriously about departing prematurely from their international assignments. Previous research (conducted outside of the expatriate context) has shown that individuals' willingness to stay with or leave their positions is an interactive function of outcome favorability and procedural fairness. A conceptually analogous interaction effect was found in the present studies. Whereas expatriates more seriously thought of departing prematurely when they perceived the non-work-related outcomes of their overseas assignments to be less favorable, this tendency was much less pronounced when procedural fairness was relatively high. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as are limitations of the studies and suggestions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived organizational support: A review of the literature.

The authors reviewed more than 70 studies concerning employees' general belief that their work organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being (perceived organizational support; POS). A meta-analysis indicated that 3 major categories of beneficial treatment received by employees (i.e., fairness, supervisor support, and organizational rewards and favorable job conditions) were associated with POS. POS, in turn, was related to outcomes favorable to employees (e.g., job satisfaction, positive mood) and the organization (e.g., affective commitment, performance, and lessened withdrawal behavior). These relationships depended on processes assumed by organizational support theory: employees' belief that the organization's actions were discretionary, feeling of obligation to aid the organization, fulfillment of socioemotional needs, and performance-reward expectancies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research.

The field of organizational justice continues to he marked by several important research questions, including the size of relationships among justice dimensions, the relative importance of different justice criteria, and the unique effects of justice dimensions on key outcomes. To address such questions, the authors conducted a meta-analytic review of 183 justice studies. The results suggest that although different justice dimensions are moderately to highly related, they contribute incremental variance explained in fairness perceptions. The results also illustrate the overall and unique relationships among distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice and several organizational outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, evaluation of authority, organizational citizenship behavior, withdrawal, performance). These findings are reviewed in terms of their implications for future research on organizational justice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Procedural justice in contacts with the police: Testing a relational model of authority in a mixed methods study.

A relational model of authority (Tyler & Lind, 1992) emphasizes the role of procedural justice (the fairness of methods used to achieve outcomes) in public support for and evaluation of the police. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, this study tested the model in the context of victim–police interactions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 110 people who had reported a crime (personal or property) to the police in the previous year. Quantitative findings supported the predictions that higher perceived antecedents of procedural justice would be associated with higher perceived legitimacy (obligation to obey the law), outcome fairness, and satisfaction with the contact. Antecedents of procedural justice were a stronger predictor of outcome fairness and satisfaction than the realization of a desired outcome, and a stronger predictor of legitimacy than criminal history. Qualitative findings supported these results. It appears that procedural justice has the potential for helping to motivate individuals with criminal history to obey the law. Implications for evaluation of police performance are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

When do procedural fairness and outcome fairness interact to influence employees’ work attitudes and behaviors? The moderating effect of uncertainty.

Prior research has shown that procedural fairness interacts with outcome fairness to influence employees’ work attitudes (e.g., organizational commitment) and behaviors (e.g., job performance, organizational citizenship behavior), such that employees’ tendencies to respond more positively to higher procedural fairness are stronger when outcome fairness is relatively low. In the present studies, we posited that people’s uncertainty about their standing as organizational members would have a moderating influence on this interactive relationship between procedural fairness and outcome fairness, in that the interactive relationship was expected to be more pronounced when uncertainty was high. Using different operationalizations of uncertainty of standing (i.e., length of tenure as a proxy, along with self-reports and coworkers’ reports), we found support for this hypothesis in 4 field studies spanning 3 different countries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of outcomes and procedures on satisfaction with formal leaders.

Tested the hypothesis that the procedures used by leaders to allocate outcomes have an impact on leadership evaluations that is independent of outcome level or outcome fairness. Two studies tested this hypothesis within the context of 132 college students' evaluations of teachers, and two tested it within the context of citizen evaluations of political leaders; Ss in the latter 2 studies were 50 residents of a university town and 156 undergraduates. The procedural justice hypothesis was strongly supported by all 4 studies. In each, strong procedural influences on evaluation were found, influences that were independent of outcome level or outcome fairness. In addition, in both surveys of naturally occurring evaluations, variations in procedural fairness had a much greater impact on leadership endorsement than did variations in outcome level, outcome satisfaction, or outcome fairness. Findings suggest that in experimental settings, Ss can be sensitive to both outcomes and procedures. In natural settings, however, individuals focus on procedures rather than outcomes in forming their evaluations of leaders. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of procedural fairness and leader support on interpersonal relationships among group members.

In this article, the authors examine the impact of fair treatment by a group leader on people's relationships with and feelings toward other individual group members. Previous studies neglected procedural fairness effects on interpersonal relationships between group members. The authors hypothesized that fairness affects interpersonal relationships and feelings toward another group member only when the leader is regarded as representative and supported by the other group members. In three studies, the authors manipulated procedural fairness (no voice vs. voice) and other group member's support for the leader (full vs. mixed support for the leader). Two vignette studies supported the hypothesis. In addition, an experimental laboratory study showed that this interaction effect between procedural fairness and leader support was most pronounced among those with high belongingness needs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Justice, citizenship, and role definition effects.

A limitation of the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature is that theory and empirical evidence suggest that some employees define OCBs as part of their job. A theoretical framework that addresses this problem is tested in this article. The framework focuses on 2 effects: a role enlargement effect (i.e., employees with more favorable attitudes define OCB as inrole behavior, which, in turn, results in greater citizenship) and a role discretion effect (i.e., the relationship between employees' attitudes and their citizenship will be stronger among employees who define OCB as extrarole behavior). In tests of this framework with 2 independent samples of supervisor–subordinate dyads, role definition were found to moderate several relationships between procedural justice and OCB, providing support for the role discretion effect. Implications for OCB theory and research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Event justice perceptions and employees' reactions: Perceptions of social entity justice as a moderator.

Building on 2 paradigms in organizational justice research and on fairness heuristic theory, the author argues that employees' perceptions about the fairness of social entities (their supervisor and their organization) moderate the relationship between their perceptions about the fairness of specific events and their reactions. A survey of 265 supervisor-employee pairs in 4 companies was conducted to test this argument. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed that when employees perceived their organization to be generally fair, this perception moderated the relationship between the perceived justice of a particular event and their reactions to the organization (organizational commitment and organization-directed citizenship behavior). In addition, employees' perceptions of the fairness of their supervisor were found to moderate the relationship between the perceived justice of a particular event and their supervisor-directed responses (trust in managers and supervisor-directed citizenship behavior) and their organization-directed responses. The results suggest that employee attitudes and behavior can be better understood when both event justice perceptions and social entity justice perceptions are considered together. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Academic expectations, attributed responsibility, and teachers' reinforcement behavior: A comment on Cooper and Baron, with some additional data.

Criticizes a study by H. M. Cooper and R. M. Baron (see record 1978-08780-001) in which they conclude that teachers' performance expectations were more potent predictors of their reinforcement behavior in class than were their attributions of responsibility. It is argued that this conclusion is questionable because of some methodological flaws in the study. Evidence that shows rather strong associations between teachers' attributions of responsibility and their reinforcement behavior is presented. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Justice as a dynamic construct: Effects of individual trajectories on distal work outcomes.

Despite an amassing organizational justice literature, few studies have directly addressed the temporal patterning of justice judgments and the effects that changes in these perceptions have on important work outcomes. Drawing from Gestalt characteristics theory (Ariely & Carmon, 2000, 2003), we examine the concept of justice trajectories (i.e., levels and trends of individual fairness perceptions over time) and offer empirical evidence to highlight the value of considering fairness within a dynamic context. Participants included 523 working adults who completed surveys about their work experiences on 4 occasions over the course of 1 year. Results indicate that justice trends explained additional variance in distal work outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions) after controlling for end-state levels of justice, demonstrating the cumulative effects of justice over time. Findings also reveal that change in procedural justice perceptions affected distal work outcomes more strongly than any other justice dimension. Implications for theory and future investigations of justice as a dynamic construct are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retaliation as a response to procedural unfairness: A self-regulatory approach.

When does procedural unfairness result in retaliation, and why do recipients of unfair treatment sometimes pursue and other times inhibit retaliation? Five studies addressed these questions. The authors proposed and found that regulatory focus moderates retaliation against an unfairness-enacting authority: Promotion-focus participants were more likely to retaliate than prevention-focus participants. Promotion focus was associated with, and also heightened the accessibility of, the individual self. In turn, individual-self accessibility influenced retaliation. In fact, prevention-focus participants were as retaliatory as promotion-focus participants under conditions of high individual-self accessibility. Implications for the procedural fairness and regulatory focus literatures are discussed, and suggestions for future research are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trust in the face of conflict: The role of managerial trustworthy behavior and organizational context.

The authors explored the role of attributions in shaping employees' trust in their managers in the context of negative events. The authors examined how 2 forms of managerial trustworthy behavior (open communication and demonstrating concern for employees) and organizational policies relate to attributions, trust in the manager, and organizational citizenship behavior. Participants were 115 credit union employees who responded to a critical incident regarding a disagreement with their managers. As hypothesized, trustworthy behavior was negatively related to attributions of personal responsibility for negative encounters, and this relationship was stronger when human resource policies were perceived as unfair. Managerial trustworthy behavior was also positively related to trust in the manager and organizational citizenship behavior. Personal attributions partially mediated the relationship between trustworthy behavior and trust. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Procedural justice as autonomy regulation.

The present research investigated the relation between autonomy (i.e., freedom of choice) and procedural justice. Three studies tested the hypothesis that people would be particularly sensitive to the fairness of decision-making procedures when they experience deprivation of autonomy needs. Study 1 indicated that procedural justice judgments indeed were influenced more strongly by variations in decision-making procedures among participants who experienced little autonomy in their life. In Study 2, these findings were conceptually replicated by manipulating whether participants were provided with choice on an issue that was unrelated to the outcomes of the subsequent decision-making process. Study 3 revealed evidence for the hypothesis in a field setting. It is concluded that procedural justice is functional to regulate basic autonomy needs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)