Personality and Org. fairness

Perception and Fairness, Justice, and Trust

Perception and perceptual processes play a major role in how people feel about fairness, justice, and trust. Think of a time when you felt unfairly treated at work or school. Why did you feel that way? What did you do about it? When we perceive unfairness, we are often motivated to do something about it. In organizations, perceptions of unfairness (also referred to as injustice) can exist in numerous situations. Layoffs and downsizings are often seen as unfair by those dismissed as well as by the employees who remain. Hiring and promotion decisions are often seen as unfair by those not chosen. In unionized settings, both managers and union representatives often perceive the other to be unfair. Even organizational change can be viewed as unfair by those asked to learn new systems or do new things.

The term  organizational fairness  refers to employees' perceptions of organizational events, policies, and practices as being fair or not fair. Fairness is a primary concern in relationships where subordinates must rely on others in higher positions. Why should you care about fairness? You should care because perceptions of fairness affect a wide variety of employee attitudes and behaviors including satisfaction, commitment, trust, and turnover. A number of negative behaviors can result from perceptions of unfairness, including theft, sabotage, and other unethical behaviors. Perceived unfairness also increases the chances that employees will file lawsuits against their employers. Most of these outcomes of fairness perceptions can have an obvious economic impact on organizations.

As a manager, it is critical to remember that it is insufficient to just be fair; you must also be perceived as fair by your subordinates. Perceptions are what drive responses, and subordinates' attributions and interpretations of your behaviors and decisions may not reflect your intentions or your own beliefs. The demographic diversity of the U.S. workforce requires many managers to handle differences among employees regarding characteristics ranging from ethnicity to religion to political ideology—all of which can be a source of conflict and misunderstanding. Effectively managing organizational fairness perceptions and attributions can help managers prevent or effectively manage any conflict or misunderstandings that occur.

Understanding fairness is important for ethical reasons as well. There has been no shortage of high-profile ethical lapses in recent years, ranging from Enron to Bernie Madoff to mortgage fraud. Training all employees, including company leaders, in organizational fairness principles helps guide them in making ethical decisions. When employees perceive general organizational fairness and an organizational desire to follow through on formal ethics programs, unethical behavior is reduced and employees are more willing to report problems to management. Also, individuals' expectations for fairness produce expectations that those who violate ethical expectations will be disciplined. Failure to meet employees' fairness expectations can lead them to engage in unethical behavior. We think of fairness in three main ways, discussed next.

Distributive Fairness

Distributive fairness  refers to the perceived fairness of the outcome received, including resource distributions, promotions, hiring and layoff decisions, and raises. Imagine that you and a friend both apply for a job with a local company at the same time. Although you believe that you are more qualified, your friend is offered a job and you are not. Would this feel fair? Your belief about the fairness of you not getting the job reflects your perception of distributive fairness. Distributive fairness relates only to the outcome received, not to the fairness of the process that generated the decision.

Procedural Fairness

A fair process is as important as a fair outcome.  Procedural fairness  addresses the fairness of the procedures used to generate the outcome (e.g., what rules were followed, whether people had the opportunity to express opinions and influence the outcome, etc.). For example, let's continue the example of your applying for a job at the same time as your friend but your friend getting the position. What if you learned that the hiring manager is your friend's cousin, so your friend was offered the job even though you were more qualified? Bending the rules for a relative would probably violate your standards for what constitutes a fair hiring procedure. Low procedural fairness increases negative outcomes, such as lower job performance and withdrawal behaviors like coming to work late or putting in less effort. But if procedural fairness is high, negative reactions are much less likely. Why does procedural fairness matter so much? There are two reasons. First, employees use perceptions of the current decision-making procedures to predict how they will likely fare in the organization in the future. Second, fair procedures signal that employees are valued and accepted by the organization.

Interactional Fairness

Interactional fairness  is whether the amount of information about the decision and the process was adequate, and the perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment and explanations received during the decision-making process. Does an employee who did not receive a performance bonus feel that the supervisor adequately explained the reason? When we assess undesirable outcomes, how we are treated can be just as important as the outcomes we receive. It is difficult to give our best effort to someone who treats us rudely or disrespects us. Deception or abusive words or actions can be seen as having low interactional fairness.

Interactional fairness describes two specific types of interpersonal treatment. The first type is interpersonal fairness, which reflects the degree to which people are treated with politeness, dignity, and respect by authorities or third parties involved in executing procedures or determining outcomes. The second type is informational fairness, which focuses on the extent to which employees receive adequate information and explanations about decisions affecting their working lives. It is important that a high degree of interactional fairness exist in the relationship between a supervisor and a subordinate. Low interactional fairness can lead to feelings of resentment toward either the supervisor or the organization. A victim of interactional unfairness often has increased expressions of hostility toward the supervisor or company, which can lead to negative work behaviors and decrease the effectiveness of organizational communication. Explanations increase job applicants' fairness perceptions, perceptions of the hiring organization, test-taking motivation, and performance on cognitive ability tests.

Perception and Trust

One of the most important outcomes of consistently treating others fairly is trust.  Trust  is the expectation that another person will not act to take advantage of us regardless of our ability to monitor or control them. Trust is critical to long-term relationships and is positively related to job performance. Trusting work relationships enable employees to focus on their work and not waste time and energy “watching their backs.” Trust is particularly important to the developmental stages of relationships, and is positively related to a company's financial performance. One survey of 500 business professionals found that having a trusting relationship with one's manager was the main factor in deciding to stay.

Case Study

What to Do When the Boss Releases His Inner Toddler

Put yourself in the following scenario:

You're one of 10 VPs at a small chain of regional clothing stores, where you're in charge of the women's apparel departments. One of your jobs is to review each month's performance at a meeting of all 10 department heads and the company president. Like your fellow VPs, you prepare a PowerPoint presentation showing the results for the previous month and your projections for the upcoming month, and during your presentation you take the podium and lead the discussion from the front of the room.

On the whole, the meeting is part of a pretty sound overall strategy that allows everyone to know what's going on and what to expect across the board. Typically, the only drawback to an informative and productive session is the president's apparent inability to deal with bad news. He gets irritable and likes to lambaste “underperformers,” and as a result, you and your colleagues always enter the meeting with stomachs in knots and leave it with full-blown gastric distress. The president himself thinks he's fostering open and honest discussion, but everyone else in the room knows plain old-fashioned bullying when they see it.

As luck would have it, you now find yourself at the front of the room, looking up at the floor-to-ceiling screen on which are emblazoned, in what looks to you like 500-point font (red, of course), your less than stellar monthly numbers. Sweating profusely, you're attempting to explain some disappointing sales figures when you hear a noise—a sort of thudding and rattling—against the wall behind you. Startled, you spin around toward the room and are surprised to see that everyone seems to be looking for something on the floor or checking the weather through the windows on one side of the room. Finally you glance toward the wall behind you, where you discover a bent meeting-room chair lying on the floor, and as you look up again, you see that the president is standing, his arms crossed and his face scowling. “The next time you show me numbers like those,” he snarls, “I won't miss!”

Believe it or not, this is a true story (although we've changed a few details—very few—in the interest of plausibility and dramatic impact). It's told by John McKee, a consultant to professionals and businesspeople who want to move up the management ladder as quickly—and, presumably, with as little violence—as possible. McKee was actually an eyewitness to the episode, and although he admits that it's “the clearest example of a boss behaving badly” that he's ever seen, he hastens to add that he won't be the least bit surprised when someone comes up with an even better one.

Consultant Lynn Taylor, who specializes in the development of work and management teams, calls bosses like the one in our scenario Terrible Office Tyrants, or TOTs—managers who can't control their power when they're placed under stress. Taylor believes that the characterization is apt in light of research showing that bosses like the one we've described actually “return to their misbehaving ‘inner toddler’ to handle unwieldy pressures.” In other words, they revert to the kind of behavior that produced “self-serving results” when they were children. In the adult workplace, explains Taylor, they “occasionally find that their ability to master the world is limited, as it is with most mortal beings. This revelation, on top of their inability to communicate clearly in the moment, makes them furious and frustrated.”

According to Taylor, there are 20 “core, parallel traits [shared by] TOTs and toddlers.” The following, which are fairly aggressive, she catalogs under “Bratty Behavior”:

· Bragging

· Bullying

· Demanding

· Ignoring

· Impulsiveness

· Lying

· Self-centeredness

· Stubbornness

· Tantrums

· Territorialism

· Whining

“Most tantrums,” Taylor assures us, “don't involve things being thrown across the room,” and TOT behavior, especially in its less aggressive forms—fickleness, mood swings, neediness—can be “proactively managed” by employees who don't care to be treated as emotional punching bags. She recommends “humor, common sense, rational thinking, and setting limits to bad behavior.” And remember, she adds, “You are the parent with the proverbial cookie jar when it comes to managing a TOT.”

Taylor's approach to understanding and dealing with bad bosses isn't entirely metaphorical, and she does suggest that beleaguered employees translate her general advice into some concrete coping techniques. When confronted by managerial neediness, for example, a good “pacifier” might be a reply such as: “It'll be the first thing on my to-do list tomorrow.” If you're looking for a handy toolbox of effective techniques, you can find dozens on the Internet, most of them posted by psychologists and organizational consultants. The following was compiled by Karen Burns, U.S. News columnist and specialist on career advice for women:

· Put everything in writing. Write and date progress reports. When you get verbal instructions, summarize them in a reply e-mail.

· Be a star performer. Beyond just being a good employee, maintain a positive demeanor; it's hard for someone to ambush you when you're doing your job and smiling in the process.

· Pick your moments. Rather than simply avoiding your boss, study her patterns. Steer clear when she's a nutcase and schedule interactions for times when she's stabilized.

· Seek community. Anchor your sanity in ties to coworkers and other managers. Find a mentor inside the workplace and someone outside to talk (and vent) to.

· Control what you can. You can't control your boss's irrational behavior, so control what you can—namely, the way you respond to it. Ignore the cranky tone of voice and respond to the substance of what she says. Also, eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, and spend the rest of your time with sane people.

· Know your rights. If you want to take your grievance to the HR department (or further), be sure that you've documented your problem and your efforts to resolve it, and be specific about the remedy you're asking for (transfer, severance package, etc.).

· Identify the exits. Come up with a plan, and don't be bullied into taking action before you're ready.