The Effect of Online Protests and Firm Responses on Shareholder and Consumer Evaluation

This study examined the link between employees’ adult attachment orientations and perceptions of line managers’ interpersonal justice behaviors, and the moderating effect of national culture (collectivism). Participants from countries categorized as low collectivistic (N = 205) and high collectivistic (N = 136) completed an online survey. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were negatively related to interpersonal justice perceptions. Cultural differences did not moderate the effects of avoidance. However, the relationship between attachment anxiety and interpersonal justice was non-significant in the Southern Asia (more collectivistic) cultural cluster. Our findings indicate the importance of ‘fit’ between cultural relational values and individual attachment orientations in shaping interpersonal justice perceptions, and highlight the need for more non-western organizational justice research.     

The Virtuous Influence of Ethical Leadership Behavior: Evidence from the Field

This study examines a moderated/mediated model of ethical leadership on follower job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. We proposed that managers have the potential to be agents of virtue or vice within organizations. Specifically, through ethical leadership behavior we argued that managers can virtuously influence perceptions of ethical climate, which in turn will positively impact organizational members’ flourishing as measured by job satisfaction and affective commitment to the organization. We also hypothesized that perceptions of interactional justice would moderate the ethical leadership-to-climate relationship. Our results indicate that ethical leadership has both a direct and indirect influence on follower job satisfaction and affective commitment. The indirect effect of ethical leadership involves shaping perceptions of ethical climate, which in turn, engender greater job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. Furthermore, when interactional justice is perceived to be high, this strengthens the ethical leadership-to-climate relationship.     

How managers can lower mental illness costs by reducing stigma

The stigma associated with mental illness is not usually an issue that managers include in their portfolio of everyday concerns. However, published data from multiple sources makes it clear that the costs of doing business for any organization are increased when the very common conditions characterized as mental illnesses are stigmatized. Denial, fear of discovery, and insurance inadequacy among an organization's employees often delay treatment, harming organizational productivity and raising health care costs related to both the mental illness itself and other associated medical conditions. Additional costs to businesses range from the possibility of increased liability to higher taxes. To counter stigma among employees, the authors recommend personal communication with co-workers diagnosed with a mental illness, or with members of their families, to create new associations for these illnesses, which is a more effective approach than either education or anti-stigma messages. They also recommend communication to constituencies beyond one's own organization, joining with other companies to demonstrate actions aimed at community-wide stigma reduction, and offering consulting services to organizations promoting mental health.     

An integrative conceptualization of organizational compassion and organizational justice: a sensemaking perspective

Organizational scholars tend to view justice and compassion as incompatible. While both have important functions in organizational life, compassion's affective elements appear difficult to synthesize with the reasoning and impartiality that underlie the concept of justice. We draw on theoretical arguments from the sensemaking perspective to argue that we can integrate organizational compassion and organizational justice conceptually because both are inherently dynamic processes that rely on emotional and cognitive components, and both are shaped by the social context of the organization. Based on this integrative conceptualization, we propose a construct we call ‘compassionate organizational justice’, in which compassion becomes an integral element of an organization's justice requirements and members’ fairness perceptions, and that those justice perceptions in turn inform future instances of organizational compassion.     

Causes and Consequences of Abusive Supervision in Sales Management: A Tale of Two Perspectives

Abuse may characterize some most important relationships, and it is estimated that 20 million Americans face abusive work situations on a daily basis. Given this statistic, there is a clear need to investigate this topic within the marketing literature. As a result, the purpose of this study is to explore antecedents and outcomes of abusive supervision in sales management, where the performance‐driven nature of salesperson–sales manager relationships often creates a highly stressful situation. This research looks at several characteristics of sales managers from their perspectives as well as subordinates, and it considers how abuse influences professional and personal lives of both parties. Causes under investigation include leadership style, justice perceptions, negative affectivity, and experiences of abusive leadership by sales managers. Their impact is measured on salesperson and manager job satisfaction and organizational commitment. A model is used to help readers visualize the processes involved with both salespersons and sales managers, and theoretical and practical implications are provided in the close.     

Transformational leadership and R&D workers' multiple commitments: Do justice and span of control matter?

This study examines how transformational leaders influence research and development (R&D) workers' commitment to their organizations and leaders. The study investigates the mediating role of organizational justice (i.e., procedural and interactional) based on social exchange theory and the moderating role of span of control in this relationship. In a sample of 445 Turkish R&D personnel, the study finds that transformational leadership significantly influences followers' organizational commitment partially through procedural justice and their supervisory commitment partially through interactional justice. Second, the findings reveal that transformational leaders boost perceptions of procedural justice and organizational commitment when the span of control is relatively narrow. Interestingly, when the span of control is large, transformational leadership has significant positive effects on supervisory commitment, but no significant effects on organizational commitment among R&D workers.     

(Un)Ethical Behavior and Performance Appraisal: The Role of Affect,Support, and Organizational Justice

Performance appraisals are widely used as an HR instrument. This study among 332 police officers examines the effects of performance appraisals from a behavioral ethics perspective. A mediation model relating justice perceptions of police officers’ last performance appraisal to their work affect, perceived supervisor and organizational support and, in turn, their ethical (pro-organizational proactive) and unethical (counterproductive) work behavior was tested empirically. The relationship between justice perceptions and both, ethical and unethical behavior was mediated by perceived support and work affect. Hence, a singular yearly performance appraisal was linked to both ethical and unethical behaviors at work. The finding that ethical and unethical aspects of employee behavior share several of the same organizational antecedents, namely organizational justice perceptions, has strong practical implications which are discussed as well.     

Procedural and Distributive Justice: Examining Equity in a University Setting

The concept of organizational justice is important to understanding and predicting organizational behavior. A significant development in the research literature has been the separation of distributive and procedural justice. While much of the research has focused on negative outcomes, this research attempted to verify the presence of both forms of justice in the context of positive outcomes. Subjects completed an instrument designed to measure their perceptions of distributive and procedural justice. The subjects also reported their satisfaction and sense of fairness with their salary increases, their belief that the procedures to award the increases had been followed, and their level of information and agreement regarding the salary program. These measures, along with size of salary increase and gender were examined to determine their impact on the subjects' perceived level of justice. The data support the existence of the two distinct forms of justice, but suggest that procedural justice may, in turn, branch out into two aspects. One category involves being informed, and a second appears to deal with acceptance of procedures. A series of relationships are then considered. Significant gender effects were non-existent.     

Role of downward versus upward social comparison in service recovery: Testing a mediated moderation model with two empirical studies

This paper extends prior research into the role of social comparison in service recovery by investigating the role of both downward and upward social comparison. Social comparison theory and attribution theory are applied to explore the differences in how upward and downward inter-customer comparison affects post-recovery satisfaction and word-of-mouth intentions. The mediating role of distributive justice perceptions and the moderating effects of the attribution of inter-customer differences in service recovery and customers’ justice sensitivity are also examined. Two online scenario-based experimental studies show that downward social comparison leads to greater satisfaction and lower negative word-of-mouth intentions. In addition, distributive justice mediates the relationship. Finally, attribution of difference in inter-customer influence and individual-level justice sensitivity moderate these effects. Besides its conceptual contributions, the findings from this paper may help managers design more effective service recovery strategies.     

When Sales Managers and Salespeople Disagree in the Appreciation for Their Firm: The Phenomenon of Organizational Identification Tension

Marketing literature emphasizes the importance of organizational identification in the sales force. However, empirical research has so far focused on the separate analysis of the consequences of either sales managers’ or salespersons’ organizational identification, largely ignoring their interactive effects. This study seeks to address this research void by exploring the phenomena of organizational identification agreement and organizational identification tension in the sales manager–salesperson dyad. In contrast to organizational identification agreement, organizational identification tension occurs in a sales manager–salesperson dyad if the sales manager and the salesperson differ in the strength of their organizational identification. Analysis of a triadic data set using hierarchical linear modeling supports the authors’ hypotheses that increasing the level of organizational identification agreement is beneficial but increasing organizational identification tension can have severe negative consequences for the satisfaction of a salesperson's customers and the salesperson's performance. The study additionally explores how sales managers’ leadership styles (charismatic vs. transactional), combined with the appropriate control system (behavioral vs. outcome control), can be effective in avoiding organizational identification tension.     

To Share or Not to Share: Modeling Tacit Knowledge Sharing,Its Mediators and Antecedents

Tacit knowledge sharing discussed in this study is important in the area of business ethics, because an unwillingness to share knowledge that may hurt an organization’s survival is seen as being seriously unethical. In the proposed model of this study, distributive justice, procedural justice, and cooperativeness influence tacit knowledge sharing indirectly via two mediators: organizational commitment and trust in co-workers. Accordingly, instrumental ties and expressive ties influence tacit knowledge sharing indirectly only via the mediation of trust in co-workers. The model is assessed by using data from different companies’ employees, who attend an evening college in Taiwan for advance study. The test results of this study indicate that tacit knowledge sharing is affected by distributive justice, procedural justice, and cooperativeness indirectly via organizational commitment. Additionally, tacit knowledge sharing is also affected by distributive justice, instrumental ties, and expressive ties via trust in co-workers. The paths from procedural justice and cooperativeness to trust in co-workers are shown to be insignificant. Managerial implications of the empirical findings are also provided. Chieh-Peng Lin is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Business and Management, Vanung University, Taiwan. He had performed international business practices for several years and now focuses on the research related to consumer and organizational behaviors. His work has been published in a variety of journals including Journal of Business Ethics, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Human Resource Development Quarterly, Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, and so on.     

Job Satisfaction as a Function of Top Management Support for Ethical Behavior: A Study of Indian Managers

Based on organizational justice theories and cognitive dissonance theories, the authors hypothesized that: (a) perceived top management support for ethical behaviors will be positively correlated with all facets of job satisfaction (supervision, pay, promotion, work, co-workers, and overall); and (b) the correlation will be highest with the facet of supervision. Empirical results (n = 77 middle level managers from two organizations in South India) supported only the second hypothesis. Implications for managing a global workforce are discussed.     

Hypocrisies of Fairness: Towards a More Reflexive Ethical Base in Organizational Justice Research and Practice

Despite becoming one of the most active research areas in organizational behavior, the field of organizational justice has stayed at a safe distance from moral questions of values, as well as from critical questions regarding the implications of fairness considerations on the status quo of power relations in today’s organizations. We argue that both organizational justice research and the managerial practices it informs lack reflexivity. This manifests itself in two possible hypocrisies of fairness. Managers may apply organizational justice knowledge but fail to increase the actual levels of fairness in employment relations. Researchers, on the other hand, may claim to promote fairness through their work while actually providing managers with tools that enable or even encourage them to feed the hypocrisy of fairness identified above. As␣part of our argument, we identify three types of mechanisms managers may use to influence and manage the formation of fairness perceptions. We consider how the exercise of power is related to the potential application of organizational justice knowledge across individual, interpersonal and social levels. Our approach makes power dynamics and moral implications salient, and questions the purely subjectivist view of justice researchers that deliberately discards normative aspects. The questions opened up by considering alternative mechanisms for creating fairness perceptions have led us to formulate a research agenda for organizational justice research that takes multiple stakeholder interests, power dynamics and ethical implications into account. We believe that the fields of organizational justice and normative justice can benefit from combined research. Marion Fortin (Ph.D., Trinity College Dublin) is Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the Durham Business School, Durham University. Marion previously worked in the financial industry and also was a visiting scholar at the Stern School, NYU. Marion’s main research interest lies in the role of justice judgments in the workplace. Her current and past research projects also involve issues of organizational change, power mechanisms, and the role of emotions in organizations. Martin R. Fellenz (Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the School of Business, University of Dublin, Trinity College. His research interests include organizational justice, organizational transformation and change, teaching and learning, and the development of theory and theory schools. He regularly contributes to executive education programs in a variety of countries and consults with leading international public, private and not-for-profit organizations on matters of leadership, management development, and organizational transformation. A previous version of this paper was originally presented at the IESE Business School, University of Navarra, for the 14th International Symposium on Ethics, Business and Society: “Towards a Comprehensive Integration of Ethics Into Management: Problems and Prospects”. May 18–19, 2006).     

Perceptions of justice afforded by formal grievance systems as predictors of a belief in a just workplace

This study investigates the relationship between workers' perceptions of distributive and procedural justice afforded by a grievance system and their more general belief in an underlying moral order in the workplace. Using samples representing five ocupationally distinct groups, the presence of any moderating effects of occupation received only weak support. Consistent with previous work, however, workers' perceptions of procedural justice (i.e., fairness in the process) were a stronger predictor of workers' belief in workplace justice than were perceptions of distributive justice (i.e., fairness of outcomes).Gerald E. Frxyell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has conducted research and published in the areas of innovation, organizational culture, corporate social performance, and management training in developing contexts.     

Psychological contracts and fairness: The effect of violations on customer service behavior

A conceptual model of the effect of psychological contracts and associated fairness perceptions on customer service organizational citizenship behaviors (CSOCB) is presented. Psychological contracts, individually held beliefs regarding employer-employee reciprocal expectations and obligations, provide a basis for the comprehensive perception of organizational justice. In turn, justice perceptions result in CSOCB, or externally directed extra-role behaviors. When customer contact employees perceive violations, these behaviors are likely to be either negative or a reduction of positive behaviors. Future research is discussed.     

International transfer pricing and subsidiary performance: The role of organizational justice

International intrafirm trade is increasingly important in the global economy. Intrafirm transactions are governed by transfer‐pricing policies mandated by parent companies. Economic and accounting theories have long prescribed policies that maximize the parent company's short‐term profits but may have other, unintended outcomes. These outcomes are explored in a single‐case study. Based on this case study and organizational justice theory, a theoretical framework is developed to show how frequently used transfer‐pricing policies, through their impact on subsidiary managers' perceptions of justice, can significantly affect the subsidiary's strategic performance. First, the conditions under which transfer‐pricing policies can be perceived as procedurally, interactionally, or distributively unfair are presented. Second, it is proposed that those justice perceptions have an impact on subsidiary managers' commitment, trust in the parent company, neglect, ethical behavior, productivity, work quality, and compliance, and that the magnitude of this impact is moderated by the quality of relations between the parent company and subsidiary managers. Finally, it is predicted that such attitudes and behaviors may generate important agency and transaction costs that jeopardize the expected outcomes of international strategies of vertical integration. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Corporate environmental market responsiveness: A model of individual and organizational drivers

This study examines the psychological and organizational drivers of corporate environmental market responsiveness (CEMR). Drawing on the relevant literature, the study identifies several variables of potential importance in CEMR and builds on the theory of planned behavior to propose a model of hypothesized relationships among these variables. The study tests hypotheses in an empirical study using a large sample of environmental managers from eleven members of the European Environmental Agency. The research findings show that the environmental behaviors of managers are largely determined by social judgments and perceptions. The present study has implications for managers who wish to pursue an environmental market-oriented approach to business. These results also have important implications for organizational theory and the debates about whether economic or social factors determine the effects of environmental issues on competitive advantage.     

Social ties between SME managers and bank employees: Financial consequences vs. SME managers' perceptions

We investigate whether social ties between SME managers and bank employees affect SME access to lending, investment, growth and profitability. On the one hand, we examine the influence of social ties on financial indicators based on SME financial statements; on the other hand, we study the impact of social ties on SME managers' perceptions of their firms' main banks. Using a dataset from Poland, we find that social ties improve SMEs' access to bank financing and stimulate their investments. However, this positive impact occurs only when social ties involve bank decision-makers. In contrast, SME managers perceive all types of social ties with bank workers as valuable.     

Beliefs about organising learning: a conceptual and empirical analysis of managers’ and workers’ learning action theories

This article describes research on the action theories that managers and workers hold toward organising learning. It begins with a conceptual analysis of learning action theories, then the empirical research is reported. The aim was to deter‐mine the dimensions in people’s perceptions of the learning system and whether these form more or less stable profiles. These perception profiles are interpreted as representing the respondents’ learning action theories.