What's Fair for Whom at Work? Studying the Choice of Justice Norms in Different Work Relationships, 2008-2010

Fairness perceptions are an important driver of employees’ attitudes and behaviours in organisations. Therefore, it is crucial for managers to understand how fairness perceptions are formed. Research has not addressed whether people choose different normative standards when making judgments of distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice in different types of work relationships. <br> <br> The objectives of this study were:<ul><li>to identify the norms that people typically choose to judge the justice of outcomes (distributive justice), procedures (procedural justice), treatment (interpersonal justice) and information provision (informational justice) at work</li><li>to develop an instrument to measure individual tendencies to choose particular types of justice norms, as an individual difference. This will allow the researchers and other researchers to determine in how far variance in justice judgments is due to general individual preferences for particular norms, independent of the situation</li><li>to explore and then test how the choice of fairness norms differs between different types of work relationships (in particular, between peer versus hierarchical relationships, and close and distant relationships) </li></ul>The central research question of this study was: which norms do people choose to judge the different aspects of fairness at work, and how is this influenced by the different types of work relationships people find themselves in? The results will be of interest to academics who are interested in the process of making justice judgments, and to organisational practitioners who need to understand how fairness judgments are made in order to be able to create fairness perceptions among their employees. <br> <br> Further information is available from the <a href="http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-061-25-0147/read" title="What's Fair for Whom at Work? Studying the Choice of Fairness Norms in Different Work Relationships">What's Fair for Whom at Work? Studying the Choice of Fairness Norms in Different Work Relationships</a> ESRC End of Award web page.<br>