Agencys Efforts At Procedural Justice If You Want Justice

Agencys Efforts At Procedural Justice If You Want Justice Towork To

Agency’s efforts at procedural justice. If you want justice to work to your benefit, you have to do it yourself. Justice Builds Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Justice-inspired employee OCBs, such as behaving altruistically toward others, sound much like employee customer service–oriented behaviors, such as helping others and listening carefully to their needs. Building on this, Bowen, Gilliland and Folger (1999) suggested that just treatment of employees would lead to OCBs that “spill over” to customers. This “just play” results in customers feeling appropriately treated, thereby yielding customer satisfaction and loyalty.

These types of internal-external relationships have been empirically validated by such scholars as Masterson (2001) and Maxham and Netemyer (2003). For example, Masterson (2001) asked a large group of university instructors how they were being treated. When teachers felt that they received distributive and procedural justice they tended to report higher organizational commitment. This commitment, in turn, improved student responses toward the instructor. Since small gains in customer loyalty can translate into much larger gains in profitability (e.g., Heskett, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1997; Smith, Bolton, & Wagner, 1999), these are very potent effects.

Thoughts Before Moving On More broadly, we suggest that justice can be a core value that defines an organization’s identity with its stakeholders, both internally and externally. When justice is espoused as a core value of an organization’s management philosophy and enacted through a set of internally consistent management practices, it can build a “culture of justice,” a system-wide commitment that is valuable and unique in the eyes of employees and customers, and tough to copy in the minds of competitors. And that can translate into the makings of sustainable competitive advantage. In our next section, we will look at management practices that can help develop a culture of justice. How to Create Perceptions of Justice We will now turn to common and important workplace situations, discussing a variety of managerial and personnel functions.

These are displayed in Table 2. In each case, we will provide a lesson for promoting justice, including some normative recommendations regarding how individuals should be treated. And in each case we will return to one or more of our conceptual observations, such as the fair process effect and the two-factor model, illustrating how these phenomena affect real-life organizations.

Selection Procedures: Positive Job Candidates For most job candidates, the recruiting and selection process is their first introduction to an organization. How they are treated at this time can have ramifications later.

Applicants who feel justly treated are more likely to form positive impressions of the organization (Bauer et al., 2001) and recommend it to their friends (Smither, Reilly, Millsap, Pearlman, & Stoffey, 1993). And the flip side is also true. When applicants feel unjustly treated they are more likely to consider litigation as a potential remedy (Bauer et al., 2001). This research suggests that it pays for organizations to put their best foot forward. By treating applicants justly in the hiring process, organizations are setting the foundation for a relationship of justice and trust when those applicants become employees.

The research on job candidates’ reactions to recruiting and hiring processes suggests that it is about much more than whether or not someone gets the job. Further, because applicants don’t often know why they didn’t get the job or the qualifications of the person who did, distributive justice is less of a concern in selection. However, managers do need to be mindful of procedural and interactional justice. It is also important to realize that the selection process begins with recruiting and initial communication, and encompasses all contact with job candidates up to and including extending an offer and rejecting an individual for a job (Gilliland & Hale, 2005). In terms of procedural justice, research has identified two broad sets of concerns:

• Appropriate questions and criteria are critical for procedural justice. Job candidates expect interview questions and screening tests to be related to the job, or at least to appear to be related to the job (Gilliland, 1994; Ryan & Chan, 1999). Overly personal interview questions and some screening tests, such as honesty tests, are often seen as inappropriate and an invasion of candidates’ privacy (Bies & Moag, 1986; Kravitz, Stinson, & Chavez, 1996).
• Adequate opportunity to perform during the selection process means giving job candidates the chances to make a case for themselves and allowing sufficient time in interviews (Truxillo, Bauer, & Sanchez, 2001). If standardized tests are used to screen applicants, justice can be enhanced by allowing candidates to retest if they feel they did not perform their best (Truxillo et al., 2001).

On the face, these two criteria seem reasonable and pretty straightforward. However, when compared with recommended hiring practices, managers are often faced with a “justice paradox” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). That is, many of the selection procedures with the highest predictive validity—those that are the best screening tools—are unfortunately those that fail to satisfy these justice concerns. Consider cognitive ability and personality tests. These screening methods have high demonstrated validity (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998), but both are seen by job applicants as not particularly fair (Steiner & Gilliland, 1996). Questions on these tests are often not related to the job, and applicants don’t feel they have an opportunity to present their true abilities. The converse is also observed with the justice paradox.

Traditional unstructured interviews have long demonstrated weak predictive validity, not much better than chance (Huffcutt & Arthur, 1994). However, job applicants perceive these interviews as having high procedural justice because they are able to demonstrate their qualifications (Latham & Finnegan, 1993). Adding structured situations and questions to the interview increases predictive validity, but decreases perceptions of procedural justice. So how can this justice paradox be managed effectively? We have three suggestions.

First, there are some screening tools that have both predictive validity and procedural justice. Work sample tests and performance-based simulations demonstrate reasonable predictive validity (Roth, Bobko, & McFarland, 2005) and are also seen as procedurally just (Steiner & Gilliland, 1996). A second solution is to modify existing screening tools to increase job applicants’ perceived procedural justice. Smither and colleagues (1993) found that cognitive ability tests with concrete, rather than abstract, items tended to be viewed more positively by job applicants. Based on the observation that applicants perceive greater justice in unstructured interviews, Gilliland and Steiner (1999) suggest a combined interview that has both structured behavioral questions to maximize predictive validity and unstructured questions to allow applicants the “opportunity to perform.” The third suggestion is based on our earlier discussion of interactional justice. Recall that interactional justice can attenuate the negative effects of procedural injustice. Research has demonstrated that interactional justice is very important for job candidates (Bies & Moag, 1986; Gilliland, 1995). With attention to considerate interpersonal treatment, honest information, and timely feedback, organizations can create hiring processes that embody interactional justice. Research has demonstrated that the informational components are particularly important if there are unanticipated delays or unusual screening procedures involved in the process (Rynes, Bretz, & Gerhart, 1991).

Reward Systems: Justly Balancing Multiple Goals At the most basic level, rewards systems need to accomplish two goals: They need to motivate individual performance, and they need to maintain group cohesion.

While both goals are worthwhile, distributive justice research tells us that it is difficult to accomplish them simultaneously. Equity allocations, which reward for performance, can spur individual effort. But the resulting inequality that is likely to occur can be disruptive. In a study of academic faculty, Pfeffer and Langton (1993) examined wage dispersion in their home departments. When wage dispersion was high, faculty reported less satisfaction and less collaboration with colleagues. Overall, research productivity dropped as well. This is not what merit pay is supposed to do. Paying everyone the same thing, though, is not the answer either. Indeed, equality distributions can boost group harmony, but they bring troubles of their own.

A key problem is one of external equity. High-performing employees, or those with rare skills, may be worth more in the external marketplace. If their salaries are “capped” to maintain internal equality, these workers may seek employment elsewhere. This is just another way of saying that no matter how people are paid, not everyone will be satisfied. How then to position rewards? The research discussed earlier underscores an opportunity. To be sure, individuals who do not receive the compensation they desire will want more. However, they often remain loyal to their employer if the pay administration procedures are viewed as fair.

Consequently, if an organization needs to maintain external equity, it can do so and risk internal inequality, but only as long as the allocation process is just. To illustrate, McFarlin and Sweeney (1992) surveyed more than 600 banking employees. As expected, when distributive justice was low, workers reported less pay satisfaction and less job satisfaction. This is bad news, but it is partially compensated for by the procedural justice results. When procedural justice was high, workers experienced higher organizational commitment and a positive reaction to their supervisors. This is the two-factor model in action. Individuals who were not necessarily satisfied with their pay were still unlikely to derogate the organization when the procedures were just. In addition to procedural justice, interactional justice can be helpful in administering pay fairly.

To illustrate this point, let us consider a situation that everyone dislikes: pay cuts. Greenberg (1993) found that differences in how pay cuts were managed at two manufacturing plants produced dramatically different outcomes. The key is interpersonal treatment. In one, an executive politely, but quickly in about 15 minutes, announced a 15% pay cut. In the other, an executive spent about an hour and a half speaking, taking questions, and expressing regrets about making an identical pay cut. During a subsequent 10-week period, employee theft was about 80% lower in the second case, and employees in that plant were 15 times less likely to resign. No one wanted to have their pay cut. But workers understood why it happened, appreciated the supportive interpersonal treatment, and did not vent their ire on the organization.

Conflict Management: You Don’t Have to Win Thomas and Schmidt (1976) tell us that managers may spend about 20% of their time settling disputes among employees, and they are not always successful (Schoorman & Champagne, 1994). Conflict resolution is likely to be most difficult when one or both parties is intransigent. At this point, the manager may listen to both disputants, but will need to impose a settlement on them. This is called arbitration, and it is ultimately autocratic. As a result, arbitration may sound risky because it hazards a distributive injustice; the settlement is imposed and not approved in advance by other parties. There is good news, however. If any component of justice is present during arbitration (distributive or procedural or interactional), the overall appraisal of the situation will be improved (Goldman, 2003). Because arbitration preserves procedural justice, an unfortunate outcome is less destructive than one might imagine. Or, we might say, managers can make hard choices, but they have to make them justly (for details see Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). This illustrates a simple yet powerful lesson from research on conflict resolution: If you can’t give people the outcome they want, at least give them a fair process.

Layoffs: Softening Hardship So far we have reviewed evidence pertaining to justice in the context of hiring, reward systems, and conflict resolution. These are everyday events in a large organization, and each will function more effectively if justice is taken into account. Even a reader willing to indulge our arguments so far might be wondering whether justice helps when something really bad happens.

Among common management situations that affect employees, downsizing is among the worst (Richman, 1993). Layoffs have pernicious effects, harming the victims while undermining the morale of survivors who remain employed. Though downsizing is a widely used cost-cutting strategy, it is highly risky. The costs of workforce reductions often outweigh the benefits (Kammeyer-Mueller, Liao, & Arvey, 2001). In these circumstances people not only lose, they lose big. The event can be so negative that a sense of distributive injustice is virtually a given. Can the guidelines suggested in this paper do any good at all? As a matter of fact, they can. When a layoff is handled with procedural and interactional justice, victims are less likely to derogate their former employers (Brockner et al., 1994, Study 1). Indeed, justice can have direct bottom-line effects.

Lind, Greenberg, Scott, and Welchans (2000) interviewed a large number of layoff victims. Many of these individuals considered legal action following their downsizing, and almost a quarter of the victims went so far as to speak to an attorney. The single best predictor of willingness to take legal action was the justice of the treatment they received at the time of their discharge. Among those who felt unjustly treated, Lind and his colleagues found that a full 66% contemplated litigation. Among those who felt justly treated, this dropped to just 16%. These are impressive findings. Although managers are often coached by attorneys or HR representatives to avoid apologizing—an apology can be seen as an admission of guilt—these results suggest that an apology may help promote the feelings of interactional justice that actually reduce the risk of litigation. Justice, it would seem, provides a useful way to survive a crisis with one’s business reputation intact. While we have so far discussed the victims of layoffs, workforce reductions also affect survivors. Those left behind, though retaining their jobs, tend to suffer from “survivor guilt” (Brockner & Greenberg, 1990). However, if organizations provide a good explanation as to why the downsizing is necessary—an aspect of interactional justice—the remaining employees respond much less negatively (Brockner, DeWitt, Grover, & Reed, 1990). Providing unemployment benefits is also advantageous, as one might expect. However, if these benefits are lacking, an advance warning that a layoff is about to occur will blunt the negative reactions that might otherwise transpire (Brockner et al., 1994, Studies 2 and 3).

Performance Appraisals: Keeping Score Fairly In order to assign rewards, identify candidates for promotion, and develop human capital, most large organizations conduct performance evaluations. While these appraisals are useful, concerns remain, and their implementation is often troubled.

For example, scholars have observed a phenomenon called the “vanishing performance appraisal” (for a review, see Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). When surveyed, most managers reported having provided performance reviews, while many of their subordinates reported never receiving one. Other research suggests that evaluations are affected by political considerations (Longenecker, Gioia, & Sims, 1987), cognitive processing limitations of the rater (DeNisi & Williams, 1988), and the social context in which they are conducted (Levy & Williams, 2004). These concerns tell us that the performance appraisal process often contains a good deal of ambiguity as well as room for reasonable people to disagree.

References

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