Interactional justice

Last updated

Interactional justice is defined by sociologist John R. Schermerhorn as the "...degree to which the people affected by decision are treated by dignity and respect" (Organizational Behavior, 2013). The theory focuses on the interpersonal treatment people receive when procedures are implemented.

Contents

Classification

Interactional justice, a subcomponent of organizational justice, has come to be seen as consisting of two specific types of interpersonal treatment (e.g. Greenberg, 1990a, 1993b). The first labeled interpersonal justice, 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, labeled informational justice, focuses on the explanations provided to people that convey information about why procedures were used in a certain way or why outcomes were distributed in a certain fashion. Where more adequacy of explanation is prevalent, the perceived level of informational justice is higher (Sam Fricchione, 2006).

Within an organization

It is important that a high degree of interactional justice exists in a subordinate/supervisor relationship in order to reduce the likelihood of counterproductive work behavior. If a subordinate perceives that interactional injustice exists, then the subordinate will hold feelings of resentment toward either the supervisor or institution and will therefore seek to "even the score". [1] A victim of interaction injustice will have increased expressions of hostility toward the offender, co-workers, or the entire organization which can manifest in actions of counterproductive work behavior [2] and reduce the effectiveness of organizational communication. [3]

Abuse directed toward a subordinate from a supervisor often stems from displaced aggression. In this case, the individual (supervisor) is unwilling to retaliate against the direct source of mistreatment and will therefore abuse a less threatening target such as a subordinate since the subordinate is incapable of retaliation. [4] [5] Thus, interactional injustice can essentially trickle-down from the top of an organization to the bottom due to displaced aggression that exists in the top ranks of the hierarchy.

See also

Related Research Articles

Procedural justice is the idea of fairness in the processes that resolve disputes and allocate resources. One aspect of procedural justice is related to discussions of the administration of justice and legal proceedings. This sense of procedural justice is connected to due process (U.S.), fundamental justice (Canada), procedural fairness (Australia), and natural justice, but the idea of procedural justice can also be applied to nonlegal contexts in which some process is employed to resolve conflict or divide benefits or burdens. Aspects of procedural justice are an area of study in social psychology, sociology, and organizational psychology.

Systemic bias is the inherent tendency of a process to support particular outcomes. The term generally refers to human systems such as institutions. Systemic bias is related to and overlaps conceptually with institutional bias and structural bias, and the terms are often used interchangeably.

Organizational behavior or organisational behavior is the: "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". Organizational behavioral research can be categorized in at least three ways:

The leader–member exchange (LMX) theory is a relationship-based approach to leadership that focuses on the two-way (dyadic) relationship between leaders and followers.

Greenberg (1987) introduced the concept of organizational justice with regard to how an employee judges the behavior of the organization and the employee's resulting attitude and behaviour. For example, if a firm makes redundant half of the workers, an employee may feel a sense of injustice with a resulting change in attitude and a drop in productivity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotional exhaustion</span> Chronic state of physical and emotional depletion

Emotional exhaustion is symptom of burnout, a chronic state of physical and emotional depletion that results from excessive work or personal demands, or continuous stress. It describes a feeling of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one's work. It is manifested by both physical fatigue and a sense of feeling psychologically and emotionally "drained".

Counterproductive norms are group norms that prevent a group, organization, or other collective entities from performing or accomplishing its originally stated function by working oppositely to how they were initially intended. Group norms are typically enforced to facilitate group survival, to make group member behaviour predictable, to help avoid embarrassing interpersonal interactions, or to clarify distinctive aspects of the group’s identity. Counterproductive norms exist despite the fact that they cause opposite outcomes of the intended prosocial functions.

Organizational conflict, or workplace conflict, is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of needs, values and interests between people working together. Conflict takes many forms in organizations. There is the inevitable clash between formal authority and power and those individuals and groups affected. There are disputes over how revenues should be divided, how the work should be done, and how long and hard people should work. There are jurisdictional disagreements among individuals, departments, and between unions and management. There are subtler forms of conflict involving rivalries, jealousies, personality clashes, role definitions, and struggles for power and favor. There is also conflict within individuals – between competing needs and demands – to which individuals respond in different ways.

Workplace aggression is a specific type of aggression which occurs in the workplace. Workplace aggression is any type of hostile behavior that occurs in the workplace. It can range from verbal insults and threats to physical violence, and it can occur between coworkers, supervisors, and subordinates. Common examples of workplace aggression include gossiping, bullying, intimidation, sabotage, sexual harassment, and physical violence. These behaviors can have serious consequences, including reduced productivity, increased stress, and decreased morale.

Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well. Job performance, studied academically as part of industrial and organizational psychology, also forms a part of human resources management. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does. This differentiates it from more encompassing constructs such as organizational performance or national performance, which are higher-level variables.

Workplace deviance, in group psychology, may be described as the deliberate desire to cause harm to an organization – more specifically, a workplace. The concept has become an instrumental component in the field of organizational communication. More accurately, it can be seen as "voluntary behavior that violates institutionalized norms and in doing so threatens the well-being of the organization".

Employee silence refers to situations where employees withhold information that might be useful to the organization of which they are a part, whether intentionally or unintentionally. This can happen if employees do not speak up to a supervisor or manager.

Within organizations people often have to make decisions about whether to speak up or remain silent - whether to share or withhold their ideas, opinions, and concerns ... [The problem is that] in many cases, they choose the safe response of silence, withholding input that could be valuable to others or thoughts that they wish they could express.

— Frances J. Milliken and Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison, Shades of Silence: Emerging Themes and Future Directions for Research on Silence in Organizations

Workplace revenge, or workplace retaliation, refers to the general action of purposeful retaliation within the workplace. Retaliation often involves a power imbalance; the retaliator is usually someone with more power in the workplace than the victim, and retaliation may be done to silence the victim so the retaliator can avoid accountability for workplace bullying, workplace harassment, or other misbehaviors in the workplace. Retaliation, legally, refers to actions taken as punishment for legally permitted behaviors: disciplinary actions taken by employers in reaction to behavors that are counter to applicable laws or to established institutional policies are permitted as part of the employer's ability to control the work environment.

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. These behaviors can harm organizations or people in organizations including employees and clients, customers, or patients. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction (the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.

Social undermining is the expression of negative emotions directed towards a particular person or negative evaluations of the person as a way to prevent the person from achieving their goals.

Workplace incivility has been defined as low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target. Uncivil behaviors are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others. The authors hypothesize there is an "incivility spiral" in the workplace made worse by "asymmetric global interaction".

An authoritarian leadership style is described as being as "leaders behavior that asserts absolute authority and control over subordinates and [that] demands unquestionable obedience from subordinates." Such a leader has full control of the team, leaving low autonomy within the group. The group is expected to complete the tasks under very close supervision, while unlimited authority is self-bestowed by the leader. Subordinates' responses to the orders given are either punished or rewarded. A way that those that have authoritarian leadership behaviors tend to lean more on "...unilateral decision-making through the leader and strive to maintain the distance between the leader and his or her followers."

Abusive supervision is most commonly studied in the context of the workplace, although it can arise in other areas such as in the household and at school. "Abusive supervision has been investigated as an antecedent to negative subordinate workplace outcome." "Workplace violence has combination of situational and personal factors". The study that was conducted looked at the link between abusive supervision and different workplace events.

Narcissism in the workplace involves the impact of narcissistic employees and managers in workplace settings.

Machiavellianism in the workplace is a concept studied by many organizational psychologists. Conceptualized originally by Richard Christie and Florence Geis, Machiavellianism refers to a psychological trait concept where individuals behave in a cold and duplicitous manner. It has in recent times been adapted and applied to the context of the workplace and organizations by many writers and academics.

References

  1. ↑ Aryee, S; Chen, ZX; Sun, LY; Debrah, YA (2007). "Antecedents and outcomes of abusive supervision: Test of a trickle-down model". The Journal of Applied Psychology. 92 (1): 191–201. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.92.1.191. PMID   17227160.
  2. ↑ Serenko, A.; Abubakar, M. (2023). "Antecedents and consequences of knowledge sabotage in the Turkish telecommunication and retail sectors" (PDF). Journal of Knowledge Management. 27 (5): 1409–1435. doi:10.1108/JKM-01-2022-0029.
  3. ↑ Baron, Robert A.; Neuman, Joel H. (1996). "Workplace violence and workplace aggression: Evidence on their relative frequency and potential causes". Aggressive Behavior. 22 (3): 161–173. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1098-2337(1996)22:3<161::AID-AB1>3.0.CO;2-Q.
  4. ↑ "How justice changes in the time of Covid". avvocatomatrimonialista.org. 2020-07-20. Retrieved 2023-04-20.
  5. ↑ Marcus-Newhall, A; Pedersen, WC; Carlson, M; Miller, N (2000). "Displaced aggression is alive and well: A meta-analytic review". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 78 (4): 670–89. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.670. PMID   10794373.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.