The authors report two studies exploring the role of a manager’s empathy in delivering negative news more fairly. In Study 1, 132 practicing managers completed a scenario task in which a layoff was to be communicated. Trait empathic concern predicted interpersonal and informational justice of written messages. In Study 2, 81 students provided face-to-face feedback to a confederate, which was videotaped. An empathic induction resulted in higher levels of interpersonal and informational justice relative to a control group. Furthermore, the empathic induction had a greater effect on interpersonal and informational justice for communicators who were high (versus low) in moral development.

In this article, we explore the social construction of workplace envy through an analysis of its portrayal in a fictional narrative. Based on our examination of three excerpts from Richard Russo's novel Straight Man, we argue that envy is socially constructed in prominent and revealing episodes within broader organizational narratives. We further show that envy both serves as a catalytic emotion that engenders action and sensemaking, and at the same time, acts as a mechanism that reproduces the moral and cultural order within which it occurs.

International audienceOrganizational justice is an important determinant of workplace attitudes, decisions, and behaviors. However, understanding workplace fairness requires not only examining what happens but also when it happens, in terms of justice events, perceptions, and reactions. We organize and discuss findings from 194 justice articles with temporal aspects, selected from over a thousand empirical justice articles. By examining temporal aspects, our findings enrich and sometimes challenge the answers to three key questions in the organizational justice literature relating to (i) when individuals pay attention to fairness, including specific facets, (ii) how fairness judgments form and evolve, and (iii) how reactions to perceived (in)justice unfold. Our review identifies promising avenues for empirical work and emphasizes the importance of developing temporal theories of justic

What events do employees recall or anticipate when they think of past or future unfair treatment at work? We propose that an employee’s temporal perspective can change the salience of different types of injustice through its effect on cognitions about employment. Study 1 used a survey in which employee temporal focus was measured as an individual difference. Whereas greater levels of future focus related positively to concerns about distributive injustice, greater levels of present focus related positively to concerns about interactional injustice. In Study 2, an experimental design focused employee attention on timeframes that differed in temporal orientation and temporal distance. Whereas distributive injustice was more salient when future (versus past) orientation was induced, interactional injustice was more salient when past orientation was induced and at less temporal distance. Study 3 showed that the mechanism underlying the effect of employee temporal perspective is abstract versus concrete cognitions about employment

Why would managers in the same firm differ in their attention to opportunity versus threat aspects of the same exogenous shock? Drawing on the attention‐based view, strategic issue diagnosis theory, and construal level theory, we propose and test a theoretical model of differentiated attention among managers within a firm driven by desirability (shock distance) and feasibility (capability perception) considerations. Managers more distant from the locus of the shock and managers with stronger ex ante perceptions regarding organizational capabilities to address the shock paid more attention to opportunity aspects and less attention to threat aspects. We also found subordination effects between shock distance and capability perception, and a moderating role of domain‐specific experience on the effects of capability perception.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.