This article uses meta-analytic methods (k = 38) to examine the relationship between organizational justice climate and unit-level effectiveness. Overall, our results suggest that the relationship between justice and effectiveness is significant (ρ = .40) when both constructs are construed at the collective level. Our results also indicate that distributive justice climate was most strongly linked with unit-level performance (e.g., productivity, customer satisfaction), whereas interactional justice was most strongly related to unit-level processes (e.g., organizational citizenship behavior, cohesion). We also show that a number of factors moderate this relationship, including justice climate strength, the level of referent in the justice measure, the hierarchical level of the unit, and how criteria are classified. We elaborate on these findings and attempt to provide a clearer direction for future research in this area.
The past 50 years have been marked by considerable progress for women in the workplace, reflected in increased labor force participation rates and a shrinking wage gap (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). Yet, these advances can sometimes be deceptive in their implications. Although a holistic view of organizations might suggest that gender parity has been achieved, a segmented breakdown of professions, positions, and industries offers a far less favorable picture. Today, women remain underrepresented in many prestigious and high-status jobs. They comprise only 5.8% of S&P 500 CEOs (Catalyst, 2017) and, in the United States, represent less than 20% of technical roles in major tech companies (Mundy, 2017) and 11% of tenured professors in engineering (National Science Foundation, 2015). Changes in the wage gap, too, have stalled (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). Although there are many possible contributors to the perpetuation of gender inequality in the workplace, research suggests that gender discrimination plays a significant role (Heilman, 2012). Organizations appear motivated to combat gender discrimination, with many publicly carrying out efforts to increase gender equality. Open about their lagging numbers, for example,
Research has shown that gender role prescriptions can bias reactions to men's and women's work behaviors. The current work draws upon this idea and extends it to consider violations of procedural and interactional justice rules. The results of four experimental studies demonstrate that men and women receive differential performance evaluation ratings and reward recommendations when they violate those organizational justice rules that coincide with the content of prescriptive gender stereotypes. Specifically, women were rated less favorably than men when they exhibited interactional injustice (Study 1 and Study 4), but not when they engaged in procedural injustice (Study 2). Findings also indicate that interactional justice violations (e.g., being impolite, not caring about the well-being of subordinates), but not procedural justice violations, are deemed less acceptable for female managers than male managers (Study 3). Overall, the findings suggest that reactions to injustice can be influenced by expectations of how men and women should behave. (PsycINFO Database Record
Women's progress into leadership positions seems to have stalled, and gender equality at the highest organizational levels remains a goal rather than a reality. This situation persists despite commitment to resolving the problem; in fact, many organizations have made good faith efforts to break the hold of gender bias on women's career advancement. Then why is life at the top of large American corporations still so overwhelmingly male? In this article, we consider how gender bias-reducing efforts may not have their intended impact. We argue that interventions, no matter how well intended, can backfire and produce new problems. We also point out the paradoxical effects of edging closer to the gender equity goal, and the very real danger of improvement undermining further progress. Being attentive to these potential pitfalls can affect whether efforts to reduce gender bias succeed or fail and whether the elusive goal of workplace equality ultimately can be achieved.
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