Hypocrisies of Fairness: Towards a More Reflexive Ethical Base in Organizational Justice Research and Practice

Abstract

(2008) 'Hypocrisies of fairness : towards a more reexive ethical base in organizational justice research and practice.', Journal of business ethics., 78 (3). pp. 415-433. Further information on publisher's website:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9330-z Publisher's copyright statement:The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. As part of our argument, we identify three types of mechanisms managers may use to influence and manage the formation of fairness perceptions. We consider how the exercise of power is related to the potential application of organizational justice knowledge across individual, interpersonal and social levels. Our approach makes power dynamics and moral implications salient, and questions the purely subjectivist view of justice researchers that deliberately discards normative aspects. The questions opened up by considering alternative mechanisms for creating fairness perceptions have led us to formulate a research agenda for organizational justice research that takes multiple stakeholder interests, power dynamics and ethical implications into account. We believe that the fields of organizational justice and normative justice can benefit from combined research.

‘If I Should Fall From Grace…’: Stories of Change and Organizational Ethics

“…What this meant was the organizational narrative had constructed the meaning of the changes such that job loss and financial misfortune themselves were not seen as a matter that concerned ethics -the only 'moral mandate' (Mullen and Skitka, 2006) that the employees held their organization to was the requirement for people to be treated fairly on departure. In this case, the perception of a high level of procedural justice reduced the sense of adversity among both those retrenched and those who remained (Brockner et al, 1994) while apparently being used instrumentally (rather than ethically) to control employee behaviour (Fortin and Fellenz, 2008).…”

“…Ethically, this meant that while there were disagreements about what had actually happened in the past, a consistent view in terms of what should happen was shared, and it is at this point, that the ethics of narrative refiguration takes place, the point where the narrative instructs rather than describes. That there was such consistency suggested the depth of the cultural embeddedness of the value of, and focus on, procedural justice as being equivalent to ethics, while at the same time distancing itself from moral questions of values (Fortin and Fellenz, 2008). Staff may have different views on whether it was done correctly but when asked about the ethics of downsizing, they invariably commented on this particular process.…”

“…Further, we explore how organizational ethics, when explicit, became limited to considerations of procedural justice associated with the relative fairness with which retrenched personnel were treated by management (cf. Brockner et al, 1994) -a process which arguably served less to ensure ethicality and more to secure the organizations' instrumental goals (Fortin and Fellenz, 2008). We utilise this discussion more generally to illustrate how the dominance and repetition of narratives that legitimate organizational change in the context of new capitalism limit the possibilities of organizational ethics.…”

Perspectives on organizational justice: Concept clarification, social context integration, time and links with morality

“…However, morality and justice are not the same ). Moral does not necessarily mean fair, as fairness is only one of many moral principles, and the concrete standard of morality will depend on the moral framework applied (Fortin and Fellenz 2007). Similarly, fair does not always mean moral, as some cases of unfairness may be less serious than what is typically called an immoral action, and unfairness may happen without fault of the actor (e.g., an accident can cause an unfair outcome) ).…”

Beyond the Particular and Universal: Dependence, Independence, and Interdependence of Context, Justice, and Ethics

“…Both organizational justice and behavioral ethics are social scientific disciplines (Fortin 2008). As such, they focus on describing and predicting the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of people (Fortin and Fellenz 2008;Goldman and Cropanzano 2015). Yet both fields are also closely related to neighboring normative-philosophical fields, specifically the prescriptive fields of normative justice and normative ethics (Cugueró-Escofet and Rosanas 2013).…”