Three Paths to Feeling Just: How Managers Grapple with Justice Conundrums During Organizational Change

Abstract

Managers tasked with organizational change often face irreconcilable demands on how to enact justice—situations we call justice conundrums. Drawing on interviews held with managers before and after a planned large-scale change, we identify specific conundrums and illustrate how managers grapple with these through three prototypical paths. Among our participants, the paths increasingly diverged over time, culminating in distinct career decisions. Based on our findings, we develop an integrative process model that illustrates how managers grapple with justice conundrums. Our contributions are threefold. First, we elucidate three types of justice conundrums that managers may encounter when enacting justice in the context of planned organizational change (the justice intention-action gap, competing justice expectations, and the justice of care vs. managerial-strategic justice) and show how managers handle them differently. Second, drawing on the motivated cognition and moral disengagement literature, we illustrate how cognitive mechanisms coalesce to allow managers to soothe their moral (self-) concerns when grappling with these conundrums. Third, we show how motivated justice intentions ensuing from specific justice motives, moral emotions, and circles of moral regard predict the types of justice conundrums managers face and the paths they take to grapple with them.

The Corporate Samaritan: Advancing Understanding of the Role of Deontic Motive in Justice Enactment

“…While the examination of recipients' and observers' perspectives has borne considerable fruit, only a handful of studies have considered the deontic perspective of managers (for a review, see Graso et al, 2019). Previous research, however, has indicated that justice enactment can also be "a matter of moral imperative" (Qin et al, 2018;Zwank et al, 2022) and attributed managers' interest in fair treatment to the character of the actor, such as caring for others or moral obligation (Brebels et al, 2011;Patient & Skarlicki, 2010). In their actor-focused model of justice enactment, Scott et al (2009) recognized that actors may adhere to justice rules due to their cognitive compliance motive or positive affective motive, which promote prosocial behaviors, or may violate these rules to rectify what they perceive as employee wrongdoing.…”

“…The literature indicates that in areas where the self is less "invested" (Hannah et al, 2011a), individuals who are low in moral maturation-whom we may also call "weak persons"-are more susceptible to contextual influences. Especially in times of difficult organizational changes, when managers are forced to make and implement tough decisions-such as layoffs or contract terminations caused by cost-cutting plans or efficiency programs-the gap between an individual's deontic justice motive and subsequent behavior is likely to widen, and strong situational pressures may easily override an actor's fairness intentions (Camps et al, 2022;Jennings et al, 2015;Jordan et al, 2011;Zwank et al, 2022). In contrast, a "strong," highly morally mature person-a more complex person with greater metacognitive ability and moral identity-can draw from a broader base of moral content and better tailor and consciously direct their active self across a broad range of situations (Hannah et al 2009(Hannah et al , 2011aLord et al, 2011).…”

“…First, although morality represents one of the key building blocks of justice, the deontic motive of organizational members who perform and enact justice (henceforth referred to as "managers") has received limited attention compared to other justice motives (Diehl et al, 2021;Graso et al, 2019;Qin et al, 2018). Second, researchers have illustrated that managers are not always able to act upon their motives, leading to a growing stream of studies investigating why justice concerns are sometimes compromised (Sherf et al, 2019;Zwank et al, 2022). Although the reasons are often traced to strong situational constraints in organizations (Jennings et al, 2015;Treviño et al, 2006), recent research has pointed to internal struggles over moral issues relating to justice enactment (Camps et al, 2022;Zwank et al, 2022).…”

“…Second, researchers have illustrated that managers are not always able to act upon their motives, leading to a growing stream of studies investigating why justice concerns are sometimes compromised (Sherf et al, 2019;Zwank et al, 2022). Although the reasons are often traced to strong situational constraints in organizations (Jennings et al, 2015;Treviño et al, 2006), recent research has pointed to internal struggles over moral issues relating to justice enactment (Camps et al, 2022;Zwank et al, 2022). Thus, the question of why some individuals break through the blinders imposed on them by organizational pressures, resist moral compromises, and still enact deontic justice-even if doing so means hazarding negative consequences for themselvesremains underresearched.…”

Harm, Then Good? How Work Meaningfulness Emerges from Doing Harm

“…First, we distinguish between mitigative practices, which enable workers to carry out tasks in a way that is less harmful than would otherwise be the case, and transformative practices, which are performed after a task to make up for the harm endured by the target. Previously contemplated responses to harm-doing, such as leaving the organization, emotionally disengaging, or blaming targets (Andiappan and Dufour, 2017;Zwank et al, 2023) are primarily destructive. Remediation practices, by contrast, are both proactive and constructive, appearing to benefit targets and performers of harm.…”