When do leaders grant voice? How leaders’ perceptions of followers’ control and belongingness needs affect the enactment of fair procedures

Abstract

Theories that explain employees' positive emotional, cognitive and behavioral responses to fair procedures rely on control and relational processes. In the present study, we build on these models but reverse this perspective to examine when leaders provide voice opportunities in their interactions with employees. We argued that leaders may take care of employees' perceived individual control needs (which influence their own outcomes) by granting them with voice. However, this will be the case particularly when leader perceive that this employee also wants to belong to the organization, because this makes it more likely that employees will use their voice in a way that does not hurt the organization's interest. Support for this predicted interaction effect was found in a laboratory experiment and a multisource field study. This research is among the first to identify factors that influence whether leaders will be more likely to act fairly, thus integrating procedural justice processes in the leadership literature.

Ranking low, feeling high: How hierarchical position and experienced power promote prosocial behavior in response to procedural justice.

“…As senior managers usually have limited direct interactions with those organization members, the fairness of decision-making procedures becomes one of the few means available to lower-level organization members to evaluate the trustworthiness of senior management. Research has shown that supervisors use information about the needs of their subordinates in shaping the enactment of fair procedures, for instance by giving more voice to those with strong control and belongingness needs (Hoogervorst, De Cremer, & van Dijke, 2013). Given that senior managers will often lack information about the needs of lower-level organization members, the design and enactment of fairly perceived decision-making procedures will likely take time to get acquainted with the concerns present in the organization.…”

Expressing forgiveness after interpersonal mistreatment: Power and status of forgivers influence transgressors' relationship restoration efforts

“…They would either be a leader or a subordinate in the organization, ostensibly based on their responses to items that measured leadership skills. This was to ensure that participants believed that their role in the organization was appointed in a legitimate manner (see Galinsky et al, 2003;Hoogervorst, De Cremer, & Van Dijke, 2013). In reality, we assigned participants randomly to the high or low forgiver power condition.…”

What helps managers being fair? Predicting managers’ self-reported justice enactment during pay setting using the ability-motivation-opportunity framework

“…Empirical studies on justice enactment have used self-assessments of managers, other-assessments through subordinates' ratings of justice perceptions, or measured adherence to rules of justice in a more objective fashion in experimental designs (e.g. Brebels et al, 2011;Hoogervorst et al, 2013;Zapata et al, 2013). In general, research has found substantial correlations between supervisors' self-reported justice enactment and employees' justice perceptions (Huang et al, 2017;Zapata et al, 2013), although some studies have also found manager reports of enacted justice to be unrelated to their subordinates' perceptions of justice (Malmrud et al, 2020).…”

“…In order not to overestimate the importance of AMO predictors for justice enactment, we controlled for individual attributes (demographics and personality), which in previous research have been found to be associated with managerial attitudes and behaviors (e.g. Hoogervorst et al, 2013;Mayer et al, 2007). Demographic characteristics were obtained from company registers and measured participants' age (in years), gender (0 ¼ man, 1 ¼ woman), and number of subordinates.…”