Why Do Managers Act Fairly in the First Place? A Daily Investigation of “Hot” and “Cold” Motives and Discretion

Abstract

Although considerable research has focused on employee reactions to organizational justice, far less research has examined why managers adhere to rules of justice in the first place. Taking a proactive approach to organizational justice, we address this void by examining managerial motives for adhering to distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal rules of justice on a day-today basis. Results of an experience-sampling study of 90 managers who completed daily surveys over a three-week period revealed that both "cold" cognitive (i.e., effecting compliance, identity maintenance, and establishing fairness) and "hot" affective (i.e., high positive affect and low negative affect) motives were associated with managerial adherence to justice rules. Moreover, "cold" motives were more strongly associated with justice rule adherence for justice dimensions over which managers perceived less discretion, while "hot" motives were more strongly associated with justice rule adherence for justice dimensions over which managers perceived greater discretion. We discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and practice.

Turning their Pain to Gain: Charismatic Leader Influence on Follower Stress Appraisal and Job Performance

“…Similarly, charismatic leaders may have more discretion in the messages they deliver and actions they take to manage the meaning of challenge stressors and less discretion for hindrance stressors (Crum et al, 2013), especially if the hindrance stressors need to be administratively managed or fairly adhered to (Scott, Garza, Conlon, & Kim, forthcoming;Zhang et al, 2014). These Marines appraised challenge stressors as being more challenging, and they were more likely to respond to this appraisal with higher performance.…”

Considering self‐interests and symbolism together: How instrumental and value‐expressive motives interact to influence supervisors’ justice behavior

“…Although supervisors play a key role in shaping employees’ justice perceptions, scant attention has been paid to why supervisors exhibit justice behavior (or not) in the first place. Fortunately, some researchers are beginning to pay attention to the antecedents of supervisors’ justice behavior (e.g., Blader & Chen, ; Scott et al., , ). By exploring this topic from the supervisor perspective, this study enriches the existing literature on the antecedents of supervisors’ justice behavior and provides a new categorization of supervisors’ justice motives.…”

“…… From a practical standpoint, identifying factors that influence justice rule adherence could have a profound impact by helping to stop injustice before it starts” (p. 1598). Recently, scholars have conducted pioneering research on this issue (e.g., Blader & Chen, ; Brebels et al., ; Cornelis, Van Hiel, De Cremer, & Mayer, ; Long, ; Scott et al., ; Scott et al., ; Scott, Garza, Conlon, & Kim, ). For instance, Scott et al.…”

“…For instance, Scott et al. () distinguished between “cold” (i.e., cognitive) and “hot” (i.e., affective) motives of supervisors’ justice behavior, finding that cold motives were more predictive of justice behaviors for which supervisors perceived less discretion whereas hot motives were more predictive of justice behaviors involving greater discretion.…”

What’s Past (and Present) Is Prologue: Interactions Between Justice Levels and Trajectories Predicting Behavioral Reciprocity

“…Studies show that compared with distributive and procedural justice, interactional justice tends to be experienced much more informally in the workplace, given the discretion managers often have in choosing to share information and/or being courteous or respectful to employees on a day-to-day basis (Matta et al, 2017;Scott, Garza, Conlon, & Kim, 2014). Thus, the experience of interactional justice is typically more episodic and transient in nature, and is therefore less appropriate for our study given the measurement time frame (Bies & Moag, 1986;Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002;Scott et al, 2014).…”