Chris M. Bell

Organisational justice: new insights from behavioural ethics

Both organizational justice and behavioural ethics are concerned with questions of ‘right and wrong’ in the context of work organizations. Until recently they have developed largely independently of each other, choosing to focus on subtly different concerns, constructs and research questions. The last few years have, however, witnessed a significant growth in theoretical and empirical research integrating these closely related academic specialities. We review the organizational justice literature, illustrating the impact of behavioural ethics research on important fairness questions. We argue that organizational justice research is focused on four reoccurring issues: (i) why justice at work matters to individuals; (ii) how justice judgements are formed; (iii) the consequences of injustice; and (iv) the factors antecedent to justice perceptions. Current and future justice research has begun and will continue borrowing from the behavioural ethics literature in answering these questions.

The cultural contagion of conflict

Anecdotal evidence abounds that conflicts between two individuals can spread across networks to involve a multitude of others. We advance a cultural transmission model of intergroup conflict where conflict contagion is seen as a consequence of universal human traits (ingroup preference, outgroup hostility; i.e. parochial altruism) which give their strongest expression in particular cultural contexts. Qualitative interviews conducted in the Middle East, USA and Canada suggest that parochial altruism processes vary across cultural groups and are most likely to occur in collectivistic cultural contexts that have high ingroup loyalty. Implications for future neuroscience and computational research needed to understand the emergence of intergroup conflict are discussed.

Organizational powerlessness, dehumanization, and gendered effects of procedural justice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether procedural justice effects on organizational powerlessness and dehumanization are stronger for women than men and, consequently, mediated effects on turnover intention are conditional upon gender. Design/methodology/approach – The authors recruited to a two-wave survey of workplace attitudes with flyers distributed at downtown subway exits. The authors controlled for and tested alternative models for distributive and interpersonal justice. Findings – Gender moderated procedural justice effects on both mediators. The moderated mediation model held only for organizational dehumanization, even controlling for powerlessness. Models for distributive and interpersonal justice were not significant. Research limitations/implications – The authors used cross-sectional, self-report data but separated predictor and criterion variables in two surveys to counteract common method bias. Nevertheless, causal inferences are limited. Practical implications – To retain ...

The two faces of envy: perceived opportunity to perform as a moderator of envy manifestation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate, with a Pakistani sample, the destructive and constructive behavioral intentions associated with benign and malicious envy in the context of perceived opportunity to perform. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted two cross-sectional studies to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, data were obtained from students (n=90), whereas in Study 2, the authors used an executive sample (n=83). Findings The primary motivation of benign envy was to bring oneself up by improving performance on the comparison dimension, whereas the primary motive of malicious envy was to pull the envied other down. The relationship between malicious envy and behavioral “pulling down” intentions of derogating envied other was conditional on perceived opportunity on the comparison dimension. Consistent with a motive to improve self-evaluation, this study also found that perceived opportunity to perform interacted with benign envy to promote performance intentions on an alternative dimension. Furthermore, malicious envy was also associated with self-improving performance intentions on the comparison dimension, conditional upon perceived opportunity to perform. Practical implications Envy, depending on its nature, can become a positive or negative force in organizational life. The pattern of effects for opportunity structure differs from previous findings on control. The negative and positive effects of malicious envy may be managed by attention to opportunity structures. Originality/value This study supports the proposition that benign envy and malicious envy are linguistically and conceptually distinct phenomena, and it is the first to do so in a sample from Pakistan, a non-western and relatively more collectivistic culture. The authors also showed that negative and hostile envy-based behaviors are conditional upon the perceived characteristics of the context.