The Impact of Individual Ethics on Reactions to Potentially Invasive HR Practices

background searches, drug testing, electronic monitoring, ethical orientation, formalism, privacy, utilitarianism,

Righting the wrong for third parties -- how monetary compensation, procedure changes and apologies restore justice for observers of injustice

People react negatively not only to injustices they personally endure but also to injustices that they observe as ystanders at work—and typically, people observe more injustices than they personally experience. It is therefore important to understand how organizations can restore observers’ perceptions of justice after an injustice has occurred. In our paper, we employ a policy capturing design o test and compare the restorative power of monetary compensation, procedure changes and apologies, alone and in combination, from the perspective of third parties. We extend revious research on remedies by including different degrees f compensation and procedural changes, by comparing the ffects of sincere versus insincere apologies and by including apologies from additional sources. The results indicate that monetary compensation, procedure changes, and incere apologies all have a significant and positive effect on how observers perceive the restoration of justice. in sincere apologies, on the other hand, have no significant effect on restoration for third parties. Procedural changes ere found to have the strongest remedial effects, a remedy arely included in previous research. One interpretation of his finding could be that observers of injustice prefer olutions that are not short sighted: changing procedures voids future injustices that could affect other people. We ound that combinations of remedies, such that the presence of a second remedy strengthens the effect of the first remedy, are particularly effective. Our findings regarding interactions underline the importance of studying and ministering remedies in conjunction with each other

Ethical Considerations and Change Recipients’ Reactions: ‘It’s Not All About Me’

An implicit assumption in most works on change recipient reactions is that employees are self-centred and driven by a utilitarian perspective. According to large parts of the organizational change literature, employees’ reactions to organizational change are mainly driven by observations around the question ‘what will happen to me?’ We analysed change recipients’ reactions to 26 large-scale planned change projects in a policing context on the basis of 23 in-depth interviews. Our data show that change recipients drew on observations with three foci (me, colleagues and organization) to assess change, making sense of change as multidimensional and mostly ambivalent in nature. In their assessment of organizational change, recipients care not only about their own personal outcomes, but go beyond self-interested concerns to show a genuine interest in the impact of change on their colleagues and organization. Meaningful engagement of employees in organizational change processes requires recognizing that reactions are not simply ‘all about me’. We add to the organizational change literature by introducing a behavioural ethics perspective on change recipients’ reactions highlighting an ethical orientation where moral motives that trigger change reactions get more attention than is common in the change management literature. Beyond the specifics of our study, we argue that the genuine concern of change recipients for the wellbeing of others, and the impact of the organizations’ activities on internal and external stakeholders, needs to be considered more systematically in research on organizational change

Exploring the Relationship Between Exclusive Talent Management, Perceived Organizational Justice and Employee Engagement: Bridging the Literature

This conceptual paper explores the relationship between an organization’s exclusive talent management (TM) practices, employees’ perceptions of the fairness of exclusive TM practices, and the corresponding impact on employee engagement. We propose that in organizations pursuing exclusive TM programs, employee perceptions of organizational justice of the exclusive TM practices may affect their employee engagement, which may influence both organizational and employee outcomes. Building on extant research, we present a conceptual framework depicting the relationship between exclusive TM practices, organizational justice and employee engagement, with social exchange theory and equity theory as the frame- work’s foundation. The propositions in the framework are each supported by the respective literature. The perceived organizational justice and potential ramifications of exclusive TM practices for employees who are not inclu- ded in corporate talent pools is an under-researched topic. The paper considers the perspectives of employees not included in corporate talent pools and explores how exclusive TM practices, as inputs, could lead to negative employee engagement outputs. In unpacking how exclu- sive TM practices could impact on employee engagement, the implications for organizations are underlined. The ethics and perceived fairness of exclusive TM practices, which have the potential to marginalize employees and lead to their disengagement, are considered

Building a climate of trust during organizational change: The mediating role of justice perceptions and emotion

Over the years, research has shown that, although there are various factors which contribute to failed change, one of the key reasons people resist change is due to the inability of leaders to convince employees to support change and to commit the energy and effort necessary to implement it. Senior management can ensure an organization is change-ready by developing and maintaining a supportive culture and climate that positively influence the emotional health and welfare of employees. Despite the obvious importance of leadership to change efforts, little previous research has investigated, holistically and in the context of major change, the relationship between senior management actions and employee responses. Furthermore, the change literature largely ignores the role that emotions play in employee responses to change initiatives. This chapter addresses both areas, and develops a model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective, which depicts employees’ justice perceptions related to senior executives as affecting trust directly and indirectly, through associated emotional responses

A Critical Analysis of the Conceptualization and Measurement of Organizational Justice: Is It Time for Reassessment?

This paper provides a historical review of the conceptualization and measurement of organizational justice. We demonstrate how, over time, a dominant norm for conceptualizing and measuring justice has emerged. We posit that although consistent conceptualization and measurement across justice studies can enable the accumulation of knowledge, if the dominant approach is incomplete, this can impede the accumulation of knowledge and risk construct reification. We suggest that these risks are high given that (a) contemporary approaches to measuring fairness perceptions fail to capture the full domain of organizational justice as it was initially conceptualized by early scholars; (b) despite a foundation of “classic” theories, our field has yet to systematically map the justice domain; and (c) the normative operationalizations of organizational justice are based on observations that predate the 21st century workplace. We offer suggestions for future research and new approaches to assessing workplace fairness. Our paper’s goal, ultimately, is to reconsider how justice is conceptualized and measured so that the findings obtained from future empirical justice studies can go beyond the constraints of the current paradigm