Leadership and Fairness: The State of the Art

Research in leadership effectiveness has paid less to the role of leader fairness than probably it should have. More recently, this has started to change. To capture this development, we review the empirical literature in leadership and fairness to define the field of leadership and fairness, to assess the state of the art, and to identify a research agenda for future efforts in the field. The review shows that leader distributive, procedural, and especially interactional fairness are positively associated with criteria of leadership effectiveness. More scarce and scattered evidence also suggests that fairness considerations help explain the effectiveness of other aspects of leadership, and that leader fairness and other aspects of leadership, or the leadership context, may interact in predicting leadership effectiveness. We conclude that future research should especially focus on interaction effects of leader fairness and other aspects of leadership, and on the processes mediating these effects.Leadership effectiveness;Fairness

Leadership and Fairness: The state of the art.

Research in leadership effectiveness has paid less attention to the role of leader fairness than probably it should have. More recently, this has started to change. To capture this development, we review the empirical literature in leadership and fairness to define the field of leadership and fairness, to assess the state of the art, and to identify a research agenda for future efforts in the field. The review shows that leader distributive, procedural, and especially interactional fairness are positively associated with criteria of leadership effectiveness. More scarce and scattered evidence also suggests that fairness considerations help explain the effectiveness of other aspects of leadership, and that leader fairness and other aspects of leadership, or the leadership context, may interact in predicting leadership effectiveness. We conclude that future research should especially focus on interaction effects of leader fairness and other aspects of leadership, and on the processes mediating these effects

Self-esteem and outcome fairness: differential importance of procedural and outcome considerations.

Results of a survey of 222 detainees in Dutch jails and police stations showed that outcome-fairness judgments of individuals with high self-esteem were more strongly related to outcome considerations than to procedural considerations, whereas outcome-fairness judgments of individuals with low self-esteem were more strongly related to procedural considerations than to outcome considerations. It was proposed that these differences were due to the fact that (a) procedures more strongly express a social evaluation than outcomes and (b) individuals with low self-esteem are more concerned with social evaluations than individuals with high self-esteem. The implications of the results for other individual-differences factors and other populations than detainees are discussed

Cooperating if one’s Goals are Collective-Based: Social Identification Effects in Social Dilemmas as a Function of Goal-Transformation

Prior studies of the effect of group identification on cooperation in social dilemmas have advanced two competing accounts of this effect, the goal-transformation hypothesis, which holds that identification implies a sense of collective self, which makes personal and collective goals interchangeable, and the goal-amplification hypothesis, which states that identification induces positive expectations about others’ cooperative behavior. These prior studies have, however, neglected to assess the process measures necessary to pit the one account against the other. Following prior research, the present study showed that the effect of identification was moderated by participants’ social value orientation (i.e., individual differences in evaluating the importance of outcomes for self and other) in such a way that identification influenced proselfs’ cooperation more than prosocials’ cooperation. This suggests that the consequence of group identification is that collective goals become personal goals. Extending earlier recent research, mediational analyses showed that the effect of our identification manipulation was mediated by participants’ sense of collective self and not by their expectations. Taken together, these results provide strong support in favor of the goal-transformation hypothesis.Goal-amplification hypothesis;Goal-transformation hypothesis

Leadership and Fairness: The State of the Art

Research in leadership effectiveness has paid less to the role of leader fairness than probably it should have. More recently, this has started to change. To capture this development, we review the empirical literature in leadership and fairness to define the field of leadership and fairness, to assess the state of the art, and to identify a research agenda for future efforts in the field. The review shows that leader distributive, procedural, and especially interactional fairness are positively associated with criteria of leadership effectiveness. More scarce and scattered evidence also suggests that fairness considerations help explain the effectiveness of other aspects of leadership, and that leader fairness and other aspects of leadership, or the leadership context, may interact in predicting leadership effectiveness. We conclude that future research should especially focus on interaction effects of leader fairness and other aspects of leadership, and on the processes mediating these effects

Cooperating if one’s Goals are Collective-Based: Social Identification Effects in Social Dilemmas as a Function of Goal-Transformation

Prior studies of the effect of group identification on cooperation in social dilemmas have advanced two competing accounts of this effect, the goal-transformation hypothesis, which holds that identification implies a sense of collective self, which makes personal and collective goals interchangeable, and the goal-amplification hypothesis, which states that identification induces positive expectations about others’ cooperative behavior. These prior studies have, however, neglected to assess the process measures necessary to pit the one account against the other. Following prior research, the present study showed that the effect of identification was moderated by participants’ social value orientation (i.e., individual differences in evaluating the importance of outcomes for self and other) in such a way that identification influenced proselfs’ cooperation more than prosocials’ cooperation. This suggests that the consequence of group identification is that collective goals become personal goals. Extending earlier recent research, mediational analyses showed that the effect of our identification manipulation was mediated by participants’ sense of collective self and not by their expectations. Taken together, these results provide strong support in favor of the goal-transformation hypothesis