Mapping the Main Roads to Fairness: Examining the Managerial Context of Fairness Promotion

This paper explores the managerial context surrounding fairness promotion using a multi-method examination that employs interviews and a survey of practicing managers. The results of these examinations describe how managers tend to focus their efforts to promote fairness on fairly allocating rewards and responsibilities (i.e., promoting distributive fairness), accurately and consistently applying organizational policies (i.e., promoting procedural fairness) and providing representation and understanding to their subordinates around key organizational issues (i.e., promoting informational fairness and voice). Analyses of the interview and survey data show how managers’ efforts to promote employee development, enact managerial propriety, and demonstrate moral leadership mediate relationships between their fundamental desires to develop positive working relationships with their subordinates and the efforts they make to promote fairness. This paper concludes with a discussion about how this work refines and extends research on how and why managers promote fairness.