Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience

In this paper we have outlined a novel theoretical model for business ethics suggesting that deontic justice—our concern with other people’s just treatment—arises from a set of psychological processes which, to speak loosely, are ‘hard wired’ into our brains (Tancredi 2005). This also suggests that justice—or its absence—could impact employees on a more fundamental level than is often recognized. As alluded to earlier, workers who feel that they have been unjustly treated experience poorer health (Cropanzano and Wright 2011) and are likely to seek revenge even when doing so is personally costly (Fehr and Gächter 2000). This is not surprising, given the robust processing and salience of fairness-related information.

A related insight for deontic justice theory is that, while human beings are concerned with their self-interest, they are also concerned with their moral principles (Folger 2001, 2011). The research evidence we have reviewed here supports these contentions. Justice, as well as ethics more generally, is a central concern in human existence (Cropanzano et al. 2007). For this reason, justice matters beyond particular individuals. Third parties often care about how others are treated even when they are not directly impacted (Skarlicki and Kulik 2005). Given this, the pernicious effects of injustice are likely to be spread rapidly through an organization, as some employees become displeased with the treatment and experiences of their coworkers (Skarlicki et al. 2015). Indeed, justice in its deontic form appears to be relevant beyond focal employee-manager interactions: It may push employees to exhibit negative behaviors and attitudes toward the organization if they witness their peers encountering moral adversity (Skarlicki et al. 1998). Hence, proactive organizations should account for deontic justice as a part of the organization’s overall culture, rather than through a piecemeal series of one-on-one interventions (Monin et al. 2013). To achieve this goal, organizations could begin by designing management systems that conform to justice rules (Fortin and Fellenz 2008), such as providing voice and respectful interpersonal treatment (Cugueró-Escofet and Rosanas 2013). In this way, valuable behaviors, such as organizational citizenship or whistleblowing will be more likely to occur (Umphress et al. 2010).

As explained throughout, incorporating neuroscience evidence into accounts of organizational justice strongly suggests that ethical decisions are often influenced by intuition and affect, as well as by moral reasoning (e.g., Greene 2013). This observation has a somewhat different emphasis than most traditional accounts of business ethics, which focus on moral reasoning as opposed to more intuitive and affective processes (cf. Salvador and Folger 2009). The present model suggests that these two views of business ethics should be re-balanced, because incorporating an organizational neuroscience perspective reveals that implicit empathic processes play a significant role in shaping the observed behaviors in response to the unfair treatment of others (Becker et al. 2011). For example, Masten et al. (2011) showed that witnessing social mistreatment of others required both forms of empathy to produce action. What is more, the present model explains that empathy should be considered as a dual construct rather than a single concept, showing relevance of our model, not just for ethical thinking, but also to organizational research at large. Previous research has sometimes considered empathy as either one type (e.g., affective sharing) or another (e.g., cognitive understanding). Supported by neuroscience research, we maintain that this ‘either/or’ approach should be replaced with ‘this and that.’ That is, there are two types of empathy and both are important.

Thus, from a practical perspective, our conceptualization may explain why training and other interventions to influence organizational justice, which are often based on rational ‘cold’ approaches, sometimes produce disappointing results (Ludwig and Longenecker 1993). Among other possibilities, our present model suggests that ethical conduct at work could be enhanced by training people in empathy (Pecukonis 1990). For instance, among health care professionals, there have been promising findings with these types of programs (e.g., LaMonica et al. 1976; Riess et al. 2012), and we would recommend that they be considered more broadly. It also reinforces the value of compassionate organizational culture (Barsade and O’Neill 2014; Karakas and Sarigollu 2013).

Along these lines, neuroscience research itself provides practical information on how deontic justice can be ‘manipulated’ in our brain. For one, Knoch et al. (2006) employed Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a non-invasive method used to inhibit small regions of the brain by low-frequency stimulation (O’Shea and Walsh 2007) while subjects were playing the Ultimatum Game. They found that one third of the participants whose right dorsolateral PFC was inhibited, accepted all the offers, even those clearly unfair. Similarly, the ‘manipulation’ of socio-moral behavior has been explored with neuro-pharmacological approaches, like those involving intranasal administration of oxytocin (Kosfeld et al. 2005). Oxytocin-treated subjects increased trust while performing a trust game (i.e., they assigned more money to the trustees) if compared to the control group. While the application of these approaches has not yet been employed in the workplace, their potential use will necessarily require a priori and shared ethical guidelines ensuring real benefits for workers.

Finally, we readily recognize that each of the different neuroscience methods we have mentioned in our paper will hold specific informative power in future testing of our model. For one, if neuro-pharmacological approaches may promote empathy and fairness, fMRI will be able to further inform on the neural substrates activated during justice-related experimental tasks or games. Yet, we hope that the cross-disciplinary nature of our framework will not only promote novel investigations on the highlighted brain regions of interest, but will also encourage the integration of this neuroscience information with more traditional business research methods as a means to comprehensively advance future research on deontic justice.

We should remark that in this work we have sought to advance current theory on deontic justice by proposing an interdisciplinary framework, rather than suggesting replacement of existing accounts of organizational justice exclusively with neuroscience research. Indeed, despite the promises of neuroscience to advance organizational justice research, we must point out a number of related limitations and cautions. Neuroscience research in these areas is still in its relative infancy (Zhan et al. 2013). As such, business ethics scholars need to be wary of placing too much weight on any single study or on a unique methodological approach. Several methodological avenues will likely contribute to advance the understanding of the neural substrates and psychological processes involved in deontic justice. For instance, Electroencephalography (EEG) has the potential to add ecological validity to deontic justice research. For one, Stikic et al. (2013) have already assessed engagement and leadership at both the individual and team levels in a social responsibility scenario.

Other research has also shown that EEG investigations can inform decision-making strategies (Jacobs et al. 2006) and help to disentangle affective and cognitive processes (Knyazev and Slobodskaya 2003; Pfurtscheller and Da Silva 1999). Moreover, coherence analysis—a measure of the degree to which EEG signals at two distinct scalp locations are linearly related to one another—is often associated with studies on individual traits (Harmon-Jones et al. 2010), thus suggesting promising avenues to appreciate individual differences in deontic justice.

Overall, the employment of interdisciplinary approaches will provide a viable opportunity for researchers to move the field forward. In parallel, we also recommend that organizational neuroscience should attempt to offer further meta-analytical evidence and ensure reproducibility of existing findings. Only then will nuanced theoretical business propositions and ecologically comprehensive paradigms match a multidisciplinary effort to further refine theoretical frameworks, such as the one presented here.

In concluding, our model suggests that there are at least two broad paradigms for future research. The first of these concerns issues regarding individual differences. It is a point of everyday experience to recognize that some people care more about morality than others (Shao et al. 2008). Our review suggests that these differences can be reflected in neural differences among people (Baron-Cohen 2011; Kiehl 2006). Moreover, as deontic justice is heavily moderated by both cognitive and affective constructs, individuals’ impairments in any link of this chain will reduce deontic justice in predictable ways. However, neuroscience evidence suggests that situational context and conditions are also important. For example, the cognitive empathy system may ‘fail’ due to strong out-group attributions (Haney et al. 1973), the framing of an ethical problem (Bazerman and Tenbrunsel 2011), or the type of violation (Greene et al. 2001). Future theoretical and empirical extensions of our model shall explicitly take these cues into account. In this regard, our present framework will serve as a helpful opening roadmap.

Finally, while future research may yield novel findings in this area, we suggest that organizations should always attend closely to the work environment, designing it so that organizational justice, as a whole, is not inadvertently restrained by structural or procedural flaws. In this regard, our model might also help inform future interventions. For example, as much of the information that influences ethical behavior is also processed outside of workers’ cognitive awareness (i.e., affective empathy), organizations should build cues into the environment that reinforce empathy while avoiding signals that unfair behavior is acceptable (Bazerman and Tenbrunsel 2011).