Joel Brockner

When do procedural fairness and outcome favorability interact to influence organizational commitment? The moderating effect of uncertainty

Coauthor(s): David De Cremer, Ariel Fishman, Marius van Dijke, Woody van Olffen, David Mayer.

Abstract:
Prior research has shown that procedural fairness interacts with outcome fairness to influence employees' work attitudes (e.g., organizational commitment) and behaviors (e.g., job performance, organizational citizenship behavior), such that employees' tendencies to respond more positively to higher procedural fairness is stronger when outcome fairness is relatively low. The present studies posited that people's uncertainty about their standing as organizational members will have a moderating influence on this interactive relationship between procedural fairness and outcome fairness, in that the interactive relationship was expected to be more pronounced when uncertainty is high. Using different operationalizations of uncertainty of standing (i.e., length of tenure as a proxy, along with self-reports and co-workers' reports), we found support for this hypothesis in four field studies, spanning three different countries.

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