Ab105 Organizational Behavior Critical Thinking

AB105 Organizational Behavior Critical Thinking The Management of Organizational Justice By Russell Cropanzano, David E. Bowen, and Stephen W. Gilliland Summary of the key issues This paper has addressed the organizational justice from various aspects and provided recommendations to enhance the fairness in the managerial activities. Firstly, it has discussed the importance of justice in workgroup from its long-range benefits, social and ethical considerations. Secondly, the authors analyzed the three components of organizational justice, namely distributive, procedural and interactional justice in details to highlight the differences between the three in business activities. Next, the paper summarized the influences of organizational justice and these include enhanced trust and commitment, improved job performance, more helpful organizational citizenship behavior, as well as greater customer satisfaction and loyalty. Lastly, after identifying the critical significance of organizational justice in building a company’s identity, recommendations on how to enhance the fairness in managerial activities are proposed. The authors had cited examples from several past studies and discussed from five angles which are hiring, performance appraisal, reward systems, conflict management and downsizing. Other Theoretical Perspectives on Organizational Justice This paper has mentioned the equity theory which is one of the earliest theories of justice brought by Aristotle. This theory emphasizes that people should be paid in proportion to their contributions. Nevertheless, equity theory focuses more on the distributive justice. Through careful research, there are other perspectives and positions on this issue. Fairness heuristic theory Fairness heuristic theory is concerned with how people react to outcomes of their authorities, and makes some predictions concerning the relationship between perceived fairness of procedures, perceived fairness of outcomes and acceptance of outcomes. This theory highlighted that employees would make decisions about others’ trustworthiness. It also discussed whether one can avoid exploitation by using available information. Uncertainty management theory Uncertainty management theory assumed that people manage uncertainty by using fairness; for instance, receiving information on the reliability of an authority figure may reduce uncertainty about unjust treatment in the future and alleviate doubt about the outcome of a possible figure. Uncertainty theory has explained why people care about justice and how they form justice judgment. This theory has relevant implications as information on managerial decisions should be provided to gain the trust from the employees to enhance procedural justice. Group engagement theory This model explains why and how procedural justice shapes cooperation in groups, organizations and societies. It has established a link between justice and corporation via its several hypotheses, such as the importance of procedures in shaping one’s social identity within a group, and the impact of this social identity on his attitudes, values and behaviors. Group engagement theory has provided insights in organizational justice as managers should treat people fairly to win their corporation. Evidence Assessment In general, the evidence provided in this paper is reliable and well-established. The key issues of the article such as importance of organizational behavior and recommendations on fairness workplace enhancement are thoroughly – discussed. The authors had researched over a wide pool of studies across a time span of 20 years, ensuring the relevance, accuracy and sufficiency of the data. Nonetheless, there are some minor limitations. First of all, little evidence was demonstrated to support the discussion on prescriptive and subjective justice, with mere definition of the two, which in turn affects the completeness of the analysis on organizational justice management. Secondly, the authors mentioned about the external equity in affecting reward system, but no proof was offered to support the claim on the influence on the disparity of salaries from the external marketplace. Lastly, although this paper has detailed coverage on the improved employee organizational behavior by establishing organizational justice, it only focuses on the procedural justice and this coverage is insufficient in my viewpoint. Other research suggest that all the three types of organizational justice have direct relationships on enhancing citizenship behavior as â€Å"trust appears to be an important mediating variable (Konovsky and Pugh, 1994). Organizational justice enhances employee trust, which in turn stimulates the display of citizenship behavior. † Assumption Analysis Several assumptions are identified in the analysis of this paper. This paper assumes that self – interest motives favor equity and people across different age groups, genders, races and education levels will perceive justice similarly (which might not be necessarily valid). Another underlying assumption in the managerial activities is that decision makers will treat the employees with genuineness while undertaking the recommended measures, because the absence of the sincerity will make the employees feel disrespected and manipulated. The influence of different contexts plays a key role in organizational justice as it will affect one’s justice perceptions. Out of all the variables, gender and culture are the main factors. Studies have shown that male’s major concern in reward allocation was protecting their own interests while females’ interests lie on maintaining the welfare of all group members. Furthermore, in a society with emphasis on collectivism, members emphasized more on particularistic principle of need or social status distribution instead of equity, as compared to societies based on individualism. Conclusions, Implications and Consequences This article has provided a detailed understanding of organizational justice. In conclusion, injustice in an organization will create problems, leading to inefficiency and unproductivity while justice acts will provide excellent business opportunities and maintain respect and trust within organizations. Therefore, it is advisable to put in efforts in improving distributive, procedural and interactional justice simultaneously in managerial activities. Furthermore, managers could also apply different organizational justice measures according to employees’ various justice perceptions which vary with genders and cultures, in order to reap the maximum benefits from exercising organizational justice in a workplace. (Word count: 1019 words)