What's Fair in Work and War?
It seems reasonable: People prefer working for companies that treat them fairly, right? Wrong, says a group of researchers from New York University, Columbia University, and the University of Texas-Austin. In Is More Fairness Always Preferred? Self-Esteem Moderates Reactions to Procedural Justice, appearing in the current Academy of Management Journal, the authors studied workers at large companies in the midst of downsizing or restructuring. While employees with high self-esteem were more committed to the company when they felt, for example, that work was fairly distributed in their unit, employees with low self-esteem were largely indifferent to organizational injustice. Being fair with workers doesn't seem to be enough to win employees' hearts.
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