Contextual factors influencing managerial motives to address systemic injustice in INGOs

Abstract

National and international employees in international work contexts tend to be remunerated on different reward packages. Recent research has explored the impact of these differential reward packages on employee outcomes (including wellbeing, motivation and perceived fairness), but has tended to focus on the experiences of individual employees. This paper shifts the focus from individuals to organisational decision-makers, exploring managerial motives for addressing systemic injustice. Strengthening the connection between behavioural ethics and organisational justice literatures, this paper specifically examines what contextual factors motivate managers in international non- government organisations (NGOs) to change their organisational reward policies and practices. 18 interviews with 16 human resource and reward managers from 15 well known international NGOs were content- analysed and discussed using instrumental, relational and deontic dimensions of justice. Key findings include identification of contextual factors at organisation and sector levels that influence manager justice enactments. We identify a primary role for deontic motives for manager justice enactments, but the potential for conflicting and contradictory justice motives to be held by managers concurrently, and for factors themselves to reflect different motives, depending on the context and perspective.