Abstract
What motivates managers to deliver bad news in a just manner and why do some managers fail to treat recipients of bad news with dignity and respect? Given the importance of delivering bad news in a just manner, answering these questions is critical to promote justice in the workplace. Drawing on appraisal theories of emotions, we propose that people with higher core self-evaluations may be less likely to deliver bad news in an interpersonally just manner. This is because these actors are more likely to appraise the delivery of bad news as a situation in which they have high coping potential and are therefore less likely to experience anxiety. However, we propose that anxiety can be important for propelling the enactment of interpersonal justice. We test our predictions across three studies (with four samples of full-time managers and employees). Theoretical and practical contributions include enhancing our understanding of who is motivated to enact interpersonal justice, why they are motivated to do so, and how to enhance justice in the workplace. Our findings also challenge the assumption that negative emotions are necessarily dysfunctional for the enactment of interpersonal justice and instead highlight the facilitative role of anxiety in this context.
Highlights
What motivates managers to deliver bad news in a just manner and why do some managers fail to treat recipients of bad news with dignity and respect? Given the importance of delivering bad news in a just manner, answering these questions is critical to promote justice in the workplace
Drawing on appraisal theories of emotion (e.g. Lazarus, 1991), we argue that core self-evaluations are negatively associated with the enactment of interpersonal justice because this managerial characteristic can impact actors’ appraisals of their coping potential related to the delivery of bad news
Given the nature of anxiety, we argue that this emotion can have facilitative effects in the context of the delivery of bad news, such that anxiety can increase managers’ motivation to enact interpersonal justice
Summary
What motivates managers to deliver bad news in a just manner and why do some managers fail to treat recipients of bad news with dignity and respect? Given the importance of delivering bad news in a just manner, answering these questions is critical to promote justice in the workplace. Drawing on appraisal theories of emotions, we propose that people with higher core self-evaluations may be less likely to deliver bad news in an interpersonally just manner This is because these actors are more likely to appraise the delivery of bad news as a situation in which they have high coping potential and are less likely to experience anxiety. Our general argument is that actors with higher core self-evaluations are less likely to enact interpersonal justice because they are more confident in their own coping potential (i.e. perceived ability to manage or ameliorate the situation; Lazarus, 1991) and are less likely to experience anxiety about delivering bad news.
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