Status is The Difference: Disability and the Unintended Consequences of Fairness

Abstract

Evolving workforce trends accentuate scholarly and industry interests in understanding third party perceptions of the fairness of allocations made to accommodate employees with disabilities. Drawing on the disability, justice, and workplace aggression literatures, we used an experimental policy- capturing method to examine the influence of differences in recipient characteristics (disability status and performance level) on coworkers’ perceptions of fairness of a manager’s resource allocation decision and subsequent intentions to undermine the recipient of the allocation. One hundred fifty participants judged the fairness of 36 allocation decisions (N = 5400 situations). In the multi-level, within- and between-persons study, we found that disability status, as an operationalization of adherence to the distributive justice allocation rule of need, influences coworkers’ judgements of fairness and social undermining intentions. Furthermore, these relationships are strongest for coworkers with a greater future orientation. In sum, the findings suggest that consideration of the unintended consequences of managerial decisions to accommodate individuals with stigmatized identities and the resulting response of bypassed coworkers in decision- making is important in the management of an increasingly diverse workforce.