The Effect of Non-Contingent Success On People's Desire for High Process Fairness

Abstract

A central tenet of organizational justice theory and research is that people prefer decisions to be made with higher than with lower process fairness. The results of three studies identified a boundary condition for this general tendency. Drawing on the self-handicapping literature in social psychology, we found that people who experienced non-contingent success had less of a desire for high process fairness relative to their counterparts who experienced contingent success. Furthermore, results attributable to other independent variables, namely regulatory focus in Study 2 and self-affirmation in Study 3, shed light on the underlying mechanism: people experience non-contingent success as self- threatening and lower their desire for high process fairness in the service of protecting themselves against the threat. Theoretical implications for the organizational justice and self-handicapping literatures are discussed, as are limitations and practical implications.