Perceptions Of Procedural Fairness Research Articles

Effects of voice and similarity on procedural fairness and trust: A dual process model of public acceptance based on representatives’ participation

In citizen participation, a few representatives of the total citizen population participate in discussions with authorities regarding public decisions and policies. The present study examines a dual process model in which the representatives’ voice and similarity of values facilitate public acceptance through procedural fairness and trust in representatives, respectively. The results of an experiment employing a scenario method, which included participants from Japan (n = 211) and the Netherlands (n = 200), indicate that the representatives’ voice increased procedural fairness and public acceptance when the similarity of representatives was high. The effects of representatives’ voice on public acceptance via procedural fairness was supported in both nations, while other effects of representatives’ similarity on acceptance via trust were indicated only in Japan. These results suggest that the indirect voice of citizens, as conveyed by representatives, plays an important role in increasing perceptions of procedural fairness and public acceptance among citizens.

Organizational commitment and supervisor support, perception of procedural fairness, tenure in the hospital: The mediating effect of work-life balance - study in nurses

Introduction: Background: For nurses, there are particularities concerning the relationship between work and private life. Objective:The objectives of this paper are to examine the association between affective and normative commitment and supervisorsupport, perception of procedural fairness, tenure in the hospital, and whether or not work-life mediates the association. Methods: Data were collected from our survey to 403 employed nurses in three hospitals, Portugal. We conducted descriptivestatistics, bivariate correlations, hierarchical regression analysis and mediation tests. Results: The affective and normative commitment was significantly associated with supervisor support; perception of proceduralfairness; work-life balance and tenure in the hospital. The observed effect suggested the moderating power of the variable worklifebalance in the model. Conclusions: This study provides health sector managers the evidence that supervisor support, perception of procedural fairnessand tenure in the hospital, are important factors to have in consideration in nurses’ organizational commitment.

Criminal defendants' satisfaction with lawyers: perceptions of procedural fairness and effort of the lawyer

At present, procedural justice theory has predominantly been used to explain defendants' satisfaction with the police, courts and prisons. It is unclear to what extent this theory is also applicable to lawyers. This study investigates to what extent (1) criminal defendants are satisfied with their lawyers and (2) procedural fairness characteristics and the effort of the lawyer are related to defendants' satisfaction with their lawyers. Data from the Prison Project were used: a large-scale research project among Dutch criminal defendants (N = 1479). Results suggest that generally, Dutch defendants are very satisfied with their lawyers. Variation in defendants' satisfaction with their lawyers can be attributed for a substantial part to procedural fairness characteristics.

Variable links within perceived police legitimacy?: Fairness and effectiveness across races and places

This work examines connections between two threads of community residents’ perceptions of local police legitimacy, effectiveness and procedural fairness, and how those links depend on race, place, and race/place combinations. Previous works have connected these two threads, but have failed (a) to explore the variability of that connection by race, place, and race/place combinations across communities spanning the urban to suburban to rural continuum or (b) to model mutual influence. An extension of the group position thesis and work on minority views of police practices suggest how these variations might be patterned. Data were derived from a 2003 probability-based sampling survey of household respondents across Pennsylvania (n=1289). Generalized confirmatory factor analysis models built procedural fairness and effectiveness indices for four groups: whites in urban core counties, non-whites in urban core counties, whites in non-urban core counties, and non-whites in non-urban core counties. Non-recursive structural equation models revealed variable impacts of perceived police effectiveness on perceived police fairness and, to a lesser extent, of fairness on effectiveness. Implications for a more structurally and contextually aware understanding of links in police legitimacy models are developed.

Speed of Decision-Making as a Procedural Justice Principle

The uncertainty management theory (Lind and Van den Bos, Research in organizational behavior 24, 181–223, 2002; Van den Bos and Lind, Advances in experimental social psychology, pp. 1–60, 2002) proposes that perceived fairness decreases experienced uncertainty, and, thus, the importance of fairness is enhanced under higher uncertainty. For example, the six procedural justice principles (Leventhal, Social exchange: advances in theory and research pp. 27–55, 1980) can be seen to reduce uncertainty in the long run by producing higher quality decisions. However, the decision-making process itself also may cause uncertainty, especially when the process is prolonged. Thus, we bring the speed of the decision-making process into discussion as one justice principle. We suggest that people use speed-related information as heuristic information and substitute lacking procedures-related information by drawing inferences from the speed of the decision-making. We propose that the speed of decision-making has a twofold effect on perception of procedural fairness: very fast and very slow decision-making processes are perceived to produce more uncertainty than moderate time processes, and consequently, a moderate process is expected to be related with more positive fairness perceptions than very slow or very fast processes. The statement was further tested by examining the mediating role of procedural fairness perceptions in the relationship between speed and its one consequence, perceived legitimacy, with a survey sample (N = 846) in the context of Finnish forest policy. The analysis confirmed the hypotheses. The role of speed as a justice rule and its contribution to the uncertainty management theory is discussed.

The Interactive Effects ofEx PostGoal Adjustment and Goal Difficulty on Performance

ABSTRACTDespite the common use of performance goals to motivate employees and the use of ex post goal adjustments to filter out the effects of unforeseen and uncontrollable events, minimal research has examined the consequences of employing them jointly. We predict that the availability of ex post goal adjustments will have a positive effect on performance and that this effect will be stronger when the ex ante goal difficulty level is moderate rather than difficult. Moreover, we predict that these effects will be mediated by perceptions of procedural justice. Results from an experiment completed by 142 undergraduate students support our predictions. The availability of ex post goal adjustments has positive effects on procedural fairness perceptions and performance under the moderate goal, but has no such effects under the difficult goal. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Does Ethical Leadership Matter in Government? Effects on Organizational Commitment, Absenteeism, and Willingness to Report Ethical Problems

Recent ethical scandals involving managers in government organizations have highlighted the need for more research on ethical leadership in public sector organizations. To assess the consequences of ethical leadership, 161 managers in a large state government agency and 415 of their direct reports were surveyed, and personnel records were obtained to measure absenteeism. Results indicate that after controlling for the effects of employee characteristics, perceptions of procedural fairness, and supportive leader behavior, ethical leadership reduced absenteeism and had a positive influence on organizational commitment and willingness to report ethical problems. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are presented.

From voter ID to party ID: How political parties affect perceptions of election fraud in the U.S.

This paper uses a survey experiment to assess what individuals understand about election fraud and under what circumstances they see it as a problem. I argue that political parties are central to answering both these questions. Results from the 2011 CCES survey suggest respondents are able to differentiate between the relative incentives of Democrats and Republicans where fraud tactics are concerned, but whether voters see these tactics as problematic is heavily influenced by partisan bias. The results show little support for the notion that partisan ideology drives fraud assessments, and suggest support for the idea that individual concerns for fraud are shaped a desire for their preferred candidate to win. These results offer insights that might be applied more broadly to questions of perceptions of electoral integrity and procedural fairness in democracies.

Not so Fair after All? Perceptions of Procedural Fairness and Satisfaction with Democracy in the Nordic Welfare States

The Nordic countries are known for their well-functioning public administrations. In indices measuring control of corruption and the quality of the rule of law, they frequently occupy top positions. However, as we demonstrate in this article, a country's top position in comparative indices does not automatically imply that citizens view the state of affairs in the same way as depicted by experts. The observation is in no way trivial: Drawing on theories of procedural fairness, we go on to show—statistically, using individual level data—that widespread public perceptions about the unfairness of civil servants may have a negative effect on the legitimacy of the political system even in so-called high-trust and “least corrupt” settings such as the Nordic ones.

Putting victims in prison

ABSTRACTA substantial body of research exists regarding legitimacy in prisons. However, little is known still about victims' perceptions of the Prison Service, and whether appreciating crime in terms of ‘harm’ encourages offenders to accept the legitimacy of their sentence. A multi-method study has examined whether participation in two restorative initiatives at Magilligan prison in Northern Ireland can enhance perceptions of legitimacy for the Prison Service. The study found that victims' perceptions of procedural fairness relied upon opportunities to express themselves and positive interactions with prison officers. Personal relationships, trust and support, developed through co-facilitating the Victim Impact Programme, encouraged those perceptions. Offenders reported participation in the programme, challenged neutralisation strategies, improved their accountability and sensitivity to victims' plight, fostered perceptions of the legitimacy of their sentence, and encouraged positive engagement with priso...

The Power of Nice: Active Listening, Procedural and Intepersonal Fairness Perceptions and Prosocial and Antisocial Negotiation Behaviors

I invoke active listening and draw on models of procedural and interpersonal fairness perceptions, perceived organizational support, and organizational prosocial behaviors to articulate and test a model of negotiator willingness to engage in exploitative and prosocial negotiation behaviors. Specifically, active listening is predicted to affect the other party’s procedural and interpersonal fairness perceptions. These fairness perceptions are expected to be interpreted as signaling the extent to which the other party cares about one’s own well-being. Perceptions of the other party’s concern for one’s own well-being are predicted to be reciprocated as positive or negative concern for the other party. Finally, one’s own concern for the other party leads to exploitative and prosocial behaviors. All hypotheses except for the proposed link between procedural fairness perceptions and perceived other party support were supported.

When Will Employees Embrace Managers' Technological Innovations? The Mediating Effects of Employees' Perceptions of Fairness on Their Willingness to Accept Change and its Legitimacy

Innovation researchers have thoroughly discussed how attitudes toward innovation influence people's intentions to use it. Most prior research tried to explore employees' acceptance of technological change through the lens of change initiators; however, using a manager's or the “great man's” perspective to explain change recipients' reaction to an innovation is indirect and peripheral. This paper argues that innovation should be studied directly from the perspective of change recipients, and that their perceptions of fairness in the wake of an innovation become a key factor in their willingness to accept it. More specifically, this paper argues that the recipients' fairness perceptions mediate the impact of innovation characteristics (operationalized as “usefulness” and “ease of use”) and implementation approach on their acceptance and belief in the legitimacy of the innovation. Two studies investigated the hypothesized mediating effects of procedural fairness/outcome fairness. The field study was conducted in a real‐world technological innovation setting, but raised questions about whether the causal effect of the mediating model really existed. The scenario study was conducted in a semi‐experimental condition which had high internal validity and guaranteed the cause–effect relation. Hence, the research design of the two studies complemented each other. The multiple regression analyses using the criteria proposed by Baron and Kenny were used to test the mediating models in the paper. Moreover, both Sobel tests and bootstrapping methods were used to guarantee that the mediating paths do exist among the independent variables, mediators, and the dependent variables. Both the field study and the scenario study showed that most of our hypotheses were supported, and change recipients had strong psychological reactions to the innovation and how the innovation was implemented in terms of fairness perceptions. Change recipients' perception of procedural and outcome fairness mediated the impact of innovation characteristics and implementation approach on their acceptance of the innovation and the perceived legitimacy of the innovation. The results disclosed that the change recipients' fairness perceptions were a key step for their sense‐making process of an innovation and its implementation. The results also indicated that studying change from recipients' perspective, as well as trying to understand their fairness perceptions, can broaden our knowledge about change. Other theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.

The Coevolution of Perceptions of Procedural Fairness and Link Formation in Self-Organizing Policy Networks

A key variable to foster cooperation in groups is the perception among members that the process of making decisions is fair to everyone involved, yet little is known about how these perceptions coevolve with the interactions that take place within the groups. In this article, I use a stochastic actor-oriented model to examine the coevolution of perceptions of procedural fairness and the establishment of relationships among organizations in self-organizing policy networks in five U.S. estuaries. These networks form and evolve as their members seek to address important environmental problems that affect multiple jurisdictions. Findings show that participation in networks does not affect perceptions of procedural fairness; instead, the latter affect the former, i.e., stakeholders create ties with other actors with similar perceptions of how fair decision-making processes are. These results have important implications for our understanding of how governance institutions should be designed to find collaborativ...

The Effect of Outcome Favorability and Fairness on Tax Compliance

The purpose of this paper is to study the role of outcome favorability on influencing the association between fairness and taxpayer compliance. Outcome favorability is whether taxpayers have a balance owing or refundable. We develop a model of tax compliance based on an integration of fairness heuristic theory (Lind 2001) with Rutte & Messick’s (1995) Model of Perceived Unfairness. Based on our model, we posit that taxpayers in a favorable tax payment position are more likely to comply with tax authorities than those in an unfavorable tax payment position, and perceptions of distributive and procedural fairness jointly moderate taxpayer compliance. Distributive fairness is whether taxpayers have paid their fair share of taxes, and procedural fairness is the even-handedness in procedures used to collect taxes. We conduct an experiment on 228 taxpayers. We find significant support for outcome favorability: compliance is significantly higher in favorable as compared to unfavorable tax positions. We also find that compliance is significantly higher under procedural fairness. Unexpectedly, we find that distributive fairness increases compliance only when outcomes are favorable. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

The Relation among Voice Value, Policy Outcomes, and Intensity of Support on Fairness Assessments of Tax Legislation

ABSTRACT: We conduct a quasi-experiment to determine whether the value placed on a taxpayer's opinion by an elected representative (valued or not valued) has an impact on the taxpayer's procedural and outcome fairness perceptions. We also examine how the taxpayer's intensity of support for the tax legislation interacts with both the value the elected representative placed on the taxpayer's voiced opinion and whether the taxpayer's preferred policy outcome is ultimately passed in a representative democracy. We recruited 92 participants from graduate accounting classes and assigned them to four experimental groups based on whether the elected officials valued their opinion, and whether their desired legislation was passed. As predicted, perceptions of fairness are more positively associated with receiving a desired outcome as intensity of support for an issue increases. Further, we find that taxpayers who do not have a strong intensity of support for a particular legislative position react favorably to having their voice valued by legislators. However, for those taxpayers who feel most passionate about a legislative issue, having their voice valued may provide limited benefits, if any at all. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors on request.

Gender‐Based Preferential Selection: Influences of Perceptions of Procedurally Unfair Advantage on Performance and Self‐Evaluations

Gender‐based preferential selection is believed to affect self‐perceptions of beneficiaries, but the mechanisms by which this occurs have not been fully investigated. An online experiment was conducted with male and female undergraduates (n = 509) in the midwestern United States in which method of selection and gender type of job were manipulated. Hypotheses regarding associations between independent variables, self‐efficacy, perceptions of procedural fairness, performance, and self‐evaluations were tested. Gender‐ vs. merit‐based selection negatively affected procedural fairness; while procedural fairness perceptions related positively to post‐hire self‐evaluations, in part through performance. Job gender type interacted with applicant gender to affect pre‐hire self‐efficacy, but self‐efficacy did not moderate the relationship between procedural fairness perceptions and post‐hire performance. Implications for affirmative‐action programs are discussed.

Cultural differences and applicants' procedural fairness perceptions

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese traditionality as a predictor of applicants' procedural fairness perceptions in selection, and both its direct and indirect relationship with applicants' recommending behavior, job performance and turnover intention three to four months post hire. Traditionality, as a moderator of perceptions‐outcomes relationships, is also tested.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data of 218 supervisor‐subordinate dyads were collected from Mainland Chinese organizations. Data were gathered in two waves, with demographic and traditionality measures taken at time 1, and supervisory ratings of performance, recommending behavior and intention to turnover taken at time 2.FindingsOne component of traditionality alone (Respect for Authority) positively predicted applicants' procedural fairness perceptions. These perceptions, in turn, predicted recommending behavior (+), job performance (+) and turnover intentions (−). There were also direct relationships between Respect for Authority and both job performance (+) and turnover intention (−). The data failed to support the moderating effect of Chinese traditionality on the relationships between procedural fairness perceptions and outcome variables.Research limitations/implicationsDespite the methodological strengths of this study, the study is cross‐sectional in nature which weakens causal inferences regarding the relationships in the theoretical model. Moreover, the paper does not investigate empirically the concrete mechanisms from Chinese traditionality to fairness perceptions and from fairness perceptions to outcome variables, since its foci are the predicting and moderating roles of Chinese traditionality.Originality/valueThe paper's findings underscore the importance of Respect for Authority as the key and only component of Chinese traditionality that predicts procedural justice perceptions and worker outcomes.

Does Fair Treatment in the Workplace Matter? An Assessment of Organizational Fairness and Employee Outcomes in Government

The purpose of the current study was to investigate how perceptions of organizational fairness may facilitate positive outcomes and prevent negative consequences in government organizations. In that effort, this study examined relationship between perceived organizational fairness and organizational identification, job involvement and turnover intention with data collected through an organizational survey from 764 professional employees working in 65 geographically distributed offices in an agency in state government. The findings indicated that perceptions of procedural and distributive fairness have positive effects on professional employees’ job involvement and negative influences on their turnover intention, though these effects are mediated by their organizational identification. Implications of these findings for public management theory and practice are discussed.

E-recruiting and fairness: the applicant’s point of view

More and more companies currently recruit online, partly because of cost savings and competitive pressure, and partly because it is the best way to reach their target group of applicants. In our study, applicants' perceptions of procedural fairness were examined in e-recruiting contexts. Using an adapted form of the Social Process Questionnaire on Selection, we found that 1,373 participants' expectations regarding fairness were mediocre and always lower than the perceived importance of five procedural fairness aspects. Based on an experimental manipulation, we showed that feedback was particularly important in online application procedures, whereas participation had smaller effects. Furthermore, participants tend to rate procedural fairness for offline application procedures as fairer than for online procedures although they reported generally positive experiences with online applications in the past. Based on our results, we discuss practical implications and limitations.

In the eyes of the beholder? The role of dispositional trust in judgments of procedural and interactional fairness

Previous research on the antecedents of people’s judgments of procedural and interactional fairness has focused primarily on situational factors. Across three studies we find that dispositional tendencies, in particular people’s general propensity to trust others, also influence fairness perceptions. People who were more trusting had more positive perceptions of procedural and interactional fairness, even when they were exposed to identical fairness information. We also found that dispositional trust in particular predicted fairness perceptions whereas other individual difference variables reflecting general positivity did not. Moreover, in all three studies, perceptions of fairness mediated the positive relationship between dispositional trust and work attitudes (e.g., organizational commitment), suggesting that one reason people who are more trusting exhibit more positive work attitudes is because they are more likely to believe they are treated fairly. Implications for the justice and trust literatures are discussed.