Observers’ fairness perceptions change with contrasting information for employee reprimands
1 Christopher Newport University, Virginia, United States of America.
2 Ashland University, Ohio, United States of America.
3 Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, United States of America.
Research Article
World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2023, 17(02), 430–443
Publication history:
Received on 01 January 2023; revised on 09 February 2023; accepted on 11 February 2023
Abstract:
In the current experiment, participants portrayed the role of third-party employees who witnessed a supervisor reprimanding a subordinate for ordering a part from the wrong company. Information was provided to participants conveying whether or not the reprimanded employee was responsible for the ordering error and then participants made ratings related to fairness. Subsequently, employee responsibility either changed or did not change (Time 2) and participants again provided the same ratings. Compared to the no-change condition, observers’ final (Time 2) perceptions of fairness were very extreme for the responsible and the not responsible conditions when participants received contrasting information about employee responsibility. These data suggest that employee reprimands affect the perceptions of their co-workers, such that contrasting information generates dissonance arousal in observers, which can be damaging to work environments. Therefore, supervisors need to establish the facts before they openly reprimand employees or they should take strong steps to avoid such displays.
Keywords:
Procedural fairness; Supervisor reprimand; Contrasting information; Cognitive dissonance
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Copyright © 2023 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0