Getting to “Fair”: Justice Interactions as Identity Negotiation

Abstract

The vast majority of justice studies reflect the “event paradigm,” focusing on how subordinates form fairness perceptions in discrete situations and how managers can alter perceptions of isolated events. However, subordinates also form global appraisals of their managers across specific events and situations. To augment the event paradigm, research falling within the “social entity paradigm” focuses on these general justice appraisals. To date, very little theory has been developed on managerial fairness from a social entity perspective. Little is known regarding how entity perceptions are formed (i.e., how managers come to be seen as “fair managers”). To address this issue, we integrate insights from research on identity negotiation into the organizational justice literature and propose that entity perceptions evolve over time across three types of events. This justice negotiation perspective is unique in that we emphasize the role of both managers and subordinates as actors in the process, rather than employees as passive observers of managers’ actions. We also move beyond subordinate perceptions to consider the role of manager self-perceptions of fairness.