Organizational Justice is Vital to Employee Retention - Assignment Example

Running Head: Organizational Justice Organizational Justice is Vital to Employee Retention (school It is the goal of this paper to attempt to explain the perceptions of organizational justice and offer solutions to the management of organizations in order to better exhibit justice in their organization. Perceived justice of an organization is central to the retention of quality employees. If there is no established trust or justice, employees will engage in an "us against them" mentality that is detrimental to their satisfaction and ultimately production at work. Therefore, it is important to measure perceptions of justice. There are three types of organizational justice, procedural, distributive, and interactional. There are clearly defined ways to improve the perception of organizational justice by one's employees or members. Samples of some alternatives are; fairness of hiring practices, non-discriminatory policies, allowing for feedback from employees, management fairness training, and a clearly procedural rewards system. As the characteristics of a process (procedural justice) are more closely linked with the perception of justice of the organization and therefore the employee's trust, more research is needed into just procedures. Employees or members of any organization that feel it's policies and procedures are at minimum unbiased are more likely to feel their contributions make a difference to the organization. When employees feel they are valued they establish a relationship with their employer/organization which invites loyalty, dedication, and higher production. Therefore, it is important to measure perceptions of trust and justice to ensure that employees feel they are treated fairly and justly. It is important to evaluate the progress of the company/organization and constantly ensure that its employees are content. This allows for maximum retention, performance, and production. Organizational Justice is the term used to define people's perception of fairness in an organization. The majority of studies on justice were conducted in the 1960's, but the majority of studies on justice in organizations have been published since 1990 (Charash 278). As it is a relatively newer field, it is surprising the number of studies that have been conducted, Charash mentions 400 studies and 100 theoretical papers. It is therefore obvious that it is an important topic in Business Management. There are three main types of Organizational Justice; distributive, procedural, and interactional (Charash 278, Henle 248). Distributive justice emphasizes the perceived outcome of fairness, and is mainly related to the cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions to particular outcomes. When an outcome is perceived as unfair, it will affect the employee's emotions and ultimately their behavior in relation to the organization. Distributive justice fails the measure the interpretation of the methods of an organization, it only addresses the outcome. Procedural justice shifted the focus from emphasizing not only the outcome as with distributive justice, but rather the perceived fairness of the process by which the outcome was achieved. (Charash 280). It is simply defined as the fairness of the process by which outcomes are determined. Procedural justice is perceived to exist when procedures follow certain types of accepted principles. Leventhal's 1980 conceptualization addressed six rules that yield perceptions of a fairer procedure. They are; (a) the consistency rule; (b) the bias-suppression rule; (c) the accuracy rule; (d) the correctability rule; (e) the representativeness rule; and (f) the ethicality rule. It is worth noting that perception of unfairness in an organization's procedure will result in reactions directed toward the organization as opposed to distributive justice, where the reactions will be directed toward the decision maker. The third type of Organizational justice is interactional justice. Interactional justice pertains to the human side of organizational procedures (Charash 281). It is best explained as the way management is behaving toward the recipient of justice; it relates to the communication process between the source and the recipient of justice. Because interactional justice is determined by the interpersonal behavior of management's representatives, reactions are generally directed toward those individuals as opposed to the organization. It is difficult to determine a measurement of the justice in an organization as the interpretations of justice are subject to an individual's opinion. However, there are some determining factors. Perceptions of justice are influenced by many different variables including (a) outcomes one receives, (b) organizational practices, and (c) characteristics of the perceiver (Charash 282). An organization can be perceived to be unfair if an individual receives an outcome that they perceive to be unfair (ie. Don't receive a promotion they feel they deserve). A set guideline or practice of an organization can be perceived as unfair, such as no health care until a year's employment. The perception of fairness is most drastically colored by the individual who is examining the judgment; if they expect health care from day one, it will be perceived to be unfair if they don't receive it for a year, even if the same is true for everyone in the organization. Demographics also play a role in an individual's perception of fairness. A middle aged black man will have a different perspective than a young white woman. Organizational justice is a measurement of the perception of justice, so it will be relative to the person. The importance of organizational justice is to allow employers, or the managers of an organization to retain employees or members. Happiness with one's employment is the leading determinant of content employees. Content employees lead to better production and the maximum output of an organization. Retention prevents loss of time and resources in training new staff. Workplace deviance is also a factor to consider as unhappy employees often try to sabotage the organization or the supervisor responsible for the perceived injustice. Workplace deviance can be predicted by a combination of perception of organizational justice as well as personality (Henle 248). Deviant behaviors include low production, theft, sabotage, and defiant behaviors such as showing up late for work. While it is agreed that certain organizational characteristics affect deviant behavior (Henle 248) and that certain personalities are more prone to deviant behavior (Henle 248) there is not sufficient knowledge in terms of the interaction between the two. There is adequate information to allow for predispositioned personalities to be sorted out in the hiring process, thus reducing some of the detrimental deviant behaviors. Using Leventhal's six guidelines for organizational justice, procedures could be enacted that would further absolve some of the deviant behavior. If employees or members of an organization feel that they are treated fairly, they are more apt to treat the organization fairly as well. There are clearly defined ways to improve the perception of organizational justice by one's employees or members. Samples of some alternatives are; fairness of hiring practices, non-discriminatory policies, allowing for feedback from employees, management fairness training, and a clearly procedural rewards system. Organizational justice begins to be perceived from the initial contact with the company during the hiring process. There should be a standard profile for the position to be filled and all candidates should be required to complete an assessment to see if they are a match for the position (Morin). If there is no benchmark, then the hiring official is allowed too much opinion based on little to no fact. Also, if there is a standard process for hiring and a profile for the position, the applicants are more likely to think that it is procedurally a fair process and begin the life of their employment at the company thinking they have been treated fairly. This also allows the company to know that they best qualified candidate is hired based on more than their personality and the likability of the applicant. Also to consider is the possibility that the assessment should be free of any biases in terms of race or gender. While these are not qualifying stipulations, often they are determining factors when allowed to be subjective to an individual's opinion. Perceptions of justice are often skewed along these lines because of traditionally held beliefs. Interestingly, Affirmative Action was meant to ensure fairness in hiring process. However, the perceptions of hiring practice when using Affirmative Action as a reason for choice of candidate is that it is unfair. Giving no explanation as to reasons for hiring a candidate has been found to be perceived as fairer than using Affirmative Action as a basis for hiring (McMillian-Capehart 44). The perception is that hiring based on color/gender is as unfair as not hiring based on the same criteria. Again, having a blind assessment would alleviate this problem. In an effort to retain the maximum employees and derail workplace deviance, care should be taken to ensure organizational procedures are fair and unbiased. After a proper candidate has been selected judgments should be based on work performance. Promotions and pay raise decisions should be made based on a clearly defined system with emphasis on employee performance, as opposed to likability. Managers should be given training as to how to work with different personalities, with the least amount of personal subjection possible. There should also be a method for employees to contribute to the organization in terms of new ideas, and methods. If an employee believes they are valued and an asset to the company, they will be happier and more likely to remain at the organization. The human resources department should keep in contact with the employees based on regular evaluations of both the employee and the organization's staff and procedures. Employees should be allowed the opportunity to evaluate their immediate supervisor as well as offer anonymous suggestions for improving both their immediate areas and the organization as a whole. This will allow the employees to feel they are contributing and valued. It is vitally important to perceived organizational justice that the rewards system is based on performance as opposed to seniority. Seniority is important, and long-time employees should be acknowledged and rewarded, but promotions should not be based on length of employment. This is detrimental to the organization. Promotional procedures that are based on performance ensure that the employees who are working hardest are the ones rewarded as opposed to the employees who are doing just enough to retain their job. This puts the best employees in supervisory positions and forces the other employees to reevaluate and improve their performance in order to obtain desired rewards. Trust in an organization is obtained through belief that the organization is just and judges based on fact instead of perception. It has been found that procedural justice is the strongest predictor of organizational and managerial trust (Hubbell 51). When an employee believes that decisions are made based on an unbiased set of procedures, they are more likely to accept the decisions as fair. Further, if the employee is treated with respect, dignity, and humanity, the employee will not judge the manager as unfair as it is the procedure that is governing the process (Hubbell 51). Therefore, the interactional justice is perceived to be fair as the manager acted properly toward their subordinate. These are the two strongest indicators of an employee's organizational trust, which leads to loyalty and happy employees. Distributive justice only establishes trust in the manager as a person, which is important but does not create trust in the organization or procedures (Hubbell 51). As the characteristics of a process (procedural justice) are more closely linked with the perception of justice of the organization and therefore the employee's trust, more research is needed into just procedures. Assessments given at the time of hiring are necessary and should be mandatory as well as a profile of the position that is to be filled. Further research is needed in terms of what should be included on the assessment as there are limited published studies regarding assessments in terms of organizational justice. Promotional and rewards procedures need clear and definitive guidelines in order to be perceived as fair. The upper management and human resources of any organization should collaborate to set standards with input from lower managers and employees. These policies should then be followed and rarely deviated from. A solid and definitive means of measuring perceived justice of an organization should be established to assist organizations with bettering perceptions. There is not an adequate measurement standard to determine organizational justice. In order to obtain an adequate measurement standard, data collection and research would have to be conducted. A proposed hypothesis is: The perception of just procedures in an organization positively affects employee/member's happiness. Conversely, the perception of unjust procedures in an organization negatively affects employee/member's happiness would also be true. These two hypotheses could be tested by way of questionnaires submitted to various groups. Suggested would be non-employing organizations as well as small and large companies. This wider sample of employees/members would allow researchers to adequately examine more facets of organizational justice. It would also become necessary to obtain some sort of framework in regards to the organization's policies and procedures regarding it's human resources. This would allow researchers to examine the interrelationship between policies and perception of justice. The following areas should be addressed in the questionnaires. 1) fairness of hiring process 2) fairness of promotions/rewards 3) fairness of direct supervisors 4) fairness of organization as a whole 4) likelihood of retention 5) likelihood of deviant behavior. It should also be established how long the employee has been with the company and their performance records if possible. This can be added into the questionnaire if necessary. The data collected can then be examined and a possible measurement reached in terms of how organizational justice relates to employee's happiness. If it is found to greatly affect employee's happiness (as it is proposed) then proper steps can be proposed to initiate more just procedures within companies wishing to retain a larger percentage of their employees. Policies such as preliminary assessments, set guidelines for rewards systems, and allowing for feedback from employees will further the development of justice based policies. Trust and perceived justice of an organization are central to the retention of quality employees. If there is no established trust or justice, employees will engage in an "us against them" mentality that is detrimental to their satisfaction and ultimately production at work (Hubbell 51). They may also engage in deviant behaviors that are harmful to the company or organization. Employees or members of any organization that feel it's policies and procedures are at minimum unbiased are more likely to feel their contributions make a difference to the organization. When employees feel they are valued they establish a relationship with their employer/organization which invites loyalty, dedication, and higher production. Employees will also become creative problem solvers and assist with managing both themselves and their fellow employees. Therefore, it is important to measure perceptions of trust and justice to ensure that employees feel they are treated fairly and justly. By implementing policies such as preliminary assessments, performance based rewards, and making employees feel valued, a company should be able to make positive changes in terms of employee happiness. It is important to evaluate the progress of the company/organization and constantly ensure that its employees are content. This allows for maximum retention, performance, and production. Works Cited: Bibby, Courtney L. "Should I stay or should I leave Perceptions of age discrimination, organizational justice, and employee attitudes on intentions to leave" Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship 2008 pg 63-86 Cohen-Charash, Yochi; Spector, Paul "The Role of Justice in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis" Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes November 2001 pp. 278-321 Foley, Sharon; Hang-yue, Ngo; Wong, Angela "Perceptions of discrimination and justice are there gender differences in outcomes" Group and Organizational Management 2005; pg 421-450 Henle, Christine A. "Predicting workplace deviance from the interaction between organizational justice and personality" Journal of Managerial Issues 2005 pg 247-263 Hubbell, Anne P.; Chory-Assad, Rebecca M. "Motivating factors: perceptions of justice and their relationship with managerial and organizational trust" Communication Studies 2005, pg 47-70 McMillan-Capeheard; Richard, Orlando "Organizational Justice and Perceived Fairness of Hiring Decisions Related to Affirmative Action Reactions" Equal Opportunities International; 2005, pg. 44-57 Morin, Richard; "Hiring shouldn't be a subjective process" Canadian HR Reporter; 2007 pg. 31 Read More