Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life - Essay Example

Name: Professor: Institution: Course: Date: Many at times we find ourselves taking with colleagues or family about how they were treated unfairly at their work place by their boss or by their colleague. The concept of fairness is an important one as everybody at one point in life wants to be treated fairly. Organizational justice can be described as how employees perceive fairness and how they react to those perceptions in the context of the organization. There are three types of organizational justice namely: distributive justice, interactional justice and procedural justice (Colquitt, 2001). This essay will be discussing about organizational justice, types of organizational just and then a discussion of a personal work experience that depicts social justice and using the literature review, recommendations will be given. Distributive justice is based on Adam’s equity theory and can be defined as perceived fairness by employees as regards to the input-output ratio as compared with the input-output ratio of others. According to the equity theory, an employee’s motivation is based on what they consider as being fair when they compare themselves with others. He described inputs as what employees give towards their job and described outputs as what employees expect in return for their work input. Inputs basically refer to an employee’s commitment, effort, skills, tolerances, determination, enthusiasm, hard work, personal sacrifice and determination. Output on the other hand refers to all types of rewards including pay, benefits, bonus, pensions, perks, recognition, and responsibility, sense of achievement, promotion, reputation, training and development. Adam described the people with whom people compare themselves with as referent. Adam theory of Equity goes beyond merely assessing inputs versus the output and considers the perspective that employees have when they compared themselves in regards to this two with their referent. Equity theory therefore helps us understand why pay alone is not the only determinant of motivation to employees (Jae-Young, Junyean, Dongchul & Surinder , 2004). In regards to how this theory applies in the workplace, employees seek to strike a balance between what they are putting into the job and what they are getting from the job. In measuring the fairness balance, employees compare the balance of work input and the rewards they are getting for the same and compare the same with the balance enjoyed by their referent others. Therefore it means that with distributive justice, employees do not only compare the input output ratio alone but they compare this ratio with the ratio of others who they consider as their referents. They form perceptions on what a fair ratio of inputs and outputs is when they compare their situations with those of other people that they consider as referent points. This explains why employees are affected strongly by the situation of friends, partners and colleagues in determining their own sense of equity or fairness. When employees perceive that their job inputs are fairly or equitably rewarded with the outputs, then generally, they are happier in the workplace and are motivated to continue putting more effort. On the other hand, when employees perceive that the input-output ratio is less beneficial or less attractive that the ratio of those they consider as their referent points, then the workers become demotivated in relation to the job and in relation to the employer (Fadil, Williams, Limpaphayom, & Smatt, 2005). When it comes to procedural justice, the shift now moves from effort and rewards to the perceived fairness in the process through which this allocations are made. Procedural justice exists where the procedures conform to five set rules. The first rule is consistency meaning that the procedures that are used to allocate resources must be consistent over time and from one person to another. Fair procedures must guarantee that similar cases are treated the same and should there be distinctions, there must be genuine and understandable reasons why the cases were treated differently. The second rule is the impartiality principle meaning that the decision maker should not allow his or her personal feelings to affect his decision. The impartial decision makers must arrive at a fair conclusion having evaluated all he possible alternatives. The third rule is accuracy meaning that the decision makers must ensure that the information being used to make the decision is accurate to ensure fairness (Mikula, Petal, & Tanzer, 2000). The fourth rule is the ethicality rule which states that the allocation process and the decision make must be moral and ethical and in accordance to the values of the perceiver. The last rule is the rule of representativeness meaning that all the needs, outlooks and values of all involved parties must be considered. Fair procedures in the workplace inspire feelings of loyalty to the involved parties, ensure voluntary compliance of company policies as well as legitimize the authority of the leaders. Procedural justice problems arise when leaders are making decision in the organization that may relate to groups, individuals or the organization at large. Organization procedures relate to the way organizations allocate resources in the organization which is why procedural justice is related to behavioural, affective, as well cognitive reactions towards the organization. If the procedures in the organization lead to outcomes that the parties involved perceive to be unfair, then the reactions of such parties are likely to be directed to the organization as a whole as opposed to the specific outcome. Therefore procedural justice is more organizational focused as opposed to outcome focused which is the case in distributive justice (Mikula, Petal, & Tanzer, 2000). Interactional justice is defined as the way in which information is communicated in the organization. It also relates to the behavior of leaders when they are carrying out decision. This means how they treat those who are subjected to their authority, actions and decisions. It does not matter how bad the decision is, but how it is communicated to the parties involved will either be perceived to be fair or unfair. Research indicates that the impacts of interactional justice are not in any way related to how individuals evaluate fairness based on the rewards they get for effort made (procedural justice) or the procedure used to allocate outcomes (procedural justice) (Ekman, 2003).. There are several factors that determine the perceptions of interactional justice. The first one is social sensitivity and under this factor, the concern is whether or not the manager treated the employees with dignity and with respect. The second factor is consideration which seeks determines whether or not the manager listened to the concerns of the parties involved. Empathy is the other factor where the question is whether or not the manager identified with personal feelings of the parties involved. It is important to note that interactional justice is very important in determining the employee’s retention, motivation and the commitment of the organization to its employees (Bies, 2005). In the organization where I work, I have heard several experiences that relate to each and every type of organizational justice. I remember one time when one of my colleagues named Peter who is an accountant picked a fight with the HR manager over his pay as compared to another accountant of his job group. He felt since they worked the same number of hours and sometimes he even worked overtime just to make sure that he did his job well, they should be paid the same amount of money. According to Peter, The other accountant that he was comparing himself to had a graduate Degree something that peter also had, he had two years work experience while Peter had Five years experience. The other accountant that Peter was comparing himself with was being paid 17,000 dollars more than him and also enjoy other benefits including house benefit, a company car and medical policy as part of his remuneration benefit all of which Peter did not enjoy. So when he went to the HR, he was positive that he was not being treated fairly as compared to the other accountant. This is a case of distributive justice where Peter perceives that he is not being treated fairly when he compares his Input-output ratio with that of his ‘referent’ other who is the other accountant. He feels that he is putting in so much input in terms of hard work, personal sacrifice, commitment and effort and yet getting very little output in terms of rewards when compared with his referent other, there is therefore no fair balance between his input-output ration when compared with the input-output ration of his referent other. The HR dismissed Peter’s claims without bothering to explain probably why they have different salaries and yet they perform the same set of tasks. The effects of distributive justice are adverse if not well dealt with. After this experience, Peter sought another job with a competing company where he went and gave sensitive financial information to the company’s competitors who used the information to the disadvantage of the organization. In another experience, it was in the disciplining procedure of the company. The company policy stated that if an employee is accused and found guilty of sexual harassment, they will be dismissed from the organization. However, there was this time when one of the senior manager was accused by one of the female employee of sexual harassment. According to the company’s policy, the first thing that should be done is to form a probing team who will investigate this claim and give both the accused party and the aggrieved party a fair hearing with the opportunity to bring in witnesses. However, in this particular case, the senior manager quickly dismissed the female employee without following the dismissal of employee procedure on the basis of theft of company property. The female employee later on decided to sue the company on the basis of unfair dismissal and sexual harassment. On realizing this, the senior management decided to call the employee and tried to buy her off for a large sum of money and a good recommendation from the company. The female employee however did not accept this offer and proceeded with the law suit. The company had to pay a huge sum of money for damages and in the process, the company’s image and reputation was damaged. There are several issues here on procedural justice. The company policy does not exempt any person from going through those procedures and it was therefore not fair that they put the interest of the senior manager who had been accused of sexual harassment over and above those of the aggrieved party. On dismissal procedure, it was also not followed when dismissing the female employees. When procedures are put in place, they should be followed by everybody to avoid feeling s of unfairness. The procedural injustice cost the company a lot in terms of resources including time, money and even human resources who tendered their resignations after this incidence. There are also instances where our organization has displayed lack of interactional justice. When communicating to the employees like in the case of dismissal of the female employee, it would be preferable to first talk to the employee on the reasons why you are dismissing them instead of simply giving a dismissal letter. Although the act of dismissal is not a pleasant one, if it is done in a nice way, the employees will perceive the organization to be fair. Managers in our organization need to improve on their interpersonal skills which are directly linked to interactional justice and which will improve the way this manager communicate with the employees in a way that is perceived to be fair. It is recommended that in order to improve organizational justice, managers should have proper communication skills to ensure interactional justice and ensure that fairness and equity is used in sticking a balance between inputs and outputs. It is also important that the set procedures are followed by all employees in the organization indiscriminately. References Jae-Young K, Junyean M, Dongchul H & Surinder T, (2004) "Perceptions of justice and employee willingness to engage in customer-oriented behavior", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 18 Iss: 4, pp.267 – 275 Fadil, P.A., Williams, R.J., Limpaphayom, W., & Smatt, C. (2005) Equity or equality? A conceptual examination of the influence of individualism/collectivism on the cross-cultural application of equity theory. Cross Cultural Management, 12 (4), 17-36. Bies, R. J. (2005). Are procedural justice and interactional justice conceptually distinct? In J. Greenberg & J. Colquitt (Eds.), Handbook of organizational justice (pp. 85-112). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mikula, G., Petal, B., & Tanzer, N. (2000). What people regard as unjust: Types and structures of everyday experiences of injustice. European Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 133-149. Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 386–400. Ekman, P. (2003). Emotions revealed: recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. New York. Henry Holt & Company. Read More