What's Fair for Whom at Work? Studying the choice of fairness norms in different work relationships

Principal investigator: Dr Marion Fortin

The central research question of this project is: Which norms do people choose to judge the different aspects of fairness at work, and how is this influenced by the different types of work relationships people find themselves in?

Three studies will be conducted:

• Study 1 explores what norms are chosen, in different work relationships, to make judgments of different aspects of justice. This will be done by interviewing organizational practitioners about their experiences at work.
• Study 2 builds on the insights derived from Study 1 to develop a questionnaire that measures individual norm preferences. This provides a tool to investigate how much of the variance in justice judgments is due to such individual differences.
• Study 3 tests the hypotheses derived from Study 1 in a controlled experiment. Respondents will give their reaction to situations involving different types of justice rules in different types of work relationships.

The results will be of interest to academics who are interested in the process of making justice judgments, and to organisational practitioners who need to understand how fairness judgments are made in order to be able to create fairness perceptions among their employees.

Updates will soon be posted on the ESRC Society Today grant website:
www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/esrcinfocentre/