Too Busy to Be Fair? The Effect of Workload and Rewards on Managers’ Justice Rule Adherence
研究管理者为何在明知公平重要时仍不公平对待员工，发现高工作负荷和缺乏公正奖励会促使管理者优先完成技术任务而牺牲公正行为，通过三项研究验证。
Why do managers act unfairly even when they recognize the significant organizational benefits of treating employees fairly? Prior research has explained this puzzling phenomenon predominantly through an “actor-centric” perspective, proposing that managers’ just behavior is an outcome of their own individual differences. This paper shifts the locus of theorizing away from managers to their organizational context by arguing that managers’ adherence to principles of justice is often influenced by two key contextual features—workload and rewards. Drawing on the multiple-task pursuit framework, we propose that under high workloads, just treatment of employees often competes with other managerial tasks. We further argue that organizations implicitly and explicitly signal to managers that acting justly is not as important as their other technical tasks. Hence, managers who face high workloads (i.e., high amounts of work and time pressures) tend to prioritize other technical responsibilities at the expense of acting justly, unless explicitly rewarded otherwise. We find support for our theorizing across three studies (an experience sampling study, a field study, and an experiment). We discuss the implications of our theory and findings for future research on managerial fairness and offer novel practical implications for organizations attempting to ensure employee fair treatment.