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Mandated Justice:
The Potential Promise and Possible Pitfalls of Mandating Procedural Justice in The
Workplace
Yuval Feldman
Bar-Ilan University
and
Tom R. Tyler
New-York University
This paper benefitted from comments made at the Annual meeting of the Law and
Society Association and of the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies. In particular, we
would like to thank Janice Nadler and Linda Demaine for valuable comments on those
presentations. We also thank Amir Falk and Miri Katz for excellent research
assistantship. Financial Support for this research was received from the EU Marie Currie
Reintegration Grant. We would also like to thank several anonymous reviewers for their
helpful comments.
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Abstract
The literature on the new governance asks whether and how legal authorities
ought to intervene in work organizations to most effectively regulate employee’s
behavior. In this paper, the authors examine this question empirically by exploring how
the influence of the procedural justice of employee pay and promotion procedures upon
employee adherence to workplace rules differs depending upon whether or not those fair
procedures are enacted within companies voluntarily or because they are mandated by
law. This question is addressed using both a survey of employees and employee
reactions to an experimental vignette.
The results suggest that the influence of evaluations of the procedural justice of
performance appraisal hearings on judgments of overall workplace fairness, perceptions
of management legitimacy, and employee rule following behavior is greater when
employees believe their workplace procedures are required by law. Two features of
procedures, their prevalence and whether they were expected led employees to believe
they were required and consequently enhanced their influence. Finally, reactions to the
experimental vignette suggest that when workers believe that procedural changes enhance
procedural justice they are more influential when they are believed to be mandated
actions on the part of management.
Overall the findings suggest that government interventions into business
organizations in the form of legal requirements to make formal procedures for
performance appraisal among employees are likely to enhance overall levels of rule
following among employees.
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Introduction
In recent decades law and society scholars have identified and investigated forms
of “new governance” in the regulation of business organizations (Auld, Bernstein, &
Cashore, 2008; Braithwaite, 2008; Gunningham, 2007; Lehmkuhl, 2008; Parker, 2002;
Shamir, 2008). These new forms of legal regulation focus less upon formal legal
regulation and more upon the voluntary efforts of both civic groups and market driven
business organizations to create and maintain internal procedures for enforcing, among
other things, standards of ethics and social responsibility. These new models highlight
the importance of reconsidering the degree to which the state should intervene directly
within work organizations by mandating appropriate procedures. This study addresses
this question empirically by exploring how employee’s judgments concerning whether
procedural protections are mandated by law shapes influence of those procedures upon
employee’s attitudes and behaviors.
Efforts to test the appropriate role of the state in facilitating new governance
approaches are especially timely since recent corporate scandals and regulatory failures
in the business community have drawn renewed scholarly attention to a long-term
question within legal studies. That question is how to most effectively manage the
behavior of people within market driven work organizations. In particular, both
management researchers and legal scholars are revisiting the issue of how government
can best act to control the actions of employees within work organizations so as to bring
employee behavior into adherence with organizational rules and principles of ethical
conduct. This approach is not a complete solution to problems of regulating behavior in
work settings, since corporate rules can facilitate unethical conduct, but any general
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approach to minimizing malfeasance must include a strategy for bringing employee
behavior into line with the type of formal rules and regulations that can be mandated by
the law.
One promising argument concerning an effective strategy for regulation develops
from the now extensive literature on procedural justice in organizations (Lind & Tyler,
1988; Tyler, 2006; Tyler & Blader, 2000). That literature demonstrates that when
employees experience procedural justice within their work organizations they view rules
and authorities as more legitimate and more frequently obey them. This suggests that one
approach that could be taken to increase employee rule adherence is to increase the
procedural justice of work organizations and thereby heighten the motivation of workers
to follow workplace rules and obey workplace authorities. In particular, employees who
are provided with opportunities for participation and voice in decisions that influence
their workplaces are found to be more rule adherent (Freeman & Rojers, 1999; Befort,
2004).
These procedural justice findings suggest a clear and compelling strategy for legal
authorities to follow in increasing rule following among employees in work
organizations. That strategy is for the law to mandate that businesses utilize just
procedures in different areas of their decision making. Such an approach is consistent
with current legal approaches. The Sarbanes-Oxley law, like many legislative actions
reflecting the “new governance” model, mandates that businesses create an ethical culture
and provides sanctions for companies that fail to do so. However, a mandated procedural
justice approach could utilize the substantial body of existing empirical research on
procedural justice to design the specifics of such a model, rather than prescribing a vague
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“ethical culture”. According to such approach, mandatory participation in pay and
promotion procedures may be required.
Is such a strategy desirable? As already noted, a number of studies in work and
other organizational environments suggests that when people feel that they are allowed to
participate in decision making procedures by presenting evidence and expressing their
views, they view those procedures as more just. Hence, the case for mandating fair
procedures is clear (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler, 2006; Tyler & Blader, 2000). However,
an examination of the psychological models underlying procedural justice effects
suggests a more complex picture.
One perspective on mandating rights is that providing people with rights affirms
their status within society and, as a consequence, encourages legitimacy and rule
following (Tyler & Blader, 2000). It is widely demonstrated that treatment with respect
by authorities, for example through their willingness to listen to and consider one’s
arguments, as favorable motivational consequences. Further, the socio-legal literature
argues that state recognition of a certain social practice is an index of the social prestige
and importance of that practice. (e.g. Kagan, Gunningham & Thornton, 2003). Similarly,
McAdams (1997) expressive law theory suggests that making a social norm into a law
communicates to people that the practice is widely accepted within society.
The argument that mandating a right might increase its effectiveness can also be
linked to feelings of psychological ownership. In one of the most influential papers in
behavioral economics, Kahneman, Knetch and Thaler (1991) have suggested that
prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1984) leads to an endowment effect (Kahneman,
Knetch & Thaler, 1990; Jolls, 2007) in which giving up things one owns is especially
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distressing. This suggests that rights that one legally owns should be especially
psychologically valuable. People should not only be less willing to give up a right once
they feel it is theirs, they should also be more likely to appreciate it (Rachlinski &
Jourden, 1998; Sunstein & Thaler, 2003). In other words, enacting a law is likely to
transform a social practice into a more psychologically important and beneficial one for
those who are entitled to receive it. This perspective leads to the hypothesis that if
employees believe that the state has mandated entitlements, rights and procedures for
employees that work organizations are required to provide, this increases the value that
employees will attribute to these rights and procedures. Consequently, voice procedures,
which are associated with a legal requirement, will have a greater influence on
employee’s allegiance to law, their support for rules and their willingness to obey them.
Alternatively, however, mandating just procedures can be argued to undermine
their effectiveness. One of the important functions of enacting fair procedures is to
demonstrate interest in and concern for those employees who are subject to the
procedures, i.e. to show that managers are benevolent and caring and are motivated to do
what is good for their employees. For example, when people are given an opportunity to
voice their arguments, the motivational value of that voice develops out of the belief that
the decision maker is sincerely motivated to consider the evidence presented and take it
into account when making a decision (Tyler, 1987). If people do not believe that their
evidence is considered in a sincere manner, voice has no favorable influence. Hence,
when people believe that management is providing opportunities for them to participate,
mainly or even partly, because they are required to do so, the value of those opportunities
might diminish. People recognize that actions taken under coercion do not reflect the
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actor’s values and intentions, and they do not infer benevolent or favorable character
from them. This proposition gains support from research conducted by Greenberg (2003)
in the context of perceived fairness of payment schemes. Testing predictions derived
from the Jones and Davis (1965) theory of correspondent inference, Greenberg
demonstrated that employees who viewed their manager’s payment decisions as deriving
from company policy were less likely to evaluate their managers as fair.
This study utilizes a survey of employees working in various companies within
Israel to test the competing predictions concerning the consequence of perceiving that the
justice occurring within a work setting is mandated by law. In an ideal research design
employees would be randomly assigned to mandated vs. voluntarily enacted procedural
justice conditions1 or we would look at changes over time that resulted from a change in
the law. However, as it often true in this study setting one set of legal standards governed
all of the workplaces studied. Fortunately, however, the hypotheses outlined are
concerned with the influence of employee’s perceptions that is whether employees
believed that the procedures used in their workplace were mandated by the state.2 In this
sample there was substantial variation in the degree to which employees felt that the
procedures being used were required or freely chosen by their management, so it was
possible to examine the consequences of these differing views of the source of these
procedures.
1
See page 13 for further discussion of the part of the study that did include a manipulation and random
assignment which was added to deal with the limitations discussed here. See also discussion of our usage
of path analysis at page 16, which was used to deal with the potential problem of reverse causality.
2
According to Israeli law the law does not require any of these elements of pay talks, so
those employees who indicate that pay talks are legally required have a subjective
perception that is not correct.
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Our concern is with the influence of the perception that performance appraisal
hearings were or were not mandated by law on the impact of these procedures on
employee’s motivation and behavior. In particular, we examined whether perceiving that
the fair procedures being used were required by law, rather than freely chosen by
management, diminished, enhanced of had no influence upon the impact of those
procedures upon employee’s judgments of workplace fairness; their assessments of the
legitimacy of company rules; and their overall compliance with those rules.
Method
This study focuses upon the determination of pay and promotion in work
organizations. The survey has two parts. In the first part employees complete a
questionnaire about their current workplace. In the second part they read and respond to
questions about an experimental vignette that varies whether a new voice procedure is
being introduced in a way that is voluntary or mandated.
Sample
The sample used for this study is a representative sample of 599 Israeli employees
drawn from an ongoing panel of respondents. The name of the firm is Midgam, which is
a highly respected survey firm in Israel. The sample is representative of the Jewish
population of Israel. The demographics are that 51% of the respondents were male; their
median age was 35-44; and 85% of them were born in Israel. On average, respondents
had worked 6.3 years for their current employer, and they worked 41.7 hours per week.
The web-based questionnaire
The right to have a voice with regard to one's salary and benefits, an element of
procedural justice, is an ideal case study for testing the likely effect of mandatory voice
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procedures through a questionnaire, as the law in Israel currently doesn’t require it, but
many employees have it on a regular basis due to social practices, collective agreements
or internal requirements of the organization. Most importantly, among those employees
who have regular pay talks, a substantial minority believe that those pay talks are
mandated by the law. Hence, the focus of this study is upon the effect of the belief that
the pay talks in one’s work organization are voluntary or are required by law.
Questionnaire
The focus of the questionnaire was on the procedures used for determining
compensation in respondents' workplaces. These “pay talk” procedures varied in the
manner in which they allowed employees to be involved in decisions about pay and
promotion. This study looked at the impact of such procedures upon three dependent
variables: Judgments about the overall procedural fairness of the workplace; evaluations
of the legitimacy of management; and employee adherence to workplace rules.
The legal requirement of voice. A four item scale was used to assess employee
perception about whether their company is “required by law or by government
regulations” to: give you an opportunity to provide information about your job
performance (41% yes)”; “allow you to review the information used to make pay
decisions for accuracy and completeness (42% yes)”; “have a meeting to discuss issues
related to job performance before decisions are made (42% yes)”; and “explain to you
how decisions concerning your pay were made (47% yes)”. These four items were
combined into a single scale reflecting perceived legal requirements. Coefficient alpha
was 0.84.
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Degree of voice experienced in decision making. A five item scale assessed
employee judgments about their actual degree of voice in the procedures used in their
company. The items concerned “how decisions concerning your pay and benefits are
made in your current work organization”. The items were: “When your salary is being
set, how much opportunity are you given to provide information about the method and
quality of your work before the decision is made?”; “When your salary is being set, how
much opportunity are you given to review the information used to make pay decision for
accuracy and completeness?”; “After decisions are made, how much explanation are you
given to help you understand how decisions concerning your pay were made?”; “How
frequently is there a meeting in which you can discuss issues that are related to your job
performance before decision are made”; and “How much opportunity are you entitled to
have to voice your evaluations of your performance and deserved pay and benefits before
decisions are made?”. Coefficient alpha was 0.88.
General workplace evaluations.
Outcome favorability. Five items: “How favorable is your pay”; “How favorable
are the benefits you receive”; “Compared to what you expect from past jobs, how
favorable is your compensation for the work you do?”; “Compared to what your
coworkers receive, how favorable is your compensation for the work you do?”; and
“How favorable is the compensation you receive based on the policies of your work
organization?”. Coefficient alpha was 0.93.
Procedural justice. Eight items measure procedural justice. Coefficient alpha was
0.92.
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Five assess quality of general workplace decision making: “How fair are the
procedures used to make compensation decisions (19-1)”; “How fair are the procedures
used to determine your pay?”; do the procedures “allow you an opportunity to express
your views”; “ensure that decisions are made in the same way for all employees”; and
“try to ensure that decisions are made based upon accurate information”.
Three items measure quality of treatment: “How fair is the treatment that
employees receive while decisions are being made”; “How fair is the treatment that you
receive when decisions are being made?”; do the procedures “reflect a desire by the
company to do what is best for employees like yourself”.
Distributive justice. Six items measure the fairness of the outcomes of the pay
talks. Those items were: “How fair is the amount of pay that you received”; “How fair is
the number of opportunities you are given to do the work you want to do?”; “My
employer wants me to receive the pay and benefits that I deserve”; “My employer places
emphasis on rewarding me fairly”; “I am fairly pair for the work I do”; “My pay is linked
to how well I do my job”. These items were combined to form an overall distributive
fairness scale (alpha = 0.93).
Values and behavior.
Legitimacy of workplace rules. Five items: “I feel I should accept the decisions
made by my supervisors, even when I think they are wrong”; “I think it hurts my work
group when I disagree with my supervisors”; “I feel that it is wrong to ignore my
supervisor’s instructions even when I can get away with it”; “I feel that I should follow
my companies policies even when I think they are wrong”; and “I think it hurts my
company when I break company rules”. Coefficient alpha was 0.83.
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Compliance with workplace rules. Four items: How often do you: “comply with
organizational instructions and regulations”; “Use company rules to guide what you do
on the job”; “Come to work on time”; and “Follow organizational instructions about how
you should spend your time”. Coefficient alpha was 0.92.
Pay talk features
Two procedural features were measured: the prevalence of pay talk procedures in
the employee’s work place and the whether those pay talk procedures are an expectation
on the part of employees.
Prevalence. Two items were used to measure prevalence: “How frequently do
your coworkers have pay talks in your current workplace”; “How many of the employees
in your current workplace have pay talks?”. (alpha = 0.71).
Expectancy. Two items were used to measure employee expectations: “Is it
expected in your company that employees will receive an opportunity to voice their view
concerning their performance and deserved pay and benefits before decisions are made?”
and “Is there a formal periodic procedure in your company in which you get to voice your
views concerning your performance and deserved pay and benefits?” (alpha = 0.72).
Demographics.
Respondents were asked about their age, gender, economic status, income,
education, and nationality. They were also asked how many years they had worked in the
company, and how many hours a week they worked.
The experimental vignette
Two issues are not ideally addressed using a survey based questionnaire. The first
is showing that variations in the mandated status of voice are the cause of changes in
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employee attitudes and behaviors. Second, presenting all respondents with a common
definition of what a pay talk is. To address these concerns we used a vignette within the
survey. That vignette presented a new, high voice procedure that respondents were told
they should think of as being implemented in their workplace. One half of the sample
was told that this new implementation was legally mandated, the other half that it was a
new voluntary management initiative.
The presentation of the vignettes exposed all participants to the same voice
procedure, controlling for its source (whether it is mandated or manipulated).
Employees were randomly assigned to receive one of two scenarios. In each case the
employer implemented a new and very fair procedure for pay talks. The issue was
whether that implementation is voluntary (n = 299) or is required by law (n = 300).
The first, "voluntary" sub-group read the following description:
"Your employer has voluntarily decided to implement the following
procedure in your organization”. The second randomly chosen group was
exposed to text which primed the notion of government initiated pay talk:
“Following a new regulation which was passed by the Ministry of Industry and
Labour. All work organizations in Israel are required to have pay talks”.
All participants than read the same description of the pay talk: "
At least one biannual meeting between each employee and a representative of the
employer regarding his/her conditions in the company. At those meetings the employees
will be given an opportunity: To review and comment on information in their
employment file.
o To present their own views about their performance.
o To indicate the pay and benefits they feel they deserve.
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According to this procedure, the employer would still decide the level of pay and
benefits the employee will receive. After decisions are made it is the responsibility of the
employer to prepare a written summary of the meeting for the employees personnel file.
Employees will receive a written copy of this summary and can include their own
comments about it in their file.
Post Manipulation Measure
Participants in both groups were then asked about their evaluation of the new
procedure as well as about their likely behavior, if such a procedure were to be enacted in
their own workplace.
A five item scale was created to reflect employee's anticipated attitudes/behavior
assuming the new voice procedure was in place. The items each asked the employee to
imagine that the change had occurred. They were first asked how likely it is that they
would: “Be satisfied with your job” and “Be satisfied with this procedure”; “Would
willingly go along with the decisions made by your supervisor”; “Would carefully carry
out the instructions of your supervisor” and “Would willingly accept your supervisor’s
decisions even when you disapprove of them”. These five items were used to create an
overall acceptance scale (alpha 0.91).
The sample was divided into four groups following a two by two design. The first
division was the degree of voice that the employees felt they had in their workplace prior
to the introduction of the procedural change (less than in the proposal; the same as the
new proposal). The second was whether the procedural innovation they read in the above
described vignette was legally mandated or voluntary.
Results
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Mandated voice and creating views about the general level of procedural justice in the
organization
The underlying premise of this analysis is that voice has a positive influence upon
employee’s attitudes and behaviors in the workplace. Unless that is true, then there
would be little gain involved in mandating voice in the workplace. And, of course, the
argument that voice encourages positive attitudes and favorable behaviors is central to the
literature on procedural justice (Lind and Tyler, 1988). Does the voice effect occur within
the employees who responded to the survey? We used regression analysis to test this
basic idea, conducting an analysis in which the dependent variables were overall
workplace fairness; fairness of decision-making; fairness of treatment and distributive
fairness. The regression analysis, shown in Table 1, examined the influence of worker
judgments concerning the amount of voice they received in their workplace on their
evaluations of the overall fairness of their workplace. The results indicate that employee
judgments about voice shaped employees’ evaluations of overall workplace fairness (beta
= 0.36, p < .001, in the case of overall procedural fairness)
In addition, the potential value of mandated voice depends upon finding that there
are benefits of requiring organizations to provide opportunities for voice on the part of
their employees. Did believing that voice was required by law lead employees to
evaluate their workplace as more procedurally just? The results of the same regression
analysis also indicate that there was a direct influence of whether voice was required on
all three procedural justice evaluations and on the index of distributive justice. The
findings indicate that required voice has more influence on these overall justice ratings
(beta = 0.08, p < .05, for overall procedural justice).
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Finally, there was no interaction with any justice evaluation, suggesting that
whether voice was mandated did not influence the weight that employees placed upon
their judgment about the amount of voice they had (beta = 0.00, n.s., for overall
procedural justice). In other words, people put an equal weight upon whatever level of
voice they had irrespective of whether they thought it was required. But, they also
thought that a workplace in which voice was required was a more just workplace.
What explains people’s judgments about whether voice was legally required in
their workplace? In particular, we wondered whether procedural features of pay talks -their prevalence and the degree to which they were expected -- influenced whether
people: (1) felt that they had voice and (2) that voice was required by law. Figure 1
shows the results of a causal model that examined the extent to which these procedural
features shaped both judgments and, through them evaluations of the favorability of
outcomes and the fairness of procedures. The analysis shown in Figure 1 is built upon
the findings of Table 1, i.e. that perceived amount of voice; whether or not that voice is
viewed as mandated; and assessments of outcome favorability in the workplace all
independently shape the perceived overall procedural justice of one’s workplace. The
analysis further assumes that evaluations of prevalence and expectedness of pay talks
influence evaluations of the amount of voice; judgments about whether or not that voice
is viewed as mandated; and assessments of the favorability of workplace outcomes.
Further, evaluations of prevalence and expectedness are allowed to directly shape
procedural justice judgments.
Figure 1 shows all significant paths in the model. What do the results shown in
Figure 1 indicate? They first suggest that the pervasiveness and expectedness of pay talk
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procedures influenced both perceived voice and perceived mandated justice. The
prevalence of pay talk procedures was the primary factor shaping perceived voice; while
whether pay talks were expected was the primary factor shaping whether employees
believed that pay talks were legally mandated. Further, both prevalence and expectancy
also directly shaped procedural justice judgments. Finally, both prevalence and
expectancy shaped employee’s judgments about the favorability of the decisions resulting
from pay talks, which also shaped procedural justice. All in all, the findings suggest that
the prevalence and expectancy of pay talks influenced, but did not wholly determine
perceived voice and perceived legality.
These findings are also helpful because they support the suggestion that views
about the legal status of pay talks are not a simple reflection of judgments concerning the
amount of voice that exists in the workplace. The two judgments are related (r = 0.57).
However, they have different antecedents: prevalence in the case of perceived voice and
expectation with the legal status of pay talks. These distinct antecedents suggest that
different issues were salient to employees when they were trying to decide how much
voice they had and whether that voice was required by law.
In summary, the first question addressed by us was whether the
voluntary/mandated distinction is important when people were making judgments about
overall workplace fairness. The findings indicated that both judging that you had voice
and believing that voice was legally mandated had a positive effect in encouraging
overall judgments of workplace fairness. However, these effects are additive in nature
and do not interact. In other words, at any given level, voice has a particular strength of
influence upon overall justice judgments and this effect is not influenced by whether the
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voice is believed to be mandated. Conversely, people think the workplace is more just if
voice is mandated, but this effect does not vary depending upon the level of voice that
they receive.
Effect of receiving voice on legitimacy and compliance
Beyond their influence on estimates of the general level of procedural justice in
their company the level of perceived voice and whether employees thought that voice
was legally mandated might shape views about the legitimacy of the organization and
compliance with company rules. To test this possibility we used regression analyses with
two dependent variables: overall evaluations of the legitimacy of workplace rules and
general compliance with those rules. The independent variables were the same as those
used in Table 1.
Table 2 shows the results of an analysis similar to that already outlined in Table 1,
but focused upon effects of degree of voice on legitimacy and compliance. Interestingly,
the pattern was not the same as the one which was found with procedural justice. With
both overall evaluations of legitimacy and general rule compliance the primary effect of
voice emerges as an interaction between the degree of perceived voice and whether that
voice was judged to be mandated. Here whether voice is viewed as required, shapes the
weight it is given in influencing legitimacy and compliance.
To determine the nature of the interaction effect, perceived voice was used to
explain legitimacy and compliance separately within subgroups of employees who
thought it was and was not required by law. In the case of legitimacy, the amount of
perceived voice that employees thought they had received explained 1% of the variance
in legitimacy when it was not required (p > .05) and 5% when it was required (p < .01).
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With compliance the amount of perceived voice that employees thought they had
explained 0% of the variance in compliance when it was not required and 3% when it was
required (p < .01). Hence, in both cases giving people voice had more influence upon
their attitudes and behaviors when they thought they were legally entitled to the voice.
When people thought that their voice opportunities were provided through the good
graces of management, those voice opportunities did not influence neither their attitudes
nor their behaviors.
We can conducted a similar analysis to examine the influence of judgments of the
prevalence and expectedness of pay talks. The influence of these factors is shown in
columns 3-6 of Table 2. These analyses show a similar interaction to that detected with
whether or not voice was viewed as legally mandated. This interaction was particularly
strong in both cases in which the dependent variable was compliance.
To determine the nature of the effect in the case of prevalence, perceived voice
was used to explain legitimacy and compliance separately within subgroups who thought
voice was and was not prevalent within the company. In the case of legitimacy, the
amount of perceived voice that employees thought they had explained 0% of the variance
in legitimacy when it was not prevalent (not significant) and 7% when it was prevalent (p
< .001). With compliance the amount of perceived voice that employees thought they
had explained 0% of the variance in compliance when it was prevalent (not significant )
and 6% when it was not prevalent (p < .01). Hence, in both cases giving people voice
had more influence upon their attitudes and behaviors when they thought that voice was
widespread within their company.
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To determine the nature of the effect with expectation perceived voice was used
to explain legitimacy and compliance separately within subgroups who thought it was
and was not an expected procedure within the company. In the case of legitimacy, the
amount of perceived voice that employees thought they had explained 0% of the variance
in legitimacy when it was not expected (not significant) and 6% when it was expected (p
< .01). With compliance the amount of perceived voice that employees thought they had
explained 0% of the variance in compliance when it was expected (not significant) and
5% when it was not expected (p < .05). Hence, in both cases giving people voice had
more influence upon their attitudes and behaviors when they thought that voice
procedures were expected.
These findings suggest that whether or not employees have voice in making
decisions about pay and promotion can influence their views about the overall legitimacy
of rules and can impact upon their general compliance with workplace rules. The
findings suggest that the influence of degree of voice is stronger when the voice people
are receiving is perceived by them to be mandated by law.
Effect of general level of procedural justice in the organization on legitimacy and
compliance.
We have shown that degree of voice that people feel they have in their workplace
in the form of pay talk participation influences three general reactions to their
organization: overall procedural justice judgments; legitimacy judgments and compliance
behavior. The effect on overall procedural justice is a main effect, while the influence on
legitimacy and compliance is an interaction of degree of voice and whether that voice
was perceived to be mandated.
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Here we address a further question. Once people have formed an overall
procedural fairness judgment about their workplace what is the impact of that judgment
upon their views about legitimacy and upon their compliance? Our findings suggest that
those who viewed their workplace as more procedurally just were more likely to rate
workplace rules as being legitimate (r = .29, p < .001) and also more likely to comply
with those rules (r = .12, p < .01). Hence, procedural fairness contributed to a rule
following organizational climate. Is that influence affected by whether or not the initial
view about the overall level of procedural justice in the workplace was created in a
situation in which employees thought their voice was voluntary or required? In other
words, do the conditions under which overall judgments of procedural justice are formed
shape the impact of those judgments?
We can examine this possibility through a regression analysis similar to those
shown in the prior tables. The results are shown in Table 3. They suggest that there is an
interaction between whether overall judgments of procedural justice are or are not due to
what employees believed to be legally required voice, and the impact of such overall
procedural justice judgments on legitimacy and compliance. What is that impact? When
procedural justice resulted from required voice, it explains 13% of the variance in
legitimacy; 11% of the variance in compliance (both significant, p < .001). When
procedural justice resulted from voice that the employee thought was voluntary, it
explained 5% of the variance in legitimacy (p < .05); 0% of the variance in compliance
(not significant).
An examination of the pattern with prevalence and expectation supports the
general argument already outlined. There are interactions for both in the case of
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compliance. With low prevalence procedural justice explains 4% (p < .05) of the
variance in legitimacy and 0% (not significant) of the variance in compliance. With high
prevalence procedural justice explains 12% of the variance in legitimacy (p < .001); 6%
of the variance in compliance (p < .001). Similarly, with low expectancy procedural
justice explains 6% of the variance in legitimacy (p < .01); 0% of the variance in
compliance. With high expectancy procedural justice explains 9% of the variance in
legitimacy (p < .001), 6% of the variance in compliance (p < .01).
These findings suggest that whether voice was viewed as being required played an
important role in the degree to which employee judgments about the overall level of
procedural fairness in the organization shaped employee’s compliance with workplace
rules. When employees believed that the voice that led to their heightened assessments
of the level of procedural justice in their organization was mandated by law, they were
more strongly influenced by overall procedural justice.
Is voluntary voice sometimes better?
While the results outlined suggest that legally requiring voice gives it more
impact, it is also possible that under some circumstances voluntary voice might be more
valuable. The second stage of the study which was based on experimental vignette
examines this possibility. It also tests the causal argument that the mandated/voluntary
distinction has an influence upon attitudes and behaviors and allows the influence of
voice to be tested in a situation in which everyone receives the same level of
(hypothetical) voice.
The dependent variables in the vignette analysis is a summary index in which
employees estimate how their attitudes and behaviors would change following the
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introduction of a new procedure in their workplace. Table 4 shows the results of an
analysis of variance with two independent variables: whether the change is an increase in
the level of procedural justice they would receive or is equivalent to their current level of
voice (something the employee estimates) and whether the "new" procedure described in
the vignette is being implemented voluntarily or by mandate of law. The dependent
variable is the summary index of legitimacy/compliance (i.e. how often would you follow
the rules after such a procedure is implemented).
The results of the analysis indicate that there is a main effect, with required voice
having more influence (F(1,595) = 11.18, p < .001). This is consistent with the findings
of the survey based stage of the study. There is also an interaction between whether the
procedure increases voice and whether it is mandatory (F(1,595) = 4.08, p < .05). The
means for the four cells are shown in Table 5. They indicate that when a new procedure
does not increase the level of voice then it has a greater impact if it is voluntary (mean =
4.65 vs. 4.88 for voluntary change). In contrast, if the procedure increases the level of
voice, it has more influence if it is mandatory (5.03 vs. 5.24 for voluntary change).
Hence, these findings suggest that mandating voice is effective in enhancing rule
following in situations in which it provides people with increased levels of voice.
The interaction finding hints at a possible limit to the generally ringing
endorsement of mandated procedural justice that emerged from the survey based analysis,
presented in previous sections. The experimental analysis suggests that mandated justice
has the most influence upon those employees who feel that the law has created a new and
more just procedure that they might not otherwise have enjoyed. In the case in which the
law is already providing employees with voice, the experimental evidence suggests that
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24
people react most strongly to evidence of employer good character in the form of a new
voluntary procedural fairness procedure. New mandated procedures do not have a strong
impact upon those who are already have the proposed level of voice.
Discussion
The findings presented in the first part of the findings section, which were based
regression analyses, suggest that among the workers studied, those who felt that the voice
provided was not required were not significantly influenced by the level of voice they
received. They did not view workplace rules as more legitimate and they were not higher
in compliance if they felt they received higher levels of voluntarily provided voice. This
would initially seem to contradict the widespread finding in procedural justice studies
that voice has positive effects on workers (Lind and Tyler, 1998).
It is important, first, to note that overall the degree to which employees thought
voice was provided was linked to legitimacy (r = 0.17, p < .001) and to compliance (r =
0.10, p < .01). While it is beyond the scope of this paper that focus on regulation of
justice, perceived voice was also related to commitment to the workplace (r = 0.39, p <
.001) and to extra-role behavior (r = 0.16, p < .001). Hence, the findings of this study are
consistent with previously reported findings. However, the findings of this study suggest
that the favorable effects of voice reported in prior studies may have been concentrated
among employees who felt that the voice they were experiencing was mandated by law or
was in some other way made prevalent or expected within workplaces.
It is also possible that this workforce is one in which mandated voice might be
especially important. The employees in this study were found to be generally suspicious
of the motives of management. For example, when asked whether the “procedures used
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25
to make decisions about pay in your current work organization” “reflect a desire by the
company to do what is best for employees like yourself” only thirty-one percent agreed.
Similarly, only twenty seven percent agreed that they reflected a desire by management
to “make sure your needs are taken into consideration”. Finally, only twenty two percent
agreed that the compensation procedures used were “generally fair”. Hence, the
employees studied, who constituted a random sample of Israeli employees, were
generally suspicious and mistrustful of the motivations of their management. It is
possible that a group of employees who began with higher levels of trust in the
motivations of the management of their companies would be more positively influenced
by voice that occurred without the force of legal mandate. As has been noted, the force
of such voluntary voice would be as an indicator of benevolence and concern by
management, something that might be more powerful in a population of employees with
more positive views of the benevolence and concern generally reflected in the motivation
of their managers.
Policy implications
If one is interested in being able to shape the rule related behavior of employees
in work organizations these findings suggest an important mechanism for achieving that
objective. The overall conclusion of the findings of this study is that mandating the use
of fair procedures when companies are evaluating employees for pay increases or
promotions has positive consequences in terms of increased employee rule following
behavior. The answer to the general question of the required role of the state in shaping
new governance techniques seem to be straightforward. Participants in our study
associated business practices which are driven and shaped by the state as more
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26
meaningful and reliable procedures. While the dangers of mandating voice are clear on a
theoretical level, this study did not find that they occurred in actuality.
Three findings support this general argument. First, when employees believe that
their voice opportunities are mandated by law, that belief enhances their evaluation of the
general procedural justice of their workplace. Second, when employees believe that their
voice opportunities are mandated by law, the occurrence of voice is linked to legitimacy
and compliance. Third, when employees believe that their workplace has overall
procedural justice, a belief enhanced when they believe voice is mandated by law, overall
procedural fairness is linked to legitimacy and compliance. Hence, mandated justice is
more influential in several ways.
However, our findings also hint at a limit of mandated justice. The experimental
vignette based manipulation of a procedural change presents employees with a highly fair
procedure for performance appraisal, a procedure which they are asked to imagine is
being enacted in their workplace. When employees believe that they already have a
mandated procedure, they are only influenced by additional actions when they are
voluntary. Hence, beyond a certain level of voice employees focus upon actions that
reflect the good intentions of management. This part of our findings corroborates the
findings of Greenberg (2003) on the inferences employees make about mangers who are
following voluntary procedures.
Finally, our study suggests several features of a procedure that are linked to
employee views that it is fair and that it is mandated. These features are prevalence and
expectancy. Employees are more likely to indicate that procedures are fair when they
believe that most employees in the workplace receive them. They also indicate that they
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27
are fair when they are expected. As demonstrated in the path analysis, both of these
features also lead employees to believe that procedures are mandated by law.
The distinctness of the antecedents of procedural fairness judgments and
judgments about whether procedures are mandated addresses one of the key aspects of
concern in this study: the fact that it deals with perceived legality. In reality none of the
employees studied were in a jurisdiction in which pay talk procedures are actually
mandated by law. Hence, it is important to show that such judgments are distinct from
procedural justice evaluations. Two factors suggest that they are distinct. First, separate
effects are found for perceived procedural justice and of whether justice is believed to be
mandated. If these two judgments were the same, they would not lead to independent
effects. Second, the antecedents of the two judgments are not the same. When we
distinguish between prevalence and expectancy, we find that the influence of these two
factors upon perceived amount of voice and upon whether voice is mandated differs,
suggesting that the two judgments have distinct antecedents. Hence, we believe that this
study does a reasonable job of examining legal mandates as a distinct issue.
Psychological implications
The key finding of the study is that employees were found to be indifferent to the
motivations of their employer. In fact, they were more affected by voice in situations in
which it revealed less about the motives of their managers and other organizational
authorities. When voice was legally mandated by the government it had a stronger
influence. This finding seems to contradict Greenberg's (2003) correspondent inference
theory of fairness evaluation, discussed earlier. Nonetheless, the reader should note few
major differences between our study and that of Greenberg. First, his focus was on
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28
distributive justice judgment rather than the effect of a given voice procedure. Second,
his study focused on a corporate mandate, rather than the state level mandate explored in
this study, so his approach raises different levels of rights' entitlement and social values.
Third, his study focused mainly on employee’s perceptions of the manger’s motivation,
while our study focused on the effect of voice procedures on employee’s attitudes and
behaviors.
One possible explanation for the fact that employees seemed to be indifferent to
the motivation of the employer is a key social psychological argument – the fundamental
attribution error (Ross, 1977). That argument is that people underestimate the role of
situational pressures in shaping behavior. Hence, when a person is compelled to take
some action by external pressure, observers nonetheless infer that the action reflects his
character. Here, employees are not discounting the mandated nature of the justice
provided. Instead, they are using the provision of a fair hearing procedure to infer that
their employer is just.
One question in particular is illuminating in this regard: Do the procedures of
your company “reflect a desire by the company to do what is best for employees like
yourself?”. In the mandated condition the mean is 4.02, while in the voluntary condition
it is 3.02 (t(499) = 6.12, P < .001). In other words, employees suggested that
management was more concerned about their well being when they provided more
procedural justice if they believed that it was mandated by the law. Hence, employees
did not connect the legal mandate to inferences about manager character, suggesting that
the mandated nature of procedures was not a salient feature.
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Another possible explanation for this finding is that employees are focused upon
issues of trust, but their focus is at the government level. While mandated procedures
may not speak to the motivations of managers, they do speak to the intentions of the law
and legal authorities, i.e. those who mandated justice. A consequence of legally
mandating procedures is that people believe that they can trust government. They also
feel that government and law recognize and protect them and their rights. If so, the
greater impact of mandated procedures does not indicate that people do not care about
inferences of character. It rather suggests that the focus of those inferences can vary. If
management voluntarily creates a procedure, then that procedure leads to a focus on the
character and trustworthiness of management. If legal authorities create the procedure,
they become the focus of attention.
Finally, we have shown using experimental manipulation that employees with
varying experience with voice procedures differed substantially in their appreciation for a
new state initiated voice procedure. Those who viewed the change in procedures as an
improvement in relation to their current situation reacted more favorably to a mandate
requiring voice in comparison to the group which was told that the procedure was a
voluntary initiative of their employer. This suggests that they lack confidence in
voluntary pronouncements from an employer who is currently not providing them with
voice. On the other hand, if the employer is currently providing a high level of voice, a
voluntary provision of new voice has the most influence.
Implications for behavioral analysis of law
The findings outlined have implications that go beyond psychology. One of the
main debates among behavioral economists who study the interaction between formal
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30
laws and social norms are related to the possible effect of law on social norms. The
research on this area seem to suggest conflicting views, while some lines of scholarship
suggest that formal laws carry negative effects for social practices and norms, while other
lines of literatures present the opposite view.
One studied effect within the "negative" view is related to the ability of formal
law to crowd out internal motivation and to distract social capital, hence suggesting
caution with regard to external legal intervention in social practices. In contrast, the
"positive" effect was hailed as well. The law was shown in recent years to carry an
expressive effect where making a social norms into a law send an important message to
citizens of the social importance of the norm.
Behavioral economists argue that an important motivation for rule following is
adherence to social norms. Hence, it is damaging if the enactment of a legal rule
undermines the role of social norms in shaping compliance (e.g. Bernstein, 1996; Brown,
2001; Kagan, Gunningham & Thornton, 2003; Posner, 1996). This section reviews some
of the mechanisms suggested by legal scholars and economists to account for this
potentially destructive effect of transforming a socially regulated behavior into a legally
mandatory one.
Crowding out. Employees are motivated to follow rules both for instrumental
reasons (rewards and punishments) and to adhere to social norms. If employees believe
that their employers are enacting “fair” procedures because those employers are required
to do so and are, hence, more likely to be themselves motivated by concern about
punishments for noncompliance, then employees themselves will be less likely to view
rule following as a social norm, and less likely to comply because they think it is
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normative and appropriate. Hence, if legal requirements “crowd out” the influence of
social norms on behavior in employers and employees, their overall effect on employee
behavior will be negative.
Frey is the leading experimental economist to explore possible destructive effects
of law on social norms, marked by the crowding out of internal and non-calculative
motivations that can occur when external motivations are introduced. In one of this
famous studies, Frey (1998) found that community residents focused most heavily upon
economic issues, and diminished their attention to social norms, when compensation was
a central issue in a policy decision. More generally, this argument suggests that when
people are led to focus on instrumental reasons for engaging in some action, their internal
motivations for engaging in that action become less important.
The related “fine is a price” mechanism describes a phenomenon that Gneezy and
Rustichini (2000) documented in the context of daycare centers that assessing fines upon
parents who were late in picking up their children at the end of the day. Imposing a fine on
late parents was counterproductive, resulting in an increased number of late pickups.
Apparently, the fine led parents to feel that they buy the right to arrive late. In this sense,
law undermined the preexisting social norm of arriving on time. Parents felt that this norm
was less relevant to their behavior when the issue was defined as an economic one.
Following a similar line of reasoning, Cohen (1991) discusses the negative impact
of legality on social capital via the concept of the “Good Samaritan.” One of the
arguments he uses is that the positive reputation associated with being a Good Samaritan
will disappear if helping becomes a legal requirement. The implications of this argument
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is that if employers are forced by law to behave in a certain way to their employees the
social reputation that employers gain from behaving in a fair way to their employees is
lost. Employees will not infer that their employer is a good person because that employer
provides them with voice if it is required, so they will not infer that there is a social norm
of employer concern in the workplace. Knowing that their efforts will go unappreciated,
employers consequently have no reason to act on behalf of employees, since they will
receive no credit for such helpful behavior. Similarly, people may be less confident that
their own actions are a reflection of their values when those actions are required by law
(Stout and Blair, 2001).
To sum up, this line of studies suggests that when the law requires employers to
create mandatory voice procedure to listen to employees in the workplace this can
influence both employers and employees. First, employers focus on their own
instrumental motivations, for example avoiding fines for noncompliance, rather than
upon the desire to help employees. Employees, in turn, focus upon employer’s
instrumental reasons for providing the procedure and do not view it as expressing social
values and practices that they might be motivated to adopt and follow voluntarily
Positive effects of legality. The literature in experimental economics makes it
equally possible to view government intervention as something that might have positive
motivational consequences on employees. One advantage of a law over a social practice
is that a law is an entitlement that is due to all. This has two favorable consequences for
employees, demonstrated empirically in our study. The first is permanence and
predictability. For example, in the context of employment relations, since the law creates
an entitlement people do not have to worry about whether that entitlement will disappear
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depending on the whims of their employer. In a similar way the second consequence is
prevalence. Because it is due to law, the entitlement to voice will go to all workers, not
just stronger employees. Hence, employees need not worry that if their skills become
less valued they will lose their rights. If procedures are provided for market reasons, they
are subject to the choices of managers concerning when they will be granted and who
will receive them. These choices will be driven by economic considerations, not by
matters of right. Studies suggest that employers are concerned about employees. For
example, they do not lower wages during a recession (Bewley, 1999). However, those
concerns are shaped by employer’s judgments about the influence of their policies upon
worker productivity, and do not necessarily reflect any desire to behave ethically.
Expressive effects. The relationship between the law and the social meaning of
behaviors is also discussed in the literature on the expressive functions of the law
(Sunstein, 1996; Cooter, 2000). The expressive function of the law is usually referred to
as the effect of law on behavior that is mediated by social norms. In other words,
expressive law focus on the ways through which the law communicates and hence
strengthen the social norms of a given society, leading the provision of some right to be
viewed by those who receive it as signaling a highly acceptable social norm. For the
reasons already outlined, this is important because highly consensual social norms, in
turn, shape rule following behavior (see Feldman, 2008 for a review).
When the law defines a social procedure as a legal requirement, the message
which is conveyed to society is that this right is linked to social status and standing in the
society, and this is likely to increase the value that all members of society will assign to
this right. This value is going to be derived both from the message that many members of
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society consider this right as important, as well as from the public association with the
state and state actors (Cooter, 1998; McAdams, 1997; Kahan, 1996; Lessig, 1995;).
According to the expressive perspective, people will appreciate a procedure that becomes
mandatory, as the transformation to a required procedure will inform members of society
that the government views this procedure as socially desirable and reflective of societies’
values. Requiring that employees receive justice is a statement about the worth that
government places upon citizen’s rights and well being.
Implications for legal policy making
The results address a key question in law, both on the general level and in
particular in the context of voice procedures. The specific question, we attempted to
answer is whether the law should intervene in work settings and mandate desirable
procedures. The findings suggest that designing legal institutions so that they require
authorities to act via the principles of procedural justice is likely to be beneficial (Tyler,
2007). We have shown that a law that mandates that authorities provide fair procedures
and the perceived provision of those procedures leads to heightened legitimacy and
greater employee compliance with workplace rules. Indeed, our findings suggest that the
effect of voice is likely to be especially positive in situations where employees widely
experience fair procedures for pay talks and have come to view such procedures as an
expected part of their workplace.
Our findings further suggest that it is important for procedures to be mandated
across the organization. One consequence of legal regulation is that voice in pay talks
becomes a right or entitlement, something that everyone in the workplace receives by
virtue of their status in society. In contrast, with voluntary voice procedures management
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35
is free to provide such voice only to highly valued employees. Our findings also suggest
that when voice procedures are consistent and prevalent in the organization, employees
infer that the procedure is legally mandated. Thus, the legal policy maker should not
only engage in mandating justice, but also make sure it is implemented in an equal and
consistent way in organization.
We believe that our findings apply also to the general question, of the pros and
cons of legal intervention in voluntary social practices. In the general debate discussed
above between the positive expressive effects of law and its ability to crowd out
motivation, our study does seem to make a contribution. When focusing on those who are
likely to use certain procedures, the benefit from knowing that they are legally entitled to
a certain procedure overshadows the costs associated from their inference on the good
nature of those who operate this procedure. At the same time, for those who have no
doubt about their entitlement to a certain procedure, they reach a stage, where voluntary
procedure will be more appreciated. However, this motivational inference seems to occur
only for the more privileged members of society who are less likely to benefit from state
assurance of their procedural rights.
Limitations
The main limitation of this paper is related to the fact that the independent factors
we measured were self-reported. The effect of mandatory justice was measured by
asking participants a series of questions regarding their perception of whether the law
required that their employer consult with them with regard to the option of giving them
voice. In reality, voice was not mandated under Israeli law, so the perception of a legal
mandate, which psychologically real, was a departure from legal reality.
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Ideally we would create a situation in which employees are randomly assigned to
work in situations that do or do not require pay talks. However, this was not possible.
This problem is typical of difficulties confronting those who want to study the impact of
legal regulations. Legal authorities are seldom willing to randomly assign legal
procedures of different types across people or jurisdictions, since the equal application of
the law is a core element of objective legal fairness. Hence, the use of indirect approach
such as ours is common.
We attempted to control for this issue in three ways. First, we controlled for the
level of perceived voice in pay talks in our analyses of the effect of mandated justice. If
the two issues are confounded in employee’s minds, i.e. if they simply thought voice was
required because they received a lot of it, no independent effect of mandates should
emerge. However, distinct mandate effects were consistently found. Second, the study
showed that antecedent conditions – prevalence and expectations – did not have the same
influence upon judgments about the amount of voice and of whether voice was mandated.
If the two processes are the same, they should have similar antecedents. Third, the
experimental vignette indicates that the issue of mandated vs. voluntary voice has a direct
influence upon attitudes and behaviors.
The fact that we have used a representative sample of israeli employees while
having some advantages could obviously carry some limitations, in terms of
generalizability to United States employees, as well as to other societies beyond Israel.
Unfortunately, there are very few studies that have attempted to compare the prevalence
of values such as fairness and of the factors shaping the rule of law among israeli and
Americanemployees. Overall it could be said that in comparison to the Unitee States
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37
studies have found that Israeli society has deeper roots in solidarity-based collective
action, as well as a more pluralist attitude toward the sources of norm-generating
authorities, including the state, religion, and military (Shprinzak 1987; Smith et al. 2002).
Correspondingly, some studies find deference to legal authority in Israel to be generally
low relative to other societies (Yagil & Rattner 2002). A recent comparative study
(Feldman and Lobel, 2008) has indeed demonstrated pervasive gaps both in behaviors
and attitudes in the context whistle-blowing between israeli and U.S employees. Hence, it
is our hope that further studies will be conducted in other cultures on this important
question of employee’s evaluations of legal interventions to establish whether mandated
justice has a positive effect similar to that found in this study in societies besides Israel.
Summary
Given the numerous studies showing the many positive influences of procedural
justice, it would be natural if legal authorities thought of requiring them within
organizations where rule following is important. One example is work organizations,
where recent corporate corruption scandals have made clear the costs to both businesses
and to society when employees violate rules of appropriate conduct. So, should
procedural justice be mandated by law? We outline theories for and against that
approach and then used both surveys and experimental survey with a representative
sample of employees in Israel, to test among them.
We believe that the findings we presented suggest that at least in this context,
employees' associate legal requirement with a positive impact of voice procedures. Those
employees who believed that the voice they have received was legally required were
more likely to be positively influenced by voice, above and beyond the current level of
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voice they had in their current workplace. Based on these further analyses the normative
recommendations we wish to take from this study are more refined than simply calling
for increased regulation of voice. On the other hand, it is our belief, that while the
empirical findings are based on the specific context of voice – pay-talks, some of the
normative implications could be generalized to all forms of voice interactions.
Furthermore, it is our belief that our methodological and theoretical approach could
trigger further research in the context of other new governance techniques. It seems that
at least up to a certain level, association with state requirements carry positive influences
and further studies should examine the circumstances under which imposing mandatory
requirement could empower business self managed practices.
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39
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Table 1: Relationship between Judgments about the Degree of Voice In Pay-Talks, Judgments About Whether That Voice is Legally
Mandated and Employees' Evaluations of the Overall Procedural and Distributive Justice of The Workplace.
Is the procedure believed to be legally
mandated?(A)
How much voice do people believe they
have ? (B)
A*B
Perceived quality of outcomes (C)
A*C
Gender
Age
Income
Economic Status
Native?
Education
Years working
Hours working
Adj. R.sq.
Column 1
Overall Procedural
Justice
.08*
Column 2
Quality of
Decision Making
.09*
Column 3
Quality of
Treatment
.13**
Column 4
Distributive
Fairness
.09**
.36***
.28***
.23***
.10***
.00
.50***
.05
.00
.03
-.10
-.05
-.05
-.01
-.10**
-.02
58%
.01
.53***
.04
.01
.00
-.02
-.01
-.01
.00
-.11*
-.02
54%
.02
.54***
-.01
-.01
.02
-.06
-.07
-.01
.02
-.12*
-.01
53%
-.01
.78***
-.02
-.08**
.00
-.01
-.04
-.01
-.01
.00
-.01
76%
Note. The dependent variables are evaluations of the justice of the workplace.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
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Table 2. Relationship between Judgments about the Degree of Voice in Pay-talks,
Judgments about Whether That Voice is Legally Mandated and the Legitimacy of
Workplace Rules and Compliance with Those Rules.
How much voice do
employees believe they have?
(A)
Is the procedure believed to
be legally mandated (B)
Prevalence of voice(BB)
Expectation (BBB)
A*B
A*BB
A*BBB
Quality of outcomes (C)
B*C
BB*C
BBB*C
Gender
Age
Income
Economic Status
Native?
Education
Years working
Hours working
Adj. R.sq.
Column 1
Legitimacy
-.04
Column 2
Compliance
-.03
Column 3
Legitimacy
-.03
Column 4
Compliance
.06
Column 5
Legitimacy
.03
Column 6
Compliance
-.05
-.07
-.10
---
---
---
---
----.13*
----.33***
-.07
-----.07
.05
.02
-.05
.00
.04
-.07
.05
13%
----.15*
----.20***
-.02
----.03
.11
.01
.07
-.06
-.02
-.06
.03
5%
-.06
----.12^
--.30***
--.04
---.05
.09
.04
.01
.01
.05
-.06
.06
13%
-.22***
----.19**
--.16**
--.05
--.04
.13*
.07
.13*
-.08
-.01
-.05
.06
7%
---.05
----.03
.30***
----.05
.06
.08
.00
-.03
-.01
.06
-.05
.08
11%
---.24***
----.13*
.17**
----.08
.02
.11*
-.01
.06
-.05
.00
-.05
.07
6%
Note. The dependent variables in this analysis are the employee’s overall ratings of the
legitimacy of workplace rules and their compliance with those rules.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
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Table 3. Relationship between Ratings of Overall Workplace Justice, Judgments of the
Legitimacy of Workplace Rules and Compliance with those Rules.
How procedurally just is
the workplace ? (A)
The the voice procedure
believed to be required
(B)
Prevalence of voice(BB)
Expectation of receiving
voice (BBB)
A*B
A*BB
A*BBB
Quality of outcomes (C)
B*C
BB*C
BBB*C
Gender
Age
Income
Economic Status
Native?
Education
Years working
Hours working
Adj. R.sq.
Column 1
Legitimacy
Column 2
Compliance
Column 3
Legitimacy
Column 4
Compliance
Column 5
Legitimacy
Column 6
Compliance
.13
.03
.06
.01
.10
.02
-.08
-.08
---
---
---
---
-----
-----
-.04
---
-.11
---
--.09
--.17**
.12^
----.24**
-.10
-----.05
.04
.02
-.03
-.01
.05
-.03
.05
13%
.28***
----.17*
-.14
----.05
.10
.01
.08
-.08
.00
-.05
.02
7%
---.03
--.27***
--.12
---.06
.05
.06
-.02
.00
.03
-.03
.05
13%
--.17*
--.18*
--.02
--.05
.12*
.06
.09
-.06
-.04
-.06
.04
6%
----.06
.24***
------.09
-.07
.04
.02
-.06
.00
.04
-.03
.06
13%
-----.12^
.16*
-----.05
.02
.09
-.02
.01
-.05
-.02
-.04
.04
6%
Note. The dependent variables in this analysis are the employee’s overall ratings of the
legitimacy of workplace rules and their compliance with those rules.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
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Table 4. Effect of Prior Voice and Manipulated Voice Procedure on
Legitimacy/Compliance Index.
Amount of voice prior to the new procedure(A)
Whether the new voice is voluntary or required
(B)
A*B
Residual
Total
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
d.f.
1
1
MS
20.34
0.00
F
11.18***
0.00
1
595
598
7.43
9.31
4.08*
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Table 5. Effect of the Comparison between Prior Voice and Manipulated Voice on
Legitimacy/Compliance Index.
"New"
(manipulated)
voice
procedure
Voluntary
Required
Overall mean
Difference
The new
procedure
increases
employee
voice
5.03
5.24
5.14
0.21
Prior voice
Same as
Overall
new
mean
procedure
4.88
4.65
4.77
-.23
4.95
4.98
---
Difference
0.15
0.41
---
Note. The dependent variable is the employee’s rating of their attitudes and behaviors
after the new procedure is put into place. High scores indicate more favorable attitudes
and behaviors.
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50
32%
How much
voice do you
have?
.22
.39
.15
Prevalence
of pay
.33
talks
.11
Outcome
favorability
.48
.25
.13
Pay talks
expected?
.07
.28
.09
Is voice legally
mandated?
12%
Figure 1. Antecedent of perceived workplace justice.
Procedural
justice
60%
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