Kim and Leung - week 5 – forming and reacting to overall fairness: a cross cultural comparison
This study compared the cross-cultural formation and reactions toward overall fairness perception of employees from the
US, China, Korea, and Japan. Distributive justice was related to overall fairness less strongly for Americans and
Japanese than for Chinese and Koreans. In contrast, interactional justice was related to overall fairness more strongly for
Americans and Japanese than for Chinese and Koreans. As expected, materialism seems to provide a coherent account
of these cultural diVerences. In addition, overall fairness showed a stronger eVect on turnover intention for Americans
than for Chinese and Koreans. For job satisfaction, the eVect of overall fairness was stronger for Americans than for
Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. Power distance seems to provide an adequate account of these cultural diVerences.
There are 3 main kind of justice : distributive, procedural, and interactional. All of them generate
overall fairness judgements
Once an overall fairness judgment is formed, as the theory suggests, it will exert influence on other attitudes
and behaviors. Perceived overall fairness has been found to influence various outcomes that are beneWcial
to employees and organizations, such as satisfaction, commitment, trust, and organization citizenship
behaviours.
One important area of organizational justice research concerns the role of cross-cultural differences in
outcomes of justice. Cross-cultural perspectives on organizational justice are important, since they contribute
to assessing the generalizability of organizational justice beyond north America.
Several researches examined how country of origin affects employees’reactions to perceived injustice but 2
questions remain unaddressed: little attention has been paid to identify the contributions pf various facets of
justice perception to overall fairness in various cultures ( one culture can weighted it more than others) so
the first goal of this study is to assess how procedural, distributive and interactional justice have differential
impacts on overall fairness perceptions across countries.
Contrary to the implicit or explicit assumption made in previous cross-cultural studies that all East Asians are
alike, probably because of their characterization as high in collectivism and power distance (, East Asian
countries actually differ substantially in their attitudinal and behavioral patterns
To summarize, it is important to examine how distributive, procedural, and interactional justice are diVerently
weighted in the formation of overall fairness, and how reactions to overall fairness diVer across East Asia
and the US. To achieve these ends, the present paper examined how distributive, procedural, and
interactional justice are related to overall fairness and how overall fairness aVects job satisfaction and
intention to leave their organization in the US, China, Japan, and Korea.
Lam et al.tested the eVects of distributive justice on job performance,absenteeism, and job satisfaction, and
found that distributive justice significantly aVected all the outcomes. However, they found that the latter
relationships were not signiWcantly diVerent between American and Hong Kong Chinese samples. On the
other hand, Pillai et al. found that distributive justice significantly affected trust and job satisfaction in the
Chinese sample, whereas distributive justice significantly affected trust but not job satisfaction in the
American sample. With regard to procedural and interactional justice, a few studies have investigated
whether the influence of procedural and interactional justice perceptions on employee outcomes vary across
countries, but the results of these studies are also mixed. On the one hand, country does not affect people’s
reactions to perceived procedural and interactional justice.
On the other hand, there are several studies that show significant cross-cultural differences in the effects of
procedural and interactional justice on employee outcomes. Taking stock of current cross-cultural justice
research, several important issues have to be addressed. For example, there are inconsistent findings
regarding US–East Asian differences in the effects of justice perceptions on employee outcomes.
In addition, current justice measures are restrictive for cross-cultural justice research for several reasons.
First, current justice measures assess the respondents’ perceptions of the treatment they receive rather than
the fairness of the treatment. For instance, interactional justice is measured by the extent to which
supervisors treat employees with dignity and respect. There may be cross-cultural differences in the
extent to which a given personal treatment is perceived to be fair to employees. Second, current justice
measures may not appropriately capture cross-cultural differences in defining justice perceptions. For
example, distributive justice is typically assessed by the extent to which rewards are fairly allocated based on
the equity rule.
One of the factors that may explain cross-cultural differences in how distributive, procedural, and
interactional justice perceptions impact on overall fairness judgments is materialism (a devotion to material
needs and desires, to the neglect of spiritual matters
Hypothesis 1. Countries with higher materialism weigh
distributive justice more highly in forming overall justice
perceptions. Specifically, Chinese and Koreans weigh
distributive justice perception more highly in forming
overall fairness perceptions than do Japanese and
Americans.
Hypothesis 2. Countries with lower materialism weigh
procedural justice more highly in forming overall justice
perceptions. Specifically, Japanese and Americans weigh
procedural justice perceptions more highly in forming
overall fairness perceptions than do Chinese and
Koreans.
Hypothesis 3. Countries with lower materialism weigh
interactive justice more highly in forming overall justice
perceptions. Specifically, Japanese and Americans weigh
interactional justice perceptions more highly in forming
overall fairness perceptions than do Chinese and
Koreans.
Country differences in reactions to overall fairness
Based on the power distance frameworks, East Asians may differ from Americans in their reactions to
perceived justice. In East Asia, where people show a stronger power distance, they tend to be tolerant of
unfair treatment from the organization. According to Hofstede, power distance refers to “the extent to which
a society accepts the fact that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.” The norms of
high power distance cultures legitimize inequality between those in high power positions and those in low
power positions. As a result, for individuals with higher power distance, “inequality and injustice are expected
and taken for granted, while they are not expected or seen as acceptable in lower power distance
individuals”.
In contrast, in a low power distance society, individuals tend to minimize status diVerentials and
subordinates have higher expectations about respectful treatment from authorities. Subordinates with a low
power distance also expect organizations to have fair practices that can constrain managers from arbitrarily
exercising their authority
Hypothesis 4a. Overall fairness is more strongly related
to intention to leave an organization in the US, compared
to the other three countries.
Hypothesis 4b. Overall fairness is more strongly related
to job satisfaction in the US, compared to the other
countries.
In summary, the predictions based on materialism group Japan with the US, whereas the predictions based
on power distance pitch the US against the three East Asian countries.
Discussion
These findings support and extend Abramson and Inglehart’s (1995) conclusion that materialists
emphasize material well-being such as pay and promotion, whereas post-materialists put a greater emphasis
on ecological issues, human and animal rights, and the quality of life. According to Abramson and Inglehart,
Chinese and Koreans are relatively more materialistic than Americans and Japanese, and the cultural
differences we found are consistent with their findings.
An unexpected finding is that procedural justice shows no significant cross-cultural difference, and the
reason may be that it has both instrumental and non instrumental connotations
Cross-cultural researchers need to pay more attention to what types of facet fairness are particularly
important to people of different countries. An unexpected finding is that procedural justice shows no
significant cross-cultural difference, and the reason may be that it has both instrumental and noninstrumental
Connotations
Another important result from this study is concerned with how Americans differ from Chinese, Japanese,
and Koreans in reacting to injustice. As expected, job satisfaction was related to organizational injustice
more strongly for Americans than for Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. The results also suggest that
Americans, compared with Chinese and Koreans, are more likely to leave their organization when they
perceive organizational injustice, and the same is true for Japanese as well. With the exception of this
unexpected finding, the general cultural argument that people who value collectivism and power distance
react less negatively toward an authority that treats them unfairly is supported. To explain the lack of
significant difference between Americans and Japanese in the effect of overall fairness on turnover intention,
we speculate that in Japan, because companies emphasize the managerial principle of “wa,” which
emphasize group (organizational) loyalty, harmony, and consensus
We should point out, however, that the results need caution to interpret because the reliabilities for both
materialism and power distance are low. One reason why materialism and power distance did not explain all
the country differences may be due to their low reliability
Limitations
They used just the common method variance so it would be used to compare the results using other
methods of measurement.