WORKPLACE INJUSTICE AND THE PLACE OF THE VICTIM; THE ANTECEDENTS OF TALK ABOUT WORKPLACE INJUSTICE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BAMENDA, CAMEROON

Mbayong Napoloen Arrey, Emmanuel Mbebeb Fomba, Nicodemus Tiendem

Abstract


Purpose: This study examines the role of a victim of workplace injustice in their own recovery process. It asks: can victims recover from the negative effects of a fairness violation, and more specifically, can talk, that is, conversation with others, aid such a recovery process? This study argues that such victims of workplace injustice will be motivated to reduce this distressing condition, to repair their relational selves, via talk. It is argued that this state of threatened relational need will lead to both emotional and cognition talk via anger. Methodology/Design/Approaches: A repeated cross-sectional survey was carried out at two time points separated by six weeks. The data and analyses for this study came from the first survey, with a replication of the results conducted with the second time point of data to examine the validity of the findings. The sample for this study used 166 employees of the University of Bamenda. The average age of participants was 43 years (SD = 15.66), and their tenure with the company was on average 7.94 years (SD = 7.33). Sixty percent (60%) of the participants were Female. Findings: The study uncovered antecedents and consequences of talk; anger and thwarted justice needs were found to trigger talk, with an interaction between emotion and cognition talk driving victim-centred outcomes of rumination, self-affirmation and active solutions. Research Limitations: It should be noted, that the present study is perhaps best assessed by cross-sectional design rather than separating predictor and criterion variables over separate time periods. The issue lies with the nature of talk – conversations unfold soon after an event. Too much temporal separation leaves a researcher open to missing the fundamental intricacies of conversation that occurs and perhaps artificially inflating the links between injustice, needs and talk. Originality: This empirical research is the first of its kind to be carried out within the context of the victims of injustice at the University of Bamenda. The study area is unique as no related research has been carried out within the University of Bamenda. As such, if the findings of this study are implemented within the study area, the present study will be one step towards a greater appreciation of workplace injustice as experienced through the eyes of a victim, providing impetus to the integration of both organisational justice and talk as fields of enquiry.

 

Article visualizations:

Hit counter


Keywords


workplace injustice, place of the victim, antecedents of talk, University of Bamenda

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in Social Exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 267-299). New York: Academic Press.

Ambrose, M. L., Seabright, M. A., & Schminke, M. (2002). Sabotage in the workplace: The role of organizational injustice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 89(1), 947-965.

Baumeister, R. F. (1993). Understanding the inner nature of low self-esteem: Uncertain, fragile, protective, and conflicted Self-Esteem (pp. 201-218): Springer.

Baumeister, R. F. (1998). The self. In S. T. F. D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Ed.), Handbook of social psychology (pp. 680-740). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Bies, R. J., & Tripp, T. M. (2002). Hot Flashes, Open Wounds: Injustice and the Tyranny of its Emotions. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Emerging Perspectives on Managing Organizational Justice (pp. 203-221). Greenwich: IAP.

Brockner, J. (1988). Self-esteem at work: Research, theory, and practice: Lexington Books/DC Heath and Com.

Brockner, J., Heuer, L., Magner, N., Folger, R., Umphress, E., van den Bos, K., . . . Siegel, P. (2003). High procedural fairness heightens the effect of outcome favorability on self-evaluations: An attributional analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 91(1), 51-68.

Cohen-Charash, Y., & Spector, P. E. (2001). The Role of Justice in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 86(2), 278-321.

Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the Dimensionality of Organizational Justice: A Construct Validation of a Measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386-400.

Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 425-445.

Cropanzano, R., Byrne, Z. S., Bobocel, R., & Rupp, D. (2001). Moral Virtues, Fairness Heuristics, Social Entities and Other Denizens of Organizational Justice. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 58(2), 164-209.

Cropanzano, R., Goldman, B., & Folger, R. (2005). Self‐interest: defining and understanding a human motive. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(8), 985-991.

Cropanzano, R., Rupp, D. E., Mohler, C. J., & Schminke, M. (2001). Three roads to organizational justice. Research in personnel and human resources management, 20, 1-113.

Cropanzano, R., Weiss, H. M., Suckow, K. J., & Grandey, A. A. (2000). Doing justice to workplace emotion. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 58(2), 164-209.

Elovainio, M., Kivimäki, M., & Vahtera, J. (2002). Organizational justice: evidence of a new psychosocial predictor of health. American journal of public health, 92(1), 105-108.

Folger, R., & Cropanzano, R. (1998). Organizational Justice and Human Resource Management. London: Sage Publications.

Folger, R., & Cropanzano, R. (2001). Fairness Theory: Justice as Accountability. In J. Greenberg & R. Cropanzano (Eds.), Advances in organizational justice (pp. 1-55). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Goldman, B. M. (2003). The application of referent cognitions theory to legal-claiming by terminated workers: The role of organizational justice and anger. Journal of Management, 29(5), 705-728.

Lind, E. A. (1995). Justice and authority relations in organizations. In R. S. Cropanzano & K. M. Kaemar (Eds.), Organizational politics, justice, and support: Managing the social climate of the workplace (pp. 83-96). Westport, CT: Quorum Books.

Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice. New York: Plenum Press.

Lind, E. A., Kanfer, R., & Earley, P. C. (1990). Voice, control, and procedural justice: Instrumental and non-instrumental concerns in fairness judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(5), 952.

Sedikides, C., & Gregg, A. P. (2007). Portraits of the self. Sage handbook of social psychology, 93-122.

Skarlicki, D. P., & Folger, R. (1997). Retaliation in the workplace: The roles of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 434-443.

Steele, C. M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. Advances in experimental social psychology, 21, 261-302.

Vermunt, R., Wit, A., van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (1996). The effects of unfair procedure on negative affect and protest. Social Justice Research, 9(2), 109-119.

Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work.

Weiss, H. M., & Rupp, D. E. (2011). Experiencing Work: An Essay on a Person‐Centric Work Psychology. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 4(1), 83-97.

Weiss, H. M., Suckow, K., & Cropanzano, R. (1999). Effects of justice conditions on discrete emotions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(5), 786.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejhrms.v6i1.1334

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2022 European Journal of Human Resource Management Studies

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.

Copyright © 2017-2023. European Journal Of Human Resource Management Studies (ISSN 2601-1972) is a registered trademark. All rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and  Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.