Even fairness goes pop – with no communication

If expectations don´t meet experiences, staff is unsettled and demotivated

 

 

 

 

For all bosses – male and female alike: Do what you can to not make expectations of your staff burst with a big bang. Since this may be pretty costly for any organisation. A current US-American study was able to present this regarding the topic “Justice at the working place”.

There they say: If your teams expect a certain level of fairness and this level is not going to be executed on the job frequently then this discrepancy produces uncertainty, annoynace adn less engagement.

Surprising: this discrepancy irritates also in the opposite case. If employees expect only low fairness and the superior executes suddenly special, never heard or seen justice unvertainty and negative feelings do also pop up. Predictability is key and this develops by congruency between expectations and experiences.-

The researchers recommend, to communicate norms for fairness proactively, to moniro deviations and reflect via feedback continuously.

Cole/Dimotakis/Bernerth, “Expected and Experienced Daily Justice, Emotions and Counterproductive Work Behavior”, in: Journal of Applied Psychology, 2026, vol. 111, no. 5, 565-585.

 

From the practise:

This study confirms my observations for years:

1. Doing alone is not sufficient. You have to describe, explain and relate your doing to the economic success of your organisation. Employees have better things to do than to watch activities of their superiors all over the time and to translate them into senseful measurements. 2. Let it be your goal to create cultural standards for all. This will, can and shall provide your team members orientation and invites them to adapt their own individual expectations concerning “Justice at the working place”. 3. Take care of these norms then (just think how overloaded so many contributions as “Our philosophy” or “Our Credo”, etc. are) and don´t accept that they are walked over – neither by you yourself nor by your staff, though. Otherwise you may expect that mission statements like this are not taken seriously and you are not being respected any more.