Beyond individual justice facets: How (Mis)alignment between justice climates affects customer satisfaction through frontline customer extra-role service behavior

ABSTRACT

This study examines the combined effect of organizational justice facets on store-level customer extra-role service behavior, and subsequently on customer satisfaction. Hypotheses were tested on a sample of 1,951 employees in 121 business units from four countries, and on 55,731 customers of an international retailer. The results of polynomial regression and response surface analysis revealed that unit customer service performance and customer satisfaction are higher when justice facets are aligned at high levels, compared to when they are aligned at low levels. Moreover, we found evidence that the consequences of misalignment between justice facets are asymmetrical. Unit outcomes were higher when distributive justice (DJ) and procedural justice (PJ) climates were both higher than the interpersonal justice climate, compared to when the inverse was true. Conversely, unit outcomes increased when informational justice (INF-J) climate was higher than DJ and PJ climates, compared to when DJ and PJ climates were higher than INF-J climates. The observed effects of misalignment between justice facets were non-linear, as complex curvilinear relationships were moderator-dependent. Customer satisfaction was higher in stores with higher team customer service behavior, and team service behavior was found to be a significant conduit by which justice facets (mis)alignment influence customer satisfaction.     

Can global justice provide a path toward achieving justice across the Americas?

In this article, I investigate actions that the United States took against Costa Rica during the 1980s in order to argue that current discussions about global justice and its foundations are flawed in three ways. First, it misidentifies the parties of global justice as individual citizens. Second, it conceptualizes global justice as exclusively a distributive justice concern and, as a result, it misidentifies what constitutes a global injustice as being the adverse fate of individuals who live in a poor nation. Finally, the current debate provides no guidance in what must be considered to identify the specific obligations one nation may have to another nation. Given these three problems, I maintain that we conceptualize global injustice as an issue of social justice rather than one exclusively of distributive justice. This will require identifying nations as the parties to global justice, at least in certain cases, and realizing that our goal is to remedy oppressive global structures of power. Utilizing the social justice I propose will put us on the road toward achieving justice across the Americas.     

Forgetting motor programmes: Retrieval dynamics in procedural memory

When motor sequences are stored in memory in a categorised manner, selective retrieval of some sequences can induce forgetting of the non-retrieved sequences. We show that such retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) occurs not only in cued recall but also in a test assessing memory indirectly by providing novel test cues without involving recall of items. Participants learned several sequential finger movements (SFMs), each consisting of the movement of two fingers of either the left or the right hand. Subsequently, they performed retrieval practice on half of the sequences of one hand. A final task then required participants to enter letter dyads. A subset of these dyads corresponded to the previously learned sequences. RIF was present in the response times during the entering of the dyads. The finding of RIF in the slowed-down execution of motor programmes overlapping with initially trained motor sequences suggests that inhibition resolved interference between procedural representations of the acquired motor sequences of one hand during retrieval practice.     

Solidarity and Social Justice: Effect of Individual Differences in Justice Sensitivity on Solidarity Behaviour

We investigate the effect of individual differences in justice sensitivity (JS) on giving behaviour in a solidarity game, its potential moderators and the underlying psychological mechanisms. In a solidarity game, subjects are asked to make decisions about transferring money to other players in a case in which they win a random draw and the other players lose. The results of four studies showed the following: (1) JS explains a unique portion of variance in the solidarity behaviour, above and beyond other basic personality dimensions (e.g. HEXACO model); (2) its effect does not depend on contextual factors, such as the degree of moral entitlement not to share and the possibility to attribute the recipients' disadvantage to their own responsibility; and (3) individual differences in the emotions anticipated in response to different outcomes of a random draw and the cognitive interpretation of the allocation situation partially mediate the effect of JS on solidarity behaviour. We also provided the first evidence that JS predicts individual differences in the propensity to take away others' earnings (antisocial behaviour). The results are discussed with respect to the research on personality as a predictor of prosocial and antisocial behaviour. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Roadway justice – Making angry drivers,happy drivers

The enforcement of traffic laws by police punishes law violators and reduces the likelihood that other drivers will violate laws via vicariously perceived punishment. The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of punishment of violators on the feelings of anger and happiness in witnesses and victims. A sample of 279 individuals was exposed to four animated simulations of unjust driving behavior. Participants indicated how angry and happy the behaviors made them feel. Participants then indicated feelings of happiness and anger a second time, after being informed that the violator had been punished. While inconsistent, analyses generally indicated that perceived punishment reduced feelings of anger and increased feelings of happiness. In addition to increasing roadway safety, the current study shows the importance of active police enforcement, which could positively impact the emotional states of victims and witnesses of unjust driving behavior.     

Role ambiguity and self-efficacy: The moderating effects of goal orientation and procedural justice

The present study investigated variables that moderated the relationship between role ambiguity and self-efficacy. Results of a field study found support for the moderating role of learning goal orientation, such that the relationship between role ambiguity and self-efficacy was weaker when learning goal orientation was high. In addition, we found that procedural justice moderated the role ambiguity—self-efficacy relationship, such that the relationship was stronger when procedural justice was high. However, contrary to our prediction, avoiding goal orientation did not interact with role ambiguity to predict self-efficacy. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.     

Justice and the human alarm system: The impact of exclamation points and flashing lights on the justice judgment process

Extending theory within the justice domain and work on the human alarm system, the current paper argues that the process by which justice judgments are formed may be influenced reliably by the activation of psychological systems that people use to detect and handle alarming situations. Building on this analysis, it is further proposed that if this line of reasoning is true then presenting alarm-related stimuli, such as exclamation points and flashing lights, to people should lead to more extreme judgments about subsequent justice-related events than not presenting these alarming stimuli. Findings collected using different experimental paradigms provide evidence supporting these predictions both inside and outside the psychology lab. Implications for the social psychology of justice and the human alarm system literature are discussed.     

For love or money? How activation of relational versus instrumental concerns affects reactions to decision-making procedures

We investigate how the direct activation of relational versus instrumental concerns affects reactions to decisions made by an authority. It is demonstrated that when instrumental concerns are experimentally induced, people’s evaluations of the authority (Studies 1 and 2) as well as their intentions to protest (Study 3) are more strongly affected by how the procedures used by the authority affect anticipated outcomes (i.e., whether procedures are favorably or unfavorably inaccurate) than when relational concerns are activated. By contrast, authority evaluations (Study 2) and protest intentions (Study 3) are more strongly affected by whether procedures used are fair (accurate) or unfair (inaccurate) when relational (versus instrumental) concerns are activated. These findings extend previous research where relational versus instrumental concerns were inferred, but not directly examined, to explain differences in responses to authorities’ decisions.     

Moral spillovers: The effect of moral violations on deviant behavior

Two experiments investigated whether outcomes that violate people’s moral standards increase their deviant behavior (the moral spillover effect). In Study 1, participants with and without a moral mandate (i.e., a strong attitude rooted in moral conviction) read about a legal trial in which the outcome supported, opposed or was unrelated to their moral mandate. Relative to when outcomes supported moral mandates, when outcomes opposed moral mandates people judged the outcome to be less fair, were more angry, were less willing to accept the outcome, and were more likely to take a borrowed pen. In Study 2, participants who recalled another person’s moral violation were more likely to cheat on an experimental task relative to angry or neutral condition participants. Taken together, results provide evidence for moral spillover: outcomes that violate moral standards increase deviant behavior.     

Giving Sense to Generosity-Ethics: A Philosophical Reading of Dostoevsky’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Idiot</Emphasis>

This paper presents a philosophical reading of “The Idiot”, which perceives its main protagonist, Prince Myshkin, as a literary hero who chooses the path of generosity. The paper exposes Dostoevsky’s generosity-ethics against the background of Christian ethics, virtue ethics, and the Nietzschean notion of generosity; it further analyzes the problematic aspects of Myshkin’s version of generosity-ethics, and discusses several possible explanations of its catastrophic outcomes in the novel. The paper consists of three parts. The first part presents the rich and profound sense that Dostoevsky gives to generosity-ethics in the novel, while showing the good it may bring to one’s life. The second part exposes the dangers and the limits of generosity-ethics, because of which the Prince may be referred to as “an idiot”. The third and final part reevaluates generosity-ethics, discusses its relation to reason, and puts forth another version of generosity-ethics that may overcome most of the flaws in Myshkin’s generosity. Offering such a philosophical reading of this great literary work of art, the paper also says some things about the relation between philosophy and literature, and aims at a fruitful dialogue between the two.