Organizational Justice, Ethics, and Stress Management

Organizational Justice and Equity Theory

Equity theory is a narrow extension of exchange theory. Organizational justice involves making and communicating decisions that are perceived as fair. There are three primary types of justice:

• Distributive justice is concerned with outcome fairness, determined by standard allocation such as equity (付出多少收获多少 - effort and reward), equality (人人平等 - everyone is equal), or need.
• Procedural justice is concerned with process fairness, including adherence to rules to ensure everyone is heard (确保每个人都被听到). It ensures that the decision is unbiased and based on full, accurate information. Procedural justice can compensate for a lack of distributive justice.
• Interactional justice is concerned with treatment fairness, involving interpersonal rules (being treated with dignity and respect) and informational rules (being given complete, relevant, and truthful information).

Ethics and Moral Decision-Making

An ethical dilemma is a conflict between two "right vs. right" scenarios. The process of moral decision-making involves several stages:

1. Moral awareness: The recognition that a moral issue exists in a situation. This can be influenced by ethical sensitivity (an individual difference that can be trained) and moral intensity (the magnitude of consequences).
2. Moral judgment: Accurately identifying the morally right course of action.
3. Moral intent: The degree of moral motivation. The opposite of moral intent is moral disengagement.

Understanding Stress and Coping Mechanisms

A stressor is the cause, stress is the response, and strain is the outcome. Cognitive appraisal theory explains why different people have different responses to stress. There are two main types of stressors:

• Challenge stressors (e.g., deadlines, complexity, responsibility): These can actually improve performance.
• Hindrance stressors (e.g., lack of resources, role ambiguity, overload, role conflict, daily hassles): These distract from work and do not improve performance.

Coping with Burnout

Compassion is key to coping with sustained stress and strain. Self-compassion entails: 1. Self-kindness; 2. Remembering common humanity; 3. Mindfulness. Other general ways to cope include remembering you are in control, building ability through "pressure practice," and building confidence through positive self-talk and encouragement from others. According to Selye, there are three stages of stress: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. The amount of negative emotion that daily hassles evoke predicts the level of stress we experience. Emotion regulation helps us cope with these stressors.

Networking and Organizational Lenses

In networking, strong ties are direct personal connections, while weak ties are indirect personal connections (aka Tom Holland). It is important to focus on information exchange first and be a giver, not a taker. To understand an organization, we use three organizational lenses:

• Strategic design lens (tasks, roles, information): Focuses on how tasks and information are designed, how they are sorted into roles, and how the organization can be rationally optimized to achieve its goals.
• Cultural lens (norms, values): Examines how history has shaped the assumptions and meanings of different people, how certain practices become rituals, and how stories and artifacts shape the feel of an organization.
• Political lens (power, influence, networks): Looks at how power and influence are distributed and wielded, and how multiple stakeholders express their different preferences and get involved in decisions.

Political Skill and Workplace Behavior

Political skill is the ability to influence others through the ability to relate well, alter behavior depending upon the situation, and inspire confidence. Political behavior is not good when it is aimed at achieving personal goals rather than organizational goals. Certain work environments can cause unethical behavior. For example, using euphemisms (e.g., "right-sizing" instead of "laying people off") is a mechanism of moral disengagement. Furthermore, when the only way to achieve demanding goals is to cheat, it causes unethical behavior.

Well-being and Power Dynamics

There are two types of well-being: Hedonic well-being comes from experiences that maximize pleasure and minimize pain, while eudaimonic well-being comes from experiences that enable personal growth and self-fulfillment, often associated with a "flow state" of complete immersion. Finally, in today's "flat" organizations, expert power may be the most important form of power. Ultimately, Trust = Power.