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Summary: Managerial trickle‐down effects refer to the tendency for supervisors to treat their subordinates in ways analogous to how they have been treated by their own bosses. Although trickle‐down effects are widely documented, including in the justice literature, less is known about the conditions under which they are more versus less likely to emerge. Across two studies, we examined how supervisors' tendencies to exhibit interpersonal fairness are interactively determined by the informational fairness they receive from managers above them and supervisors' sense of power. Study 1 was a multisource survey conducted in organizational settings. Study 2 was an experiment in which we manipulated the informational fairness that supervisors received from managers and supervisors' sense of power. The results of both studies showed that the positive relationship between the informational fairness received from managers and supervisors' enactment of interpersonal fairness was stronger among supervisors who had a lower sense of power. This interactive effect did not emerge on supervisors' enactment of other forms of fairness (distributive, procedural, and informational), consistent with prior theory and research showing that interpersonal fairness allows for greater discretion than other forms of fairness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed as are limitations and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central tenet of justice theory and research is that people prefer decisions to be made with processes that adhere to principles of fairness. The present research identified a boundary condition for this general tendency. Across three studies, we found that people who experienced non-contingent success had less of a desire for fair processes relative to their counterparts who experienced contingent success. Furthermore, results attributable to other independent variables, namely regulatory focus in Study 2 and self-affirmation in Study 3, shed light on the underlying mechanism: people experience non-contingent success as self-threatening and lower their desire for processes that adhere to fairness in the service of protecting themselves against the threat. Theoretical implications are discussed as are limitations of the studies and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Process fairness refers to people's perceptions of how fairly they are treated in the course of interacting with another party. Conceptually distinct from outcome fairness, it subsumes procedural fairness, interpersonal fairness, and the like. As recipients of decisions, we generally want to be treated with more rather than with less process fairness. As agents of decisions, we often would rather plan and implement them with more rather than with less process fairness. Whereas the organizational justice literature generally extols the virtues of high process fairness, recent theory and research suggest that when it comes to process fairness, more is not always better than less. We discuss why, when, and how people's general tendency to desire higher process fairness over lower process fairness may be attenuated, eliminated, or even reversed. Our analysis is organized by the notion that under some conditions, receiving or acting with high process fairness prevents people from satisfying some of their basic psychological motives, such as their needs to feel good about themselves or to maintain a sense of control. Future research directions also are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present studies were designed to delineate when procedural fairness would be more versus less likely to be inversely related to people’s self-evaluations in response to unfavorable outcomes. Prior theory and research have shown that: (1) the more that people assign psychological significance to unfavorable outcomes, the more likely are their self-evaluations to be adversely affected by such outcomes, and (2) people who are more prevention focused in their self-regulatory orientation assign greater psychological significance to unfavorable outcomes. Consequently, we predicted that in the face of unfavorable outcomes, the inverse relationship between procedural fairness and self-evaluations would be more likely to emerge among those who are more prevention focused. Using different conceptions or operationalizations of all of the independent and dependent variables, we found support for this prediction in three studies, spanning different cultures, contexts, and methodologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]