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Will I Cooperate? The Moderating Role of Informational Distance on Justice Reasoning

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Abstract

This study examines the influence of a dimension of a strategic organizational change context—namely informational distance—on employees’ justice expectations and their behavioral intentions toward the change. Drawing on research from organizational justice and from construal level theory, we hypothesize that informational distance, i.e., the extent to which employees feel knowledgeable about the coming change, affects the relative influence of the anticipatory justice facets and anticipatory overall justice in predicting support for change. Consistent with the hypotheses, results from participants of a merger suggest that when employees feel less knowledgeable about the future change (high-informational distance), overall anticipatory justice predicts their intention to cooperate with the change. However, when employees feel more knowledgeable about the future change (low-informational distance), anticipatory justice facets predict intention to cooperate. Implications for research on organizational justice and change as well as considerations for practice are discussed.

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Notes

  1. We ran multiple regression tests to confirm the SEM results. These results are generally consistent with those of the SEM: (1) intention to cooperate is only associated with anticipatory overall justice, anticipatory interpersonal justice, and marginally with anticipatory procedural justice; and (2) with a confidence level set at 95 %, bootstrapped bias-corrected confidence intervals also support H1a and, partially, H1b (the results were supported for distributive justice and interpersonal justice only).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EMLYON Business School, 23 Avenue Guy de Collongue, 69130, Ecully, France

    Tessa Melkonian & Guillaume Soenen

  2. University of Central Florida, UCF College of Business Administration, 4000 Central Florida Blvd., P. O. Box 161400, Orlando, FL, 32816, USA

    Maureen Ambrose

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  1. Tessa Melkonian
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  2. Guillaume Soenen
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  3. Maureen Ambrose
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Correspondence to Tessa Melkonian.

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Melkonian, T., Soenen, G. & Ambrose, M. Will I Cooperate? The Moderating Role of Informational Distance on Justice Reasoning. J Bus Ethics 137, 663–675 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2744-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2744-8

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