Justice in Organisational change

For example, if there is uncertainty within the organization during a merging process employees tend to participate less and show less willingness to cooperate, which could endanger the integration of the merger or at least prolong the process. According to Melkonian et al., (2011) the cooperation of employees is crucial to the success of the merger and mentions the importance of employees investing time and effort into actually trying to integrate the two corporate cultures. Furthermore, Melkonian et al., (2011) states, that when an organization is changing, an employee’s perception of justice can have a large impact on the employee’s attitude and behaviour at work.

Past research has shown that employee attitude, as well as organizational justice plays a large part in times of organizational change and given the importance of changing and developing in business, it is understandable why this topic is an important area to study (Tyler and De Cremer, 2005).

In short, we will discuss how companies, by focusing on certain factors, might be able to improve their employees’ willingness to cooperate when organizational change such as when merger is occurring.

Over the last 20 years’ organizational change and organizational justice have been widely researched and one could argue that there are several themes which reoccur within the literature. In short, there seems to be a consensus within the scientific community that if leaders act in fair and respectful way, it will lead to employees or followers more susceptible to organizational change. For example, Tyler and De Cremer, (2005) claims that if a leader acts in a fair way, the leader will, by the followers, be seen as more competent and receive an increase in their legitimacy to manage, which in turn leads to followers more accepting to change. Furthermore, Shin et al., (2015) found that there was a higher acceptance or support for organizational change if employees felt committed to change.

According to Shin et al., (2015) there are four main dimensions of organizational justice, these are distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice and informational justice. Where distributive justice could be described as the connection between an employees work in comparison to the outcome of such work (Shin et al., 2015) (Rodell and Colquitt, 2009). According to Tyler and De Cremer, (2005) distributive justice also includes the employee influence on the changes which the organization makes related to outcomes and opportunities related to the employees. In their previous research they argue that having high distributive justice is an effective method when trying to make one’s employees work harder. They argue that including the employee’s perspective when making organizational changes individuals will enhance cooperation and affect employees so that they will be more inclined to see the goals of the company as their own (Tyler and De Cremer, 2005)

Procedural justice could in comparison be described as the extent of the distribution of the outcome and if the method of distribution is free of bios and consistent (Shin et al., 2015). Furthermore Tyler and De Cremer (2005) clarifies that Procedural justice can vary depending on the organization. For example, in a certain companies, giving a specific person the right to vote or the right to opinion could be considering procedural justice, while in other organizations procedural justice might relate more to treating employees consistent over time (Tyler and De Cremer, 2005). Korsgaard et al., (2002) instead describes procedural justice as a way for managers to minimize potential negative effects of future or current organizational changes.

The third type of justice is interpersonal justice which is referred to as the level of which mangers treat their employees with respect and fairness (Shin et al., 2015) and Rodell and Colquitt, (2009) argues that it also involves the way that manager’s communicate with their employees.

Finally informational justice is the extent to which managers and leaders are able to motivate and justify a specific method or procedure with relevant information (Shin et al., 2015). Informational justice could also include the extent of managers could motivate their decisions with honest justifications (Rodell and Colquitt, 2009).

At the same time Rodell and Colquitt, (2009) argue that there also exists a type of anticipatory justice and procedural justice where the first could be described as the perception or the reflection on the perception of future justice experiences. For example, an employee might have a qualified guess or a perception what justice will be enacted in a specific event, but also understand how themselves would react to that type of justice. It is possible to argue that this concept refers to justice which is yet to come, thus is a type of foreseen justice where the employees are sensing how the justice will be enacted beforehand. The second, procedural justice, is more connected to the perceived fairness of the managers or leader’s decision making process, and to what extent that these decisions are ethical (Rodell and Colquitt, 2009).

Shin et al., (2015) argues that certain types of justice climates, where justice climate is any type of justice shared among a groups of employees or a group of managers, could increase the way employees reacts to organizational change. They argue that for example, that there is a positive relationship between an organizations informational justice and the employee’s commitment to change.

In 2004, one of the largest airline groups was underway of being created. Air France was buying KLM. The merger consisted of ca 70000 employees, who of the majority were placed in Europe. As a French company, Air France had typical French values and valued national identity and a structured organization. KLM on the other hand had ca 30000 employees and had chosen to focus on the customer and tried to create a low-cost organization. Values included democratic decisions and a customer oriented organization. The question now turns to the managers of how to motivate, ensure or to maximize the odds of the merging being successful (Melkonian et al., 2011).

In general, companies which merge try to do so in order to increase profits and also the long term survival of the new firm (Tyler and De Cremer, 2005). Saying that, there is no guarantee that a merger between two firms will be successful, especially since the employees have each of those firms have probably have different perceptions of justice and a different prototype of a leader. As such, as a manager during a merger might encounter employees which do not want to take part the organizational change, such as the case between KLM and Air France. Managers which wish to help with the merging process would need to engage their employees into the new culture and find the right tools to motivate them towards it (Tyler and De Cremer, 2005).

It is possible to argue that the difference between the companies is large, but at same time, both firms are middle size multinational corporations focusing on air travel. There is in my opinion a high likelihood that certain procedures will be similar between the firms, but there will also be differences, and it is within changing these differences that a managers trust or legitimacy will be challenged. Drawing from the research from Tyler and De Cremer, (2005) one could argue that a manager the position which has previously acted in a fair way, should theoretically be regarded by his/her followers as competent as well as have a high legitimacy to manage, as such this manager could easier implement the change, in comparison to perhaps a leader or manager who has only been employed for a short while.

If one though looks specially at the justice perspective, it is important for managers to focus on all the different types of justices, distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice and informational justice as well as anticipatory justice and procedural justice. As creating a justice climate will increase the odds of creating a successful merger, as the employees will be more inclined to change. In this specific case, there is a possibility that perception of what distributive justice might differ between individuals from the two firms, and it interesting to note there is not much research on topic. However Tyler and De Cremer, (2005) mentions that distributive justice could include more employee involvement in decisions making processes, but does not mention on how to solve the issue in a merger, as one might have two opposing sides. I propose that when facing a merger, the manager should try to pick individuals which are seen as informal leaders within both groups, as these induvial already have built up some type of legitimacy to power, and as such other induvial are likely to follow them and be satisfied or motivated by the decision. As such I agree with theory that managers that have built legitimacy with his/followers before making decisions will have a higher probability of ensuring that his/her employees agree with organizational changes, but argue that one could achieve the same effect, but without having built that legitimacy oneself. One could in lemans terms say that a manager could piggyback on the legitimacy of informal leader and thus achieve the same effect without the same time and effort.

This paper can be seen as an attempt to offer several meaningful tools for managers who are or soon will undergo an organizational change. Saying that, the author believes it to be important to not only work with trying to motivate employees or try to create a better work environment during an organizational change, but rather argue that it should be continuous project. I argue that firms should continuously try to improve its justice climate as it will lead to a higher degree of change acceptance amongst the employees, despite that no change has yet taken place. One could argue that firms should work proactively with organizational justice. This can be seen to be in line with previous research such as Shin et al., (2015) who argues that managers should frequently request feedback from the employees regarding upcoming organizational changes.

In short, I argue that managers should try to integrate their employees in all major organizational decisions taken within a firm or a merger, as well taken the time and effort to explain the decisions or changes which will take place. But as previously mentioned, I argue that a manager can piggyback on the legitimacy of informal leaders in order to achieve the same effect as if they themselves had been involved in create a justice climate over time, and thus achieve legitimacy to power through that. Despite which alternative is chosen, it is likely that a justice climate leads to an environment where the employees are more inclined to change, and the earlier a manager can start to build this type of relationship with their followers, the better, even though it could be achieved in a different manner.

Korsgaard, M. A., Sapienza, H. J. and Schweiger, D. M. (2002) Beaten before begun: The role of procedural justice in planning change, Journal of Management, 28 (4), pp. 497–516. DOI: 10.1177/014920630202800402.

Melkonian, T., Monin, P. and Noorderhaven, N. G. (2011) Distributive justice, procedural justice, exemplarity, and employees’ willingness to cooperate in M&A integration processes: An analysis of the air France-KLM merger, Human Resource Management, 50 (6), pp. 809–837. DOI: 10.1002/hrm.20456.

Rodell, J. B. and Colquitt, J. A. (2009) Looking ahead in times of uncertainty: The role of anticipatory justice in an organizational change context, Journal of Applied Psychology, 94 (4), pp. 989–1002. DOI: 10.1037/a0015351.

Shin, J., Seo, M.., Shapiro, D. L. and Taylor, M. S. (2015) Maintaining employees‘ commitment to organizational change: The role of leaders’ informational justice and Transformational leadership, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 51 (4), pp. 501–528. DOI: 10.1177/0021886315603123.

Tyler, T. R. and De Cremer, D. (2005) Process-based leadership: Fair procedures and reactions to organizational change, The Leadership Quarterly, 16 (4), pp. 529–545. DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2005.06.001.