1. MASSEY UNIVERSITY
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School of Management (Albany)
Lecturer’s Name
Dr Wendelin Küpers
Paper Name
Advances Research Methods
in Business
Paper Number
152.781
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Family Name Given Name(s) ID number Student Signature Date
JOY JACKSON 13088772 17-04-2013
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number
For Office Only
Marker’s Name: Mark:…………………………….
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Date Assignment due
17-04-2013

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EMOTION IN ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE
(SEMESTER 01, 2013)
Lecturer: Dr. Wendelin Küpers
Jackson Joy
Student ID: 13088772
152.781 - ADVANCED RESEARCH METHODS
Email: joyjackson1988@yahoo.in
Word count: 1030
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
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What categories of injustice are perceived by the managers and employees in the
context of organisational change?
What are the behavioural and emotional reactions or responses to these perceived
injustices of organisational change?
How are the change recipient and the change leader influenced by the perceived
injustices of organisational change?
LITERATURE REVIEW:
‘Not only is change ubiquitous and unpredictable, but almost everyone also assumes
that its velocity will increase exponentially’ (Cameroon, 2006, p. 317). From the
point of view of every manager, an organisation needs to adapt to changes internally
and externally and improve performance by avoiding all threats. The management
tends to presume that the way employees respond on a psychological basis should be
rational, and the emotional reactions are not rational (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996).
Eventually most of them fail to foresee the emotional responses to organisational
change, but in some cases even if they do, they may ignore them. Emotions are
usually rational, and they have cognitive antecedents.
The highlight of this paper is to apprehend the different types of injustice perceived
by the managers and how these affect the emotions of the employees. These types of
injustices were infrequently probed in previous qualitative studies. This paper also
seeks in finding what would have led to this perception along with the behavioural
and emotional responses to these injustices of organisational change.
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Injustice of Organisational change
The sense of injustice- the anger, the bitterness, the fear, the helplessness; these are
the emotions that all people have experienced on the job, some more frequently than
others, and some more intensely than others (Bies & Tripp, 2002, p. 204). Folger and
Skarlicki (2008) emphasis that justice has conducive, comparative and moral
propellers that access the perceptions of organisational change (Keifer, 2005). For
the employees experiencing favourable or unfavourable outcomes, change turns out
to be an emotional event. Keifer (2005) claimed that most emotional responses to
change were cynical and due to injustice. The recipient of the change can be either
the employee experiencing injustice or the manager/leader being sandwiched by the
organisation and staff.
Fifty years of research on Organisational justice with the foundations from Homans
(1961) and Adams (1965) has reinforced the theory into four different categories:
distributive, procedural, interactional and systemic. Distributive justice refers to the
perceived veracity of outcomes after the execution of some managerial decisions
(Adams, 1965; Homans, 1961). These outcomes can be either economic-
psychological (Brockner & Wiensenfeld, 1996) or extrinsic- intrinsic (Lester &
Kickul, 2001). A change in an organisation can conceive both types of outcomes, for
instance an employee can be relocated to a less sophisticated office and may be
treated with lower status. Thus, the result of change stimulates negative emotional
responses when an employee finds himself in a worse experience when compared
with others. When outcomes are perceived as unfair, employees judge the veracity of
managerial decision process that directed the outcome (Tyler & Lind, 1992). This is
referred to as Procedural Justice. Tyler and Lind (1992) alights that the perception of
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veracity of outcomes are appreciated when the participation of employees are also
included in the decision making process, which thereby would develop a positive
emotional response. Pragmatic research has proved how procedural injustice has led
to negative emotions by shaping negative perceptions of change. For instance, a
victim of downsizing was likely to accuse the organisation or the manger for the
unfavourable outcomes. Similarly, the survivors of downsizing who perceived
procedural injustice expressed lower job satisfaction and lower affective commitment
(Kernan & Hanges, 2002). Interactional Justice as the name implies refer to the way
in which the managers or the superiors clearly communicate about the outcomes and
procedures with the employees and respect them (Novelli, Kirkman & Shapiro,
1995). Many employees who turned out to be the survivors of downsizing have
complained that their superiors had provided inadequate information (Brennan &
Skarlicki, 2004). Interactional justice can be classified as interpersonal justice
(respect and dignity by which employees are treated) and informational justice
(precision and timing of the information provided by the superior). Both of them can
blend to each other. For instance in Bryant`s (2006, p. 253) interviewees reported
that when they questioned their manager about the prospective of their job, the
manager either did not know or sometimes became scurrilous. Systemic Justice is a
principal term for the perceived veracity of many outcomes over time, and it is a
feature of the organisational culture (Beugre & Baron, 2001).
The perception of each form of justice has its own unique consequence and so the
combined effect can be intricate. It was found that the victims of downsizing
pinpointed on distributive justice while the survivors focussed on procedural justice
(Clay-Warner et al., 2005). Barclay et al. (2005) found that interpersonal justice was
related to the perception of behaviour of a specific manager where as procedural
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justice was concerned on organisational approaches where the former evoked more
intense emotions. Similarly, interactional justice evoked more negative emotions
when compared with distributive justice. Matheny and Smollan (2005) emphasized
that emotions predominates when the change recipient concentrates on justice in any
form instead of the outcomes. It is understood that the perceptions of a form of
justice can alleviate perceptions of another form of injustice, so a form of injustice
infuriate another (Brockner & Wiensenfeld, 1996). Turnley & Feldman (1999)
stresses that Organisational change often alters the psychological contract and
injustice arouses negative responses mainly when the organisation fails to render the
perceived responsibilities. Psychological contract is the employees’ instinctive
perception of the common agreement amid the management and the employee
(Morrison & Robinson, 1997).
Conclusion:
Gilliland (2008) says that the enforcer of justice and injustice i.e. the manager or
leader also has to deal with a series of negative emotions like guilt, anxiety and
concerns. It is believed that the manager does not often deliberately act unfairly with
the employees, but they too have intellectual and emotional motives. The manager
may not have the discretion to issue the knowledge that the employee wants due to
marketing or business reasons, and as a result even candour managers may be forced
by organisational authority and get stranded in a moral dilemma. Thus, it is shown
that injustice due to many facets of organisational change does alleviate negative
emotional responses both among the recipient of the change and those managing the
change. If the manager can spend extra time in demonstrating interpersonal justice to
the employees who think the change was not fair, then this approach can reduce
negative reactions.
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References
Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances
in experimental social psychology, (pp. 267-299). New York, NY: Academic
Press.
Barclay, L. J., Skarlicki, D. P., & Pugh, S. D. (2005). Exploring the role of emotions
in injustice perceptions and retaliation. Journal of Applied Psychology,
90(4), 629-642.
Beugre, C. D., & Baron, R. A. (2001). Perceptions of systemic justice: The effects
of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Journal of Applied
Social Psychology, 31(2), 324-339.
Bies, R. J., & Tripp, T. M. (2002). ‘Hot flashes, open wounds’: Injustice and the
tyranny of its emotions. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki
(Eds.), Emerging perspectives on managing organizational justice (pp. 203-
221). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
Brennan, A., & Skarlicki, D. P. (2004). Personality and Perceived Justice as
Predictors of Survivors’ Reactions Following Downsizing1. Journal of
Applied Social Psychology, 34(6), 1306-1328.
Brockner, J., & Wiesenfeld, B. M. (1996). An integrative framework for explaining
reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures.
Psychological Bulletin, 120(2), 189-208.
Bryant, M. (2006). Talking about change: Understanding employee responses
through qualitative research. Management Decision, 44(2), 246-258.
Cameron, K. (2006). Good or Not Bad: Standards and Ethics in Managing Change.
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(3), 317-323.
Clay-Warner, J., Hegtvedt, K. A., & Roman, P. (2005). Procedural justice,
distributive justice: How experiences with downsizing condition their impact
on organizational commitment. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 89-102.
Folger, R., & Skarlicki, D. P. (2008). The evolutionary bases of deontic justice. In
S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Justice, morality,
and social responsibility (pp. 29-62). Charlotte, NC: New Age Publishing.
Gilliland, S. (2008). Peeling the justice onion: Ten essential questions. In S. W.
Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Justice, Morality, and
Social Responsibility, (pp. 291-311). Charlotte, NC: New Age Publishing.
Homans, G. C. (1961). Social behavior: Its elementary forms. Taylor & Francis.
Kernan, M. C., & Hanges, P. J. (2002). Survivor reactions to reorganization:
Antecedents and consequences of procedural, interpersonal, and
informational justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(5), 916-927.
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Kiefer, T. (2005). Feeling bad: Antecedents and consequences of negative
emotions in ongoing change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(8),
875-897.
Lester, S. W., & Kickul, J. (2001). Psychological contracts in the 21st century:
What employees value most and how well organizations are responding to
these expectations. Human Resource Planning, 24(1), 10-21.
Matheny, J. A., & Smollan, R. K. (2005). Taking change to heart: Exploring
emotions experienced through change events. Research on Emotion in
Organizations, 1, 173-210.
Morrison, E. W., & Robinson, S. L. (1997). When employees feel betrayed: A
model of how psychological contract violation develops. Academy of
management Review, 226-256.
Novelli, L., Kirkman, B. L., & Shapiro, D. L. (1995). Effective implementation of
organizational change: An organizational justice perspective. In C. L.
Cooper & D. M. Rousseau (Ed.), Trends in organizational behavior (Vol.
2, pp. 15-36), Chichester, NY: Wiley.
Turnley, W. H., & Feldman, D. C. (1999). The impact of psychological contract
violations on exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect. Human relations, 52(7), 895-
922.
Tyler, T. R., & Lind, E. A. (1992). A relational model of authority in groups.
Advances in experimental social psychology, 25, 115-191.
Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective Events Theory: A theoretical
discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective
experiences at work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 18, 1-74.
Annotated Bibliography
Barclay, L. J., Skarlicki, D. P., & Pugh, S. D. (2005). Exploring the role of emotions
in injustice perceptions and retaliation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4),
629-642.
This article focuses on understanding the emotions within an organisational justice
framework by examining the relationship between the responses to procedural justice
and the responses to interactional justice by considering two emotions: inward-
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focussed emotions and outwards-focussed emotions. The author also investigates
whether the negative emotions due to these outcomes lead to the perceived injustice
and how the two related to each other. The article also pin points the reason for
employees to blame the manager or management for the low outcomes was the low
level of procedural or interactional justice.
This source was useful in interpreting that the negative emotions were conceived due
to the perceived injustice of organisational change where previous researches failed
to notice or understand this. In this study, the author is successful in finding out the
outcome favourability collaborates with both the procedural and interactional justice
to predict the participants’ emotions. The sample size for this study was large with
173 participants who experienced being laid off as a part of business strategies such
as cost cutting or restructuring. However, the limitation of this study was that since
the participants for this study were all from the same organisation, these findings
could not be generalised for other organisations.
This article was useful to my literature review on emotional responses to
organisational injustice. It provided me ample evidence for considering emotions
arising due to the outcomes of procedural and interactional justice. This study helped
me understand that emotions are a key part of organisational life, and there is a
theoretical correlation between (in)justice and emotions. It also provided me with the
method by which one could carry out a qualitative approach to find out how an
outcome of an organisation influences the emotions of an employee.
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Beugre, C. D., & Baron, R. A. (2001). Perceptions of systemic justice: The effects of
distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 31(2), 324-339.
This study seeks to demonstrate how the employees’ perceptions of the procedural
and interactional justice of organisational change led to perceptions of systemic
justice. It also made it evident that perceptions of distributive justice do not predict
perceptions of systemic justice where this used to be a hypothesis in early research
that perceptions of distributive justice could positively influence perceptions of
systemic justice. The author states that the fairness of an organisation as a whole
could be evaluated by an employee based on his perceptions of the distributive,
procedural and interactional justice. The author also talks about the inducing
perceptions of high level of organisational justice among the employees so as to yield
positive outcomes that will eventually lead to positive emotional responses.
This study was conducted on a sample of 232 employees chosen from different
organisations, and the result showed that the employees’ perceptions of systemic
justice were influenced by the perceptions of procedural and interactions justice only
and not on distributive justice. Unlike other studies, where the samples were taken
from the same organisation, in this study the samples were from different
organisations. The finding could be generalised for all organisations, and this was a
significant advantage of this study over other past researches and makes this source
reliable for my literature review. The author emphasis that justice issues are
substantial because the manner in which people are considered in organizations
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exerts a mass effect on the emotional responses, irrespective of other objective
features of the working environment.
This article was useful in identifying the two types of perceived justice namely
procedural and interactional that positively predicted perceptions of systemic justice.
The study helped me understand that if an organisation is keen to induce a higher
level of perceived systemic justice on its employees, then it would be better to focus
more on the procedural and interactional justice instead of distributive justice. The
implications of the emotional experience caused due to the perceived injustice of
organisational change did relate to the discussion of my literature review.
Brennan, A., & Skarlicki, D. P. (2004). Personality and Perceived Justice as
Predictors of Survivors’ Reactions Following Downsizing1. Journal of
Applied Social Psychology, 34(6), 1306-1328.
The purpose of this article was to investigate whether downsizing (leading to layoffs)
due to organisational strategy results in negative emotional on the survivors’ attitude
and behavior as it does to the victims. The author examines what role the personality
and organisational justice had over the survivors’ response to downsizing. They
study was successful in finding that the relationship between the survivors perceived
interactional justice and the organisational commitment was moderated by the angry
hostility. This study investigates if the personality predicts the survivors’ perceptions
of the veracity of downsizing.
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The potential strengths of this study over other studies regarding the same topic is
that, this study includes the use of rating scale and several different organisations
thus minimize the common method variance and increasing the generalizability,
respectively. The study was carried out with a sample of 93 employees from 5
different organisations that had downsized over the previous 2 years. Yet another
strength of this study was the use of facets instead of global personality dimensions.
This made the result of the study more precise and accurate thus making it reliable
for my literature review.
The article was helpful in the compiling of my literature review as the study made
me understand that it is not just the victim employees of the downsizing who are
affected emotionally but at the same time the surviving employees also react
negatively to the same. These findings of this study were nearly related to my
research questions. The author discussed the way in which employees who survive
an organisation change responds and how this can be regulated so that the change
initiative is successful.
Clay-Warner, J., Hegtvedt, K. A., & Roman, P. (2005). Procedural justice,
distributive justice: How experiences with downsizing condition their impact
on organizational commitment. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 89-102.
This main objective of this article is to add on to the previous research demonstrating
that both the distributive justice and procedural justice are key predictors of work
behaviour. The authors define that the distributive justice predicts the commitment of
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the organisation among the victim employees of downsizing where as procedural
justice predicts among the unaffected and survivors of downsizing. They also
propose that it is when the employee perceives that he or she is being treated fairly;
they reveal higher satisfaction and positive emotional responses. This study examines
how the employees experience with the organisational change his or her perceptions
about the distributive and procedural justice.
The major limitations of this article include – use of a small number of sample of
downsizing victims (n=87) because of which the ability to seek statistical differences
between distributive and procedural justice coefficients is limited as a larger number
of victim samples are necessary for the same. This study only showcases one type of
employee’s previous experience (downsizing) by which the whole study is carried
out, but it is also understood that other experiences also exert similar results. Even
though the study has such limitations it does become a suitable source for my
literature review as it does tell about the different types of perceived justice and their
effect on organisational commitment.
This article was useful in understanding how the organisations change affected the
employee’s workplace attitude. The article also explains the consequences that the
organisation would have to suffer when the effect of the perceived injustice on the
workers were also considered which includes less productivity, lowered commitment
to organisation and resistance to change. The key purpose of the study was well
related to my literature review. It was also found in the study that with respect to the
organisational commitment, procedural justice accounts for about 5 times more than
distributive justice.
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Gilliland, S. (2008). Peeling the justice onion: Ten essential questions. In S. W.
Gilliland, D. D. Steiner & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Justice, Morality, and
Social Responsibility, (pp. 291-311). Charlotte, NC: New Age Publishing.
The study seeks to demonstrate the level of justice in an organisation. The Author
talks about the organisational justice theories that influence the work attitude and
behaviour. The article highlights the connection between the employees, the
management and how the emotions of an employee are correlated with the
management decisions. Morality, social exchange relationships and trust are the key
issues that an employee faces with the change organisation. The author illustrates the
different motives underlying justice and how these maximize the valued personal
outcomes. They study shows that all the motives comes from the employees
perception of justice.
This source was useful in identifying the relation between morality and justice,
social responsibility and justice and to identify the social phenomena of justice. This
source assumes that, these relations are pivotal in the understanding of emotions in
an organisations context. The study also shows the qualitative methods by which an
organisation can recover when the employees have experienced injustice. The mode
of study in this source is based on the organisational perspective where other
researches usually examine the recovery process from the victim’s perspective. The
study also shows how influential and salient is justice is for the employee and how an
employee can be motivated by justice when the managerial decisions are unfair.
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This study was of immense use to my literature review as it highlighted on the
negative emotional responses of employees to justice violations in an organisation. It
also helped me to understand that some employees recover more readily than others
from the emotional dilemma. The author also suggests that a motivation by ability
perspective may be used to analyze the individual differences in victim recovery.
Kernan, M. C., & Hanges, P. J. (2002). Survivor reactions to reorganization:
Antecedents and consequences of procedural, interpersonal, and
informational justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(5), 916-927.
The article focuses on the reactions of employees to reorganisation based on his or
her perceptions of the procedural, interpersonal and informational justice. This study
correlates the three types of perceived justice with each other. The authors also
investigated on the antecedents that predict interpersonal justice and informational
fairness. They also found out that the organisational reconfiguration not only affects
the employees removed from the organisation but also affects the surviving
employees as well. They also added that the perceived injustice in organisation plays
a large role on the emotions responses of the employees affected by the organisation
reconfiguration. In this article, the authors investigated the extent to which the
perceived injustice is related to the employee’s emotional reactions.
The sample size of this study is large with 163 respondents to the initial survey and
194 respondents to the follow up survey. The strength of this study was that the
survey was carried out using a 7-point Likert scale thus minimising the common
method variance and but since all the respondents were from the same company, the
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result could not be generalized. The limitations of this study were that there were
other variables (like the nature of job changes resulting from reorganisation) that
influenced the reactions of reorganisation, were not included in this study. These
variables need further investigation on how they influence the reactions, and this
brings the scope for future research.
This article was extremely useful in the compilation of my literature review as the
study focussed on emotions responses to the injustice in an organisation and how the
managers need to minimize the negative emotional reactions as a result of workplace
reorganisation. This study also made me understand that there was a greater
possibility for employees to bear another type of restructuring after experiencing an
initial organisational reconfiguration. The authors emphasised that it is mandatory in
the present era, where organisation changes were more common, to study about the
variables that facilitate positive and negative emotional responses.
Kiefer, T. (2005). Feeling bad: Antecedents and consequences of negative emotions
in ongoing change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(8), 875-897
They key purpose of this article was to explore the way how negative emotions are
developed during an organisational change. The author also found out through a
regressions and path analysis that every ongoing organisational change is affiliated
with negative emotions and these negative emotions were responsible for the
employees’ lack of trust on the management and employees withdrawal from the
organisation, both turning out to have a negative feedback on the organisation. The
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study also identified the three antecedents of negative emotions namely the
perceptions of the inadequate working conditions, fairness of organisational
treatment and future of employee in the organisation. This study focuses on the
different ways in which these negative emotions are getting originated during
change.
The study was carried by making employees participate in a questionnaire in two
phases. The first phase included cross-sectional samples on 155 participants which
were used to test all hypotheses and the second was a follow-up sample of 76
participants that tested the impact of the emotions over time. Since the total
respondent samples were big the results were more accurate and thus this article
became a key source to my literature review. This study has some limitations that
include the omission of certain context variables (like history of prior changes,
employee agreement) relating to organisation change. The author also suggests that
this can be an area for the future research.
This article was of great use to my literature review as it clearly pictured what
emotions are getting conceived during a change and how these emotions affect the
employee as well as the employer. The author discussed the limitations of this study
and how further research can be applied to investigate deeper into this research. The
author insisted on the fact that emotions should not be considered as expressions of
resistance to change but as the consequences of injustice in the organisation.
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