Abstract
Using a survey of 393 employees who were natives and residents of China, Japan, and South Korea, we examined the extent to which employees from different countries within East Asia experience distributive justice when they perceived that their work outcomes relative to a referent other (i.e., someone with similar “inputs” such as educational background and/or job responsibilities) were (1) equally poor, (2) equally favorable, (3) more poor, or (4) more favorable. As predicted, we found that when employees perceived themselves relative to a referent other to be recipients of more favorable outcomes (i.e., pay, job security), Chinese and Korean employees were less likely than Japanese employees to experience distributive injustice. We also found that these differences were partially mediated by employees’ level of materialism. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 267–299). New York: Academic Press.
Alston, J. P. (1989). Wa, guanxi, and inwha: Managerial principles in Japan, China, and Korea. Business Horizons, 32(2), 26–30.
Babcock, L., & Loewenstein, G. (1997). Explaining bargaining impasse: The role of self-serving biases. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11(1), 109–126.
Bacha, E., & Walker, S. (2013). The relationship between transformational leadership and followers’ perceptions of fairness. Journal of Business Ethics, 116(3), 667–680.
Bhagat, R. S., & McQuaid, S. J. (1982). The role of subjective culture in organizations: A review and directions for future research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 67(5), 653–686.
Brislin, R. W. (1986). The wording and translation of research instruments. In W. J. Lonner & J. W. Berry (Eds.), Field methods in cross-cultural research (pp. 137–164). Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Brockner, J., Greenberg, J., Brockner, A., Bortz, J., Davy, J., & Carter, C. (1986). Layoffs, equity theory, and work performance: Further evidence of the impact of survivor guilt. Academy of Management Journal, 29(2), 373–384.
Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York: Academic Press.
Chambers, J. R., & Windschitl, P. D. (2004). Biases in social comparative judgments: The role of nonmotivated factors in above-average and comparative-optimism effects. Psychological Bulletin, 130(5), 813–838.
Chen, C. C., Choi, J., & Chi, S. (2002). Making justice sense of local-expatriate compensation disparity: Mitigation by local referents, ideological explanations, and interpersonal sensitivity in China-foreign joint ventures. Academy of Management Journal, 45(4), 807–817.
Choi, J., & Chen, C. C. (2007). The relationships of distributive justice and compensation system fairness to employee attitudes in international joint ventures. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28(6), 687–703.
Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millenium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of overall fairness research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(1), 425–445.
Cropanzano, R., & Ambrose, M. L. (2001). Procedural and distributive justice are more similar than you think: A monistic perspective and a research agenda. In J. Greenberg & R. Cropanzano (Eds.), Advances in organizational justice (pp. 119–151). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Crosby, F. J. (1976). A model of egoistical relative deprivation. Psychological Review, 83(2), 85–113.
Dwyer, J. H. (1983). Statistical models for the social and behavioral sciences. New York: Oxford University Press.
Edwards, J. R. (1994). The study of congruence in organizational behavior research: Critique and a proposed alternative. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 58(1), 51–100.
Edwards, J. R. (2002). Alternatives to difference scores: Polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology. In F. Drasgow & N. W. Schmitt (Eds.), Advances in measurement and data analysis (pp. 350–400). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Edwards, J. R., & Lambert, L. S. (2007). Methods for integrating moderation and mediation: A general analytical framework using moderated path analysis. Psychological Methods, 12(1), 1–22.
Edwards, J. R., & Parry, M. E. (1993). On the use of polynomial regression equations as an alternative to difference scores in organizational research. Academy of Management Journal, 36(6), 1577–1613.
Evans, M. G. (1985). A Monte Carlo study of the effects of correlated method variance in moderated multiple regression analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process, 36(3), 305–323.
Farh, J. L., Earley, P. C., & Lin, S. C. (1997). Impetus for action: A cultural analysis of justice and organizational citizenship behavior in Chinese society. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(3), 421–444.
Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114(3), 817–868.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(1), 117–140.
Folger, R., & Cropanzano, R. (1998). Organizational justice and human resource management. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Greenberg, J. (1993). The social side of fairness: Interpersonal and informational classes of organizational justice. In R. Cropanzano (Ed.), Justice in the workplace: Approaching fairness in human resource management (pp. 79–103). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Greenberg, J., Ashton-James, C. E., & Ashkanasy, N. M. (2007). Social comparison processes in organizations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102(1), 22–41.
Harcourt, M., Hannay, M., & Lam, H. (2013). Distributive justice, employment-at-will and just- cause dismissal. Journal of Business Ethics, 115(2), 311–325.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V. (2004). Leadership, culture, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Huseman, R. C., Hatfield, J. D., & Miles, E. W. (1987). A new perspective on equity theory: The equity sensitivity construct. Academy of Management Review, 12(2), 222–234.
Inglehart, R. (1981). Post-materialism in an environment of insecurity. American Political Science Review, 75(4), 880–900.
Kim, T.-Y., & Leung, K. (2007). Forming and reacting to overall fairness: A cross-cultural comparison. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 104(1), 83–95.
Kim, T.-Y., Weber, T., Leung, K., & Muramoto, Y. (2010). Perceived fairness of pay: Importance of task versus maintenance inputs in Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. Management and Organization Review, 6(1), 31–54.
Kruglanski, A. W., & Mayseless, O. (1990). Classic and current social comparison research: Expanding the perspective. Psychological Bulletin, 108(2), 195–208.
Kulik, C. T., & Ambrose, M. L. (1992). Personal and situational determinants of referent choice. Academy of Management Review, 17(2), 212–237.
Leung, K., & Bond, M. H. (1982). How Chinese and Americans reward task-related contributions: A preliminary study. Psychologia: An International Journal of Psychology in the Orient, 25(1), 32–39.
Leung, K., Smith, B. P., Wang, Z., & Sun, H. (1996). Job satisfaction in joint venture hotels in China: An organizational justice analysis. Journal of International Business Studies, 27(5), 947–962.
Leung, K., Su, S., & Morris, M. W. (2001). When is criticism not constructive? The roles of fairness perceptions and dispositional attributions in employee acceptance of critical supervisory feedback. Human Relations, 54(9), 1155–1187.
Leventhal, G. S. (1980). What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. In K. J. Gergen, M. S. Greenberg, & R. H. Willis (Eds.), Social exchange: Advances in theory and research (pp. 27–55). New York: Plenum.
Lind, E. A., Kray, L., & Thompson, L. (1998). The social construction of injustice: Fairness judgments in response to own and others’ unfair treatment by authorities. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 75(1), 1–22.
Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum.
Loewenstein, G., Issacharoff, S., Camerer, C., & Babcock, L. (1992). Self-serving assessments of fairness and pretrial bargaining. Journal of Legal Studies, 22(1), 135–159.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253.
Martin, J. (1981). Relative deprivation: A theory of distributive injustice for an era of shrinking resources. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 3, pp. 53–107). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
McCain, S. L. C., Tsai, H., & Bellino, N. (2010). Organizational justice, employees’ ethical behavior, and job satisfaction in the casino industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 22(7), 992–1009.
Messick, D. M., & Sentis, K. (1983). Fairness, preference, and fairness biases. In D. M. Messick & K. S. Cook (Eds.), Equity theory: Psychological and sociological perspectives (pp. 61–94). New York: Praeger.
Pierce, J. R., & Aguinis, H. (2013). The too-much-of-a-good-thing effect in management. Journal of Management, 39(2), 313–338.
Rice, R. W., McFarlin, D. B., Hunt, R. G., & Near, J. P. (1985). Organizational work and the perceived quality of life: Toward a conceptual model. Academy of Management Review, 10(2), 296–310.
Richins, M. L., & Dawson, S. (1992). A consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Consumer Research, 19(3), 303–316.
Shao, R., Rupp, D., Skarlicki, D. P., & Jones, K. (2013). Managing justice across cultures: A meta-analytic review, management framework, and cross-cultural research agenda. Journal of Management, 13(1), 263–301.
Siemsen, E., Roth, A., & Oliveira, P. (2010). Common method bias in regression models with linear, quadratic, and interaction effects. Organizational Research Methods, 13(3), 456–476.
Super, D. E. (1973). The work values inventory. In D. G. Zytowski (Ed.), Contemporary approaches to interest measurement (pp. 189–205). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Tversky, A. (1977). Features of similarity. Psychological Review, 84(4), 327–352.
Tyler, T. R., & Lind, E. A. (1992). A relational model of authority in groups. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 115–191). New York: Academic Press.
Vandenberg, R. J., & Lance, C. E. (2000). A review and synthesis of the measurement invariance literature, Suggestions, practices, and recommendations for organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 3(1), 4–69.
Weiss, H. M., Suckow, K., & Cropanzano, R. (1999). Effects of justice conditions on discrete emotions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(5), 786–794.
Wood, S., Braeken, J., & Niven, K. (2013). Discrimination and well-being in organizations: Testing the differential power and organizational justice theories of workplace aggression. Journal of Business Ethics, 115(3), 617–634.
World Trade Organization. (2009). World trade developments. Retrieved August 24, 2010, from World Trade Organization Web site: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2009e/section1_e/its09_highlights1_e.pdf.
Yeganeh, H., Su, Z., & Chrysostome, E. V. M. (2004). A critical review of epistemological and methodological issues in cross-cultural research. Journal of Comparative International Management, 7(2), 66–86.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kim, TY., Edwards, J.R. & Shapiro, D.L. Social Comparison and Distributive Justice: East Asia Differences. J Bus Ethics 132, 401–414 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2326-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2326-1