Abstract
A view of organizations as social contracts recognizes self-interests of individuals but does not explain the occurrence of unselfish contributions such as are denoted by “organizational citizenship behavior” (OCB). We propose that the concept of fairness, as applied to systems of relational contracts, provides a high-leverage construct for understanding the fusion of self-interest and self-denial. A review of the empirical literature suggests that fairness, rather than job satisfaction, accounts for OCB; and that the evidence points toward procedural and interactional fairness as both empirically and conceptually critical in the fairness-OCB relationship. However, we explain why distributive fairness still should not be deemphasized.
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Organ, D.W., Moorman, R.H. Fairness and organizational citizenship behavior: What are the connections?. Soc Just Res 6, 5–18 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01048730
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01048730