Gender Effects in Injustice Perceptions: An Experiment on Error Evaluation and Effort Provision

Abstract

As performances are rarely observable, evaluation errors may occur. We observe how women react to evaluation errors and wrongful reward assessment in organizations. In particular, we focus on severity and leniency errors in the evaluation of performances. Severity errors occur when workers do not receive the reward although they exerted high effort and reached the target. Leniency errors occur when workers are rewarded even when they exerted low effort and did not reach the target. They are both detrimental to motivation and effort provision. Our findings from a laboratory experiment show that, when gender is considered, asymmetric results are shown for men and women. Whereas males drop their contribution more under severity errors rather than leniency errors, female tend to do the opposite. We discuss these results contributing to the literature on organizational justice by investigating the role of gender in the perception of justice within organizations.