Cugueró-Escofet, Natàlia, Fortin, Marion and Canela, Miguel-Angel (2014) Righting the wrong for third parties -- how monetary compensation, procedure changes and apologies restore justice for observers of injustice. Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 122 (n° 2). pp. 253-268.

Abstract

People react negatively not only to injustices they personally endure but also to injustices that they observe as ystanders at work—and typically, people observe more injustices than they personally experience. It is therefore important to understand how organizations can restore observers’ perceptions of justice after an injustice has occurred. In our paper, we employ a policy capturing design o test and compare the restorative power of monetary compensation, procedure changes and apologies, alone and in combination, from the perspective of third parties. We extend revious research on remedies by including different degrees f compensation and procedural changes, by comparing the ffects of sincere versus insincere apologies and by including apologies from additional sources. The results indicate that monetary compensation, procedure changes, and incere apologies all have a significant and positive effect on how observers perceive the restoration of justice. in sincere apologies, on the other hand, have no significant effect on restoration for third parties. Procedural changes ere found to have the strongest remedial effects, a remedy arely included in previous research. One interpretation of his finding could be that observers of injustice prefer olutions that are not short sighted: changing procedures voids future injustices that could affect other people. We ound that combinations of remedies, such that the presence of a second remedy strengthens the effect of the first remedy, are particularly effective. Our findings regarding interactions underline the importance of studying and ministering remedies in conjunction with each other.