The Effect of a Consciously Set and a Primed Goal on Fair Behavior

• Date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21743
• Author: Robert Folger,Gary P. Latham,Deshani B. Ganegoda
• Published date: 01 September 2016

Human Resource Management, September–October 2016, Vol. 55, No. 5. Pp. 789–807

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21743

Correspondence to: Deshani B. Ganegoda, Research School of Management, Australian National University,

Canberra, ACT0200, Australia, Phone: (026) 125-6180, Fax: (026) 125-9982, d.ganegoda@anu.edu.au

THE EFFECT OF A CONSCIOUSLY

SET AND A PRIMED GOAL

ON FAIR BEHAVIOR

DESHANI B. GANEGODA, GARY P. LATHAM,

ANDROBERT FOLGER

Three experiments were conducted to test whether an enhanced degree of fair

behavior could be obtained by making justice a goal, whether consciously set,

primed, or both. Each experiment assessed fairness in a competitive negotiation

context. All participants, across the three experiments, were asked to attain a

base-level performance goal. The fi rst experiment examined how a negotiation is

affected by a consciously set goal for fairness as well as a primed fairness goal.

The results revealed that both the conscious and the primed goal enhanced a

participant’s fairness. The second and third experiments examined the underly-

ing mediating mechanisms of the effects found in the fi rst experiment. Overall,

the results of three experiments indicate that both conscious and primed goals,

individually or in combination, can increase fair behavior by enhancing justice

saliency. ©2015Wiley Periodicals,Inc.

Keywords: primed goals, organizational justice, goal setting, motivation

The mountain of evidence regarding

reactions to fair and unfair behavior con-

trasts with the dearth of research on

the antecedents of fair behavior. Human

resource (HR) knowledge about sources of

motivation to behave fairly or unfairly, therefore,

remains limited. Highlighting this asymmetry, a

growing number of human resource management

(HRM) scholars have argued for more research

on fairness as a dependent variable—that is, the

importance of considering fairness from the per-

spective of the actor rather than the victim or

a third party (e.g., Ambrose & Schminke, 2009;

Colquitt & Greenberg, 2003; Folger & Skarlicki,

2001; Patient & Skarlicki, 2010; Scott, Colquitt,

& Zapata-Phelan, 2007). Given the importance of

this topic in HRM, the present research addresses

the following question: “How can individuals be

motivated to behave fairly?”

Justice motivation has been conceptualized as

the “degree to which justice concerns dominate

other concerns in motivating a particular behav-

ior in a particular setting” (Ambrose & Schminke,

2009, p. 235). In an organizational context,

motives such as increased profit often compete

with the motivation to be fair and, thereby, con-

stitute potential “roadblocks” to fair behavior

(Ambrose & Schminke, 2009). Thus, a way in

which fair behavior can be enhanced might be to

strengthen the justice motive relative to compet-

ing motives.

The present research examined whether jus-

tice motivation can be strengthened by enhanc-

ing fairness salience either (a) by setting a

conscious goal for fairness in ways consistent

with goal-setting theory (e.g., Locke & Latham,

1990, 2013) or (b) by priming a goal for fairness

in the subconscious,1 consistent with research on

790 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2016

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

The social motives

literature ties

egoistic motivation

to competitive

behavior, and pro-

social motivation to

cooperative behavior.

Fairness is a concept

that permeates

both competition

and cooperation;

therefore, the

dependent variable in

the present research

captures a broader

phenomenon than

the competitive

and cooperative

behaviors examined

in studies on social

motives.

others’ perceptions of the actor’s behavior. This

distinction is important because appearing fair

does not always equate with being fair (Skarlicki

& Latham, 2005).

Finally, we examined a mediation process

by which a fairness goal and a fairness prime

can increase justice salience, and, thereby, fair

behavior. Overall, drawing on goal-setting theory

(Locke & Latham, 1990, 2013) and the automatic-

ity model (Bargh, 1990), the present three experi-

ments expand the scope of organizational justice

research by focusing on conscious and primed

goals as possible antecedents of fairness.

Removing Roadblocks to Fairness

Enhancing fairness requires understanding what

induces fair behavior. In that regard, Ambrose and

Schminke’s (2009) “roadblocks to justice” model

links processes that can precede fair behavior to

related factors that can impede it. In the present

study, we focus on two interrelated processes: jus-

tice awareness (recognizing the relevance of being

fair) and justice motivation (having fairness not

overshadowed by other considerations). These

two processes jointly provided a context for influ-

ence by situational factors as operationalized in

our three experiments.

Ambrose and Schminke (2009) argued that

organizational demands (e.g., profits) act as road-

blocks when they deprioritize justice. For exam-

ple, Whiteside and Barclay (2014) related the

roadblock model to a manager’s bad-news deliv-

ery as a context in which fairness can lack high

priority because of the time and effort it might

require (cf. Folger & Skarlicki, 1998). They found

that fairness salience could offset low trait empa-

thy as an impediment to interactional justice (cf.

Patient & Skarlicki, 2010). Justice salience, there-

fore, reduces the influence of other goals as pri-

orities. Salience in this instance refers to cognitive

accessibility that is not necessarily an aspect of

conscious experience (cf. Van Prooijen, Van den

Bos, & Wilke, 2002). By making justice salient, we

expected an increase in an individual’s motiva-

tion to be fair. Specifically, we enhanced justice

saliency based on a consciously set goal, a primed

fairness goal, or both.

Fairness and Goal-Setting Theory

Goal-setting theory (Locke & Latham, 2002) states

that goals affect behavior in four ways: (1) goals

make relevant information salient—they direct

attention away from goal irrelevant information;

(2) goals energize individuals to expend effort to

attain a given outcome; (3) goals increase persis-

tence; and (4) goals affect behavior by motivating

individuals to discover and apply goal-relevant

the automaticity model (e.g., Bargh, 1990). Three

experiments were designed to test whether a goal

for fairness—consciously set or primed in the sub-

conscious—can counteract self-serving tendencies

that are often associated with negotiations (Huber

& Neale, 1987; Zetik & Stuhlmacher, 2002).

These experiments make a number of con-

tributions to HRM. First, previous research has

focused not on the actor’s motivation per se, but

on specific behaviors that can improve an evalua-

tor’s perceptions of fairness (e.g., Cole

& Latham, 1997; Greenberg, 2006;

Skarlicki & Latham, 1996, 1997). In

contrast, the present research explic-

itly focused on the actor’s motivation

to act fairly.

Second, we tested the effec-

tiveness of setting a conscious or a

primed goal for fairness as a means

to increase an individual’s justice

motivation. Although a number

of studies on social motives have

examined ways in which individu-

als can be made to behave pro-

socially toward others (Beersma

& De Dreu, 2003) and be less ego-

centric (Paese & Yonker, 2001),

the primary focus of those studies

has been on finding ways to make

individuals more oriented toward

another party’s needs and out-

comes (see De Dreu, Weingart, &

Kwon, 2000, for a meta-analysis).

In contrast, the focus of the pres-

ent research was not on how an

individual relates to another indi-

vidual’s needs, but on his or her

motivation to adhere to the norm of

fairness. This distinction is impor-

tant. The social motives literature

ties egoistic motivation to competi-

tive behavior, and prosocial moti-

vation to cooperative behavior.

Fairness is a concept that permeates

both competition and cooperation;

therefore, the dependent variable

in the present research captures

a broader phenomenon than the

competitive and cooperative behaviors exam-

ined in studies on social motives. The present

study is also different from previous studies that

manipulated social motives (prosocial vs. ego-

istic) and measured the subsequent impact on

participants’ outcomes and their experiences of

fairness (e.g., Beersma & De Dreu, 2003). This

is because the focus of the present research was

on the fair behavior of the actor, as opposed to