Is Justice the Same for Everyone? Examining Fairness Items Using Multiple-group Analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine whether fairness assessed in a widely used multisource instrument written by practitioners possessed a similar factor structure as fairness measured in academic literature, and whether different groups based on their relationship to the ratee (e.g., peers, subordinates, supervisors) perceived a similar structure to the construct.Design/methodology/approachMultisource data were collected for 141 managers from a variety of organizations across the United States, who participated in a leadership development program offered by Personnel Decisions International (PDI), a global management consulting firm.FindingsThe study results show that fairness measured with a widely used multisource instrument indeed assesses the same construct as that examined in the academic literature. Peers, subordinates, and supervisors perceived fairness similarly, whereas self-reports of fairness differed, suggesting that they function as a systematic source of variance in the measurement of fairness.ImplicationsThe findings in this study demonstrate that leaders can be confident that their constituents are all conceptualizing fairness the same way, such that differences are meaningful and not due to differences in the understanding of the items in the instrument.Originality/valueThe proliferation of the use of multisource feedback instruments in leadership development programs has facilitated the assessment of the fairness of managers. This study shows that perceptions of fairness of the manager as reported by his or her constituencies (e.g., peers, supervisor, subordinates) change very little as a function of who is doing the perceiving, which heretofore has not been shown.