Rejection and organization justice

Subject Areas : روان درمانگری

Mahin Tavakoli ¹ , Warren Thorngate ²

1 - Ph D Student Carleton University, Ottawa
2 - PhD Carleton University, Ottawa

Received: 2015-06-07 Accepted : 2015-06-07 Published : 2005-09-23

Keywords: Organizational Justice, Rejection, competition, negative feelings,

Abstract :

Content analysis of semi-structured   
 adults about losing an important organizational competition examined how three types of social justice : procedural, distributive, and interactional, affect the experience of rejection. All participants reacted to losing with feeling of sandness, anger, frustration, and a tendency to criticize the decision –  


 participants also withdrew from subsequent competitions. These negative feelings motivated all respondents engage in social comparison with the winner, and use the comparison to judge whether the decision – making process was fair. Social comparisons that led to a judgment of being unfairly treated, or that showed the winner to be less qualified, intensified the respondents’ negative feelings towards the judges and retarded recovery from negative feeling and thoughts associated with the rejection or loss. To cope with these negative feelings, participants adopted various psychological and behavior strategies such as finding meaning or benefit in the rejection or loss, and trying other competitions. Persistent negative feelings were related to receiving impolite, disrespectful, or insufficient feedback about competition results. Managerial implications are discussed.