Inequity In Social Exchange

By J. Adams. 1965

Publisher Summary The process of exchange is almost continual in human interactions, and appears to have characteristics peculiar to itself, and to generate affect, motivation, and behavior that cannot be predicted unless exchange processes are understood. This chapter describes two major concepts relating to the perception of justice and injustice; the concept of relative deprivation and the complementary concept of relative gratification. All dissatisfaction and low morale are related to a person's suffering injustice in social exchanges. However, a significant portion of cases can be usefully explained by invoking injustice as an explanatory concept. In the theory of inequity, both the antecedents and consequences of perceived injustice have been stated in terms that permit quite specific predictions to be made about the behavior of persons entering social exchanges. Relative deprivation and distributive justice, as theoretical concepts, specify some of the conditions that arouse perceptions of injustice and complementarily, the conditions that lead men to feel that their relations with others are just. The need for much additional research notwithstanding, the theoretical analyses that have been made of injustice in social exchanges should result not only in a better general understanding of the phenomenon, but should lead to a degree of social control not previously possible. The experience of injustice need not be an accepted fact of life.

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Citations in the corpus

How Do Fairness Definitions Fare?: Examining Public Attitudes Towards Algorithmic Definitions of Fairness (2018, methodology): “Broadly, we investigate a concept of fairness known as distributive justice, or fairness regarding the outcomes [1, 2].”
Does Total Rewards Reduce the Core Employees' Turnover Intention? (2013, background): “Combined Homans’ social exchange theory and Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory, Adams (1965) proposed the well-known distributive justice theory. The theory pointed out that the employees not only care about the absolute justice of the allocation results, they are more concerned with the relati”
The moderating role of organizational culture in the relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors (2011, background): “This view is theoretically rooted in equity theory (Adams, 1965), which states that employees evaluate their work situations by cognitively comparing their inputs to the organization with the outcomes they receive in return.”
Fairness, Feelings, and Ethical Decision- Making: Consequences of Violating Community Standards of Fairness (2007, background): “The theoretical mechanism proposed by these studies draws on Adams’ (1965) equity theory.”
Organizational Justice in an Exchange Framework: Clarifying Organizational Justice Distinctions (2006, methodology): “Justice perceptions have also been found to have implications for a variety of employee behaviors such as job performance (Adams, 1965; Lind, Kanfer, & Earley, 1990), pilfering (Greenberg, 1993b), and organizational citizenship behaviors (Moorman, 1991; Niehoff & Moorman, 1993). Much of the early ju”
Just Feelings? The Role of Affect in the Formation of Organizational Fairness Judgments (2011, background): “Thus, for instance, people may judge the fairness of outcomes by comparing their own outcomes to others’ (Adams, 1965), and judge the fairness of procedures by comparing them to some universal moral standard (Blau, 1986), or to an imagined, alternative reality (Folger, 1987; Folger & Cropanzano, 200”
The role of justice and social exchange relationships in workplace deviance: Test of a mediated model (2010, background): “Distributive justice concerns the employee’s perception of the extent to which the outcomes he or she receives are fair (Adams, 1965; Greenberg, 1990).”
The Love of Money, Satisfaction, and the Protestant Work Ethic: Money Profiles Among Univesity Professors in the U.S.A. and Spain (2004, background): “Further, equity theory suggests that people consider their output/input ratio and compare their ratio with that of a referent (Adams, 1965).”
Organizational Justice and Job Outcomes: Moderating Role of Islamic Work Ethic (2015, methodology): “Organizational justice has its roots in Adams (1965) equity”