Chapter 5: An Accessible Identity Approach to Understanding Fairness in Organizational Settings

An accessible identity model (AIM) of justice reasoning is introduced and applied to the controversy of whether family-friendly policies in the workplace are fair. The AIM has two core propositions: (a) people are most likely to think about justice and fairness when self-relevant values and goals are highly accessible or activated, and (b) how people define fairness depends on which aspect of the self (i.e., the material, social, or moral) dominates the working self-concept. Using this model, one can derive hypotheses about who spontaneously thinks about the fairness of family-friendly policies and why. Moreover, one can account for why proponents and opponents of these policies have such different claims about whether family-friendly policies are fair or unfair. Finally, the AIM makes novel predictions about how to resolve organizational conflicts about fairness about family-friendly policies as well as other issues where claims of possible injustice arise.