Chapter 7: Why Managers Don’t Always do the Right Thing When Delivering Bad News: The Roles of Empathy, Self-Esteem, and Moral Development in Interactional Fairness

Whereas most research on organizational justice has tended to look at fair treatment as an independent variable, this chapter focuses on interactional justice as a dependent variable. Specifically, we examine psychological factors that encourage or impede a critical aspect of fair treatment: how bad news is communicated to the victims. Our model proposes that communication of bad news is influenced by communicator empathy (in terms of other-oriented empathic concern and self-oriented personal distress), feelings of self-worth, and moral maturity. We provide managerial implications and suggestions for future research.