Chapter 5: A Third-Party Observer’s Reactions to Employee Mistreatment:Motivational and Cognitive Processes in Deservingness Assessments

We discuss how deservingness can be a useful construct for understanding third-party reactions to employee mistreatment. Deservingness reflects observers’ sense that the employee is more or less deserving of his or her fate by virtue of the employee’s actions or who the employee is, which in turn affects fairness judgments. Studies of deservingness indicate that judgments can be a function of whether the relevant information is processed implicitly and in the service of motivational concerns or processed explicitly and rationally. In the context of employee mistreatment, implicit, motivated processing can give rise to reactions such as victim blaming or psychological distancing from the victim. Under conditions that favor more rational and explicit processing, observers more thoroughly consider antecedents of mistreatment and arrive at judgments that are consistent with more rational models of blame assignment and deservingness. The implications of a deservingness analysis of observer reactions for both theory and practice are considered.

A report by Ernst and Young on the sporting goods giant Nike’s employment practices in third world countries found numerous occasions of employee physical and sexual abuse. In one incident, a manager taped a woman’s mouth shut for talking during working hours. On another occasion, a supervisor hit a worker on the back of the head with a Nike shoe. Subsequent to the report’s release, Nike’s sales decreased and its stock experienced a significant drop in price. Executives at Nike credit part of the company’s significant loss in 1998 third quarter sales to its negative image (Saporito, 1998).