Chapter 6: Employee Stress, Injustice, and the Dual Position of the Boss

According to recent census data, 25 percent of Dutch employees who enter into the disablement program have reported having problems with their bosses. Vermunt and Steensma (1996, 2001) have developed the Injustice-Stress Theory (1ST) to explain stress phenomena and subsequent absenteeism resulting from supervisors’ unjust behavior. In the present chapter, I provide some preliminary data that support our previous ideas. Moreover, the chapter describes the dual position of the boss as an important factor for why bosses may maintain their unjust behavior. An underlying assumption is that the boss is confronted with two forms of fairness, one form has to do with allocating resources to subordinates (proactive justice; Greenberg. 1996), and the other is reactive justice and has to do with the evaluation of allocation behavior of the boss’ superior. It is argued further that because of the dual position of the boss, appearing fair towards his/her subordinates may be preferred to actually being fair, given the potential for negative consequences in terms of subordinates’ behavior. The paper concludes with some suggestions for improvement.