Building Houses on Rocks: The Role of the Ethical Infrastructure in Organizations

We present and discuss a theoretical model of an organization's ethical infrastructure, defined as the organizational elements that contribute to an organization's ethical effectiveness. We propose that the infrastructure is composed of both formal and informal elements—including communication, surveillance, and sanctioning systems—as well as organizational climates for ethics, respect, and justice. We discuss the nature of the relationship between these elements and ethical behavior, the relative strength of each of these elements, and their impact on each other. Theoretical and practical implications of this model are presented.     

Employee concerns regarding self-managing work teams: A multidimensional justice perspective

The increase in the use of self-managing work teams in organizations has been accompanied by growing employee resistance and concern about what such dramatic changes mean to workers. Using an organizational justice perspective, this chapter identifies and examines employee concerns about the move to self-managing work teams in two Fortune 500 organizations. Employee fairness concerns regarding three types of justice—distributive, procedural, and interactional—are highlighted. Findings suggest that to address employee fairness concerns regarding the move to self-managing work teams, managers should act distributively, procedurally, and interactionally justly.[Self-managing work teams are] the right way and the only way to be productive.—Self-managing work team member in a Fortune 500 company     

Trends in the Experience of Injustice: Justice Indexes About Earnings in Six Societies, 1991–1996

This paper examines trends in the experience of injustice in six societies—Bulgaria, Czech Republic, East and West Germany, Hungary, and Russia—between 1991 and 1996. Using data collected by the International Social Justice Project, we estimate the justice index, JI1, and its decomposition into the amount of injustice attributable to poverty and the amount of injustice attributable to inequality; and we also examine gender differences in the justice index and its decomposition. The justice index is a summary measure of individuals' justice evaluations, and therefore the paper also takes a preliminary look at the two basic quantities that underlie the justice evaluation—actual earnings and just earnings—and their determinants, investigating, for the men of East and West Germany, the actual and just returns to schooling and experience in 1991 and 1996.     

Putting the group back into intergroup justice studies

This paper argues that groups have traditionally been conceptualized in two major ways—subjective and objective—which correspond to the different conceptions found within the disciplines of psychology and sociology. We argue that the term group is frequently used too carelessly since rarely are readers informed of the conception of group to which the findings are relevant. Findings generated from studies involving one conception of group may not allow valid inferences to groups conceptualized differently. We suggest that a more sociological conception of group is needed to balance the current emphasis based in the psychological tradition. We believe that such a difference in conceptualizing groups could well lead to very different speculations about the nature of intergroup justice relations.     

Exploring the Justice of Punishments: Framing, Expressiveness, and the Just Prison Sentence

This paper examines views about the justice of punishments for offenders convicted of five major types of offenses—drug, violent, corporate, property, and victimless crimes. We focus on the just punishment and the just dispersion in the punishment distribution, together with observers' framing and expressiveness; and we test for interrespondent differences. Data are drawn from six U.S. samples interviewed in 1982, a probability sample of the adult population of a major city and samples of five special groups, prison inmates, police officers, law-school and high-school students, and Job Corps trainees. Respondents' judgments were obtained using Rossi's factorial survey method. Fictitious offenders were constructed by randomly combining offender, offense, and victim characteristics; and respondents used a line-matching technique to rate the justice of punishments randomly assigned to fictitious offenders. Analysis is guided by the framework for empirical justice analysis, which provides an integrated set of procedures for estimation and testing. Results indicate that respondents in all samples save one disagree with each other on the just punishment; and the six samples yield four distinct average orderings of just prison sentences. However, large majorities in all six samples find the dispersion in the punishments experimentally put into the vignette world to be too small relative to the just dispersion. More broadly, comparing the results obtained here from the probability sample of a major city with results from a comparable study on the justice of earnings, we find two interesting symmetries—approximately 1% of the general population is contrarian, regarding earnings as a bad and time in prison as a good; and approximately 92% to 94% of the population regard earnings inequality as too high and prison-time inequality as too low. Finally, this study provides additional evidence that the general population in the United States exhibits independence of mind informing their ideas about what constitutes the just earnings and the just punishment.     

Social Inequality and the Perceived Income Justice Gap

This paper attempts to answer the question whether justice evaluations of income inequality in a society are determined more by country differences or by the social position an observer occupies. In very general terms what we study is whether, in shaping justice beliefs, cultural factors are more important than social-structural ones, or vice versa. In view of transformation societies, country differences are conflated with differences in the transformation processes the countries are experiencing. This is why we distinguish different types of transmations with regard to the postcommunist countries of Eastern and Central Europe testing empirically whether these transformation types exert influence on the justice beliefs, and how this influence compares to that of positional effects. With International Social Justice Project (ISJP) data of 1991 and 1996, we study the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria, East Germany, and—as a western referent society—West Germany. Main results are that in the early phase of transformation the different transformation types as well as social positions matter in shaping justice evaluations, over time, however, the types of transformation clearly lose influence. In 1996, compared to 5 years earlier, the countries have become similar in that most of the variation in the perception of the income justice must now be attributed to the positional differences of individuals. We conclude that the characteristics of the transformation processes decrease in importance for determining public views about social justice. In this respect, the transformation societies of Eastern and Central Europe may well be on the route to becoming more like western societies.     

Medicalization and social justice

Most social justice critiques of medical care focus upon the allocation of extant, but scarce, resources. In contrast to that focus, this article explores the preallocative arena of factors which shape the supply and availability of medical care. We identify four such factors: (1)medicalization — the tendency to regard as biologically caused various human problems which were in earlier eras ignored or attributed to other causes; (2)social inclusion — the bringing of economically deprived and socially marginal groups into participation in the medical care system; (3)biomedical transcendence — the elevation of biomedically derived concepts of human function into a social and personal world view; and (4)health absolutism — the ideology which holds individuals accountable for their own health and which, contrary to the thrust of the other factors, deemphasizes access and social equity for professionally provided medical care. While these forces all enhance the place of health as a social value, it is by no means certain that they will lead to a society which is more medically just. The article concludes with an appeal for critical analysis of the processes which shape both the medical care system and the broad social concern with medical care.     

Distributing Adventitious Resources: The Effects of Relationship and Grouping

This study examines the effect of two variables—relationship and grouping—on the distribution of resources which are unearned, or adventitious. Strangers and acquaintances made decisions about the distribution of an adventitious resource either as individual decision makers or as members of a small group. Results indicate that acquaintances were more likely to share the resource than were strangers, and that group members were more likely to share than were individual allocators. Equality received the highest overall rating as a norm for distributing the adventitious resource. At the same time, subjects expected allocators to keep the resource instead of applying an equality distribution norm.     

The Environmental Justice Movement: Equitable Allocation of the Costs and Benefits of Environmental Management Outcomes

We present a review of theoretical and methodological advances in the social scientific literature on environmental inequality/racism and argue for new directions in research efforts that pay more attention to (1) the historical forces driving environmental justice conflicts; (2) the complex role of stakeholders in these struggles; (3) the role of social inequality, particularly the trade-offs between environmental protection and social equity; and (4) the impact of social movement activity on the state of environmental protection. Drawing on a case study of an environmental justice conflict in the United States, we find that environmental inequality impacts many actors with often contradictory and cross-cutting allegiances. These struggles therefore become a moving drama—a process—rather than a cross-sectional outcome. We conclude with an analysis of environmental inequality on a global scale and argue that the role of transnational capital remains largely untheorized in the literature. We suggest new models for explaining environmental inequality's causes and consequences.     

Explaining Controversial Organizational Decisions: To Legitimize the Means or the Ends?

We investigated the influence of information legitimizing the means—or decision procedures—versus information legitimizing the ends—or the decision outcome—on observers' reactions to an undesirable organizational decision. One hundred and sixty-one employees read an account of a company layoff occurring in a nearby city. The content was experimentally manipulated, such that participants either (i) did or did not receive information legitimizing the layoff procedures, and (ii) did or did not receive information legitimizing the layoff itself. Furthermore, participants received one of two versions of the manipulations, to assess the generalizability of the results across two operationalizations of the primary independent variables. Whereas both information legitimizing the means and information legitimizing the ends were necessary (and neither sufficient) to mitigate observers' judgments of outcome unfairness, procedural information was necessary and sufficient to influence evaluations of the organization. Overall, the data are consistent with the notion that the effectiveness of managerial accounts might be determined not only by information explaining why but also information explaining how decisions are made.     

New wine and old wineskins: Four challenges of restorative justice

Conclusion Dissatisfaction with the current paradigm of criminal justice is leading to new programs with different visions. Some, such as restitution, can be incorporated into existing structures. Others, such as victim-offender reconciliation, point to a possible new approach to criminal justice—restorative justice. In some ways, restorative justice is simply a new application of an ancient vision. It is new wine from old vines. But those of us who celebrate the harvest are advised to remember the parable of new wine and old wineskins. Before we begin to pour—before we insert restorative features into familiar responses to crime—we would do well to reflect on what the consequences may be.This article has considered four likely consequences: the challenge to abolish criminal law, the challenge to rank multiple goals, the challenge to determine harm rationally, and the challenge to structure community-government cooperation. Although each challenge is significant, I have argued that all can be effectively addressed. Indeed, they must be if criminal justice is to become—using Justice John Kelly's image—a means of healing the wounds of crime.B.A., Wheaton College 1971; J.D., DePaul University 1975; LL.M., Georgetown University 1993. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Karen Strong, David Carlson, Thomas Crawford, and Dr. Daniel Dreisbach.     

Abusive Males and Abused Females in Adolescent Relationships: Risk Factor Similarity and Dissimilarity and the Role of Relationship Seriousness

This study examines male-to-female physical abuse within adolescent relationships. Analyses use data describing 603 opposite sex relationships reported during Wave II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) matched with data on the individual characteristics of both the reporting females and their male partners from Wave I. In addition to the occurrence of physical abuse, relationship data included information on the seriousness of the relationships. Female and male participants' scores on 14 individual-level variables were used to predict abuse. The first set of analysis found that male-to-female abuse was predicted by 6 individual characteristics of males and 6 individual characteristics of females. Only one of these characteristics, grade point average (GPA), was a significant predictor of the occurrence of male-to-female abuse for both male and female relationship participants. The other characteristics were each only predictive for either males—Verbal IQ, Fighting, Attitudes About Sex and Relationships, and Past Sexual Behavior, or females—Mother Relationship, School Attachment, Drinking Behaviors, and Depression. Analyses also revealed that associations between different individual-level characteristics and relationship abuse were dependant on relationship seriousness. These findings suggest that relationship seriousness, which did not itself predict abuse, may act as a catalyst for the influence of some individual-level characteristics on the occurrence of abuse in relationships.     

Macroeconomic Development and Civil Litigation

This paper contributes to the explanation of the tremendous rise in civil litigation activity in Austria over the last four decades by analysing the influence of macroeconomic conditions on civil litigation. We find that the number of transactions per individual—proxied by the level of real per capita GDP—positively influences the amount of litigation per capita. Inertia in litigious behavior reinforces effects. In the short run, however, we observe a countercyclical pattern of litigious activity. Cointegration analysis confirms the short run negative association, and a long run cointegrating relationship between GDP and civil litigation. Several robustness tests corroborate our results. Rent-seeking interpretations, and possible detrimental effects on the long run growth prospects cannot be excluded.     

Property Rights, Technology, and Internet Distribution

Lost in the discussion of the rapid growth of e-commerce is the role of the Internet as a means for the direct distribution of electronic goods and services. Any product that can be reduced to a string of digital code—text, images, and data—is capable of being transmitted over the Internet. These information intensive goods fall into three broad and overlapping categories: information goods, professional services, and entertainment goods. This paper discusses the implications of Internet distribution for competition, product quality, and pricing in consumer markets and how encryption technology addresses the property rights questions raised by online distribution.     

Technological Adaptation and “Learning by Cooperation.” A Case Study of a Successful Onshore Technology Transfer in Tierra del Fuego

The paper deals with a successful technology transfer process aimed at developing the detail engineering required to set up an oil plant in Tierra del Fuego. Specifically, it analyzes the relationship between the parties involved throughout the cooperation process by which French technological assistance was provided to Argentine engineers.The study of everyday communication among the participants shows that the translation required for a successful technology adaptation) is achieved when: (1) each partner actually carries out—according to contract the complementary tasks for which he is responsible (specific competence); (2) each party has some basic skills in relation to the specific competences of his partners—in other words, when they share a common technical language which enables communication (generic competence); (3) participants recognize in both senses of the term their partners' idiosyncratic work styles. This is when a relational, socio-cultural competence derived from and effective only with regard to the specific ongoing cooperation process, is developed.     

New directions in social stratification and income distribution: Introduction

The contributors to this special issue address important problems in the area of social stratification and income distribution. More specifically, Van der Sar and Van Praag offer a solution to the problem of measuring the relative importance of a social position by referring to the individual utility function. Hermkens and Boerman test hypotheses derived from functionalist and marxist theory concerning the degree of value consensus associated with the differential allotment of income and prestige to social positions. Shepelak points to the effects of a prevailing system of norms and values — beliefs about meritocracy, fair shares and opportunity — on the equalization of incomes. Arts and Van Wijck study social constraints to income equalization and focus on the inadequacy of decision-making processes and imperfect implementation of decisions. In the final contribution to this issue, Jasso examines the behavioral and social consequences of the simultaneous operation of two distinct considerations on courses of action: the individual's own well-being and the societal common good.