National systems of workplace justice contain bodies of principles that set out the obligations of employees, the behaviors that violate those obligations, and the penalties that employers may assess for those violations. These principles establish the standards for determining just cause for discipline and termination of employment. This study is an international comparison of the laws that establish these principles and their application in practice. It finds a broad commonality but some interesting differences.
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References
1.
1. The participants were, in addition to Wheeler, Klaas, and Rojot, Roy J. Adams, McMaster University, Canada; Bernard Adell, Queens' University, Canada; Werner K. Blenk, International Labour Office, Geneva, Switzerland; Brian Brooks, University of New South Wales, Australia; Chris Engels, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium; Francesco Liso, University of Bari, Italy; Karl J. Mackie, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom; Mordehai Mironi, University of Tel Aviv, Israel; Dennis R. Nolan, University of South Carolina, United States; Antonio Ojeda-Aviles, University of Seville, Spain; Elena Pisani, American Embassy, Rome, Italy; and Hans Peter Viethen, Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Germany.
2.
2. Hoyt N. Wheeler and Jacques Rojot, eds., Workplace Justice: Employment Obligations in International Perspective (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985).
3.
Anne Trebilcock, “Discussion,” in ibid., pp. 512-14.
4.
4. Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research Design and Methods (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1984), p. 21.
5.
5. Wheeler and Rojot, eds., Workplace Justice, p. 382.
6.
6. Ibid., p. 367.
7.
7. Ibid., p. 369.
8.
8. Ibid., pp. 379-80.
9.
9. Hoyt N. Wheeler and Anthony DeAngelis, “The Effective Union Steward: A Behaviorally Anchored Description,”Labor Studies Journal, 6(3):300 (Winter 1982).
10.
10. Wheeler and Rojot, eds., Workplace Justice, pp. 372-380.
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11. Although it is technically necessary to do so only if we wish to generalize to national populations, we nevertheless did calculate the statistical significance of the differences between lenient and stringent countries. These differences are significant at the level of .10 or less with respect to half of the scenarios analyzed.
12.
12. Brian Brooks, “Australia,” in Workplace Justice, ed. Wheeler and Rojot, p. 47.
13.
13. Elena Pisani and Francesco Liso, “Discipline and Discharge for Off-Duty Conduct” (Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Industrial Relations Research Association, Anaheim, California, Jan. 1993), p. 7.
14.
14. Gerald Mars, Cheats at Work: An Anthropology of Workplace Crime (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982).
