When do bosses stop caring about organizational justice? Managerial power and male versus female managers’ appraisals of workplace gender inequality

Abstract

When do male and female managers stop caring about workplace gender inequality and, instead, engage in actions that maintain the status quo? We examined the differences in male and female managers’ appraisals of workplace inequality and the role of power in their efforts to enact organizational justice. Specifically, we tested whether managers’ injustice standards are a function of their managerial power and gender and whether these standards mediate the effect of managerial power on managers’ organizational injustice appraisals and attitudes. An injustice standard is the amount of evidence needed to conclude that workplace gender wage inequality is unfair to female employees. Power was operationalized as economic advantage (i.e., having a higher salary than the salary of female workers; Studies 1 and 2) and as organizational charge (i.e., having managerial responsibilities; Study 2). Managers reported either their ingroup standards (evidentiary injustice thresholds they as members of their gender group set; Ingroup Focus condition) or outgroup standards (injustice thresholds they estimate members of the other gender group set, Study 1; or injustice thresholds they estimated disadvantaged women in the workplace set, Study 2; Outgroup Focus condition). In Study 1 (N = 268) and Study 2 (N = 389), injustice standards increase as a function of power for both male and female managers. Injustice standards mediated the effects of power on managers’ resistance to efforts to reduce workplace inequality, legitimizations of inequality, and attitudes toward workplace diversity policies. Different strategies for reducing workplace injustice are discussed.