IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v110y2009i2p129-139.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exploring the neural basis of fairness: A model of neuro-organizational justice

Author

Listed:
  • Beugré, Constant D.

Abstract

Drawing from the literature in neuroeconomics, organizational justice, and social cognitive neuroscience, I propose a model of neuro-organizational justice that explores the role of the brain in how people form fairness judgments and react to situations of fairness and/or unfairness in organizations. The model integrates three levels of analysis: (a) behavioral, (b) mental (cognitive and emotional), and (c) neural. The behavioral level deals with motivated actions displayed by the individual; the mental level deals with information processing mechanisms and emotional arousal; and the neural level concerns the brain systems instantiating mental processes. The paper also describes a fairness theory of mind that could help managers improve their ability to create fair working environments. The model's implications for further research and management practice are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Beugré, Constant D., 2009. "Exploring the neural basis of fairness: A model of neuro-organizational justice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 129-139, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:110:y:2009:i:2:p:129-139
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749-5978(09)00049-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    3. Turillo, Carmelo Joseph & Folger, Robert & Lavelle, James J. & Umphress, Elizabeth E. & Gee, Julie O., 2002. "Is virtue its own reward? Self-sacrificial decisions for the sake of fairness," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 839-865, September.
    4. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    5. Knutson, Brian & Peterson, Richard, 2005. "Neurally reconstructing expected utility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 305-315, August.
    6. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    7. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher & Michael Kosfeld, 2005. "Neuroeconomic Foundations of Trust and Social Preferences: Initial Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 346-351, May.
    8. Colin F. Camerer & George Loewenstein & Drazen Prelec, 2004. "Neuroeconomics: Why Economics Needs Brains," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 106(3), pages 555-579, October.
    9. Colin F. Camerer, 2007. "Neuroeconomics: Using Neuroscience to Make Economic Predictions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(519), pages 26-42, March.
    10. Jonathan D. Cohen, 2005. "The Vulcanization of the Human Brain: A Neural Perspective on Interactions Between Cognition and Emotion," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 3-24, Fall.
    11. Sarah F. Brosnan & Frans B. M. de Waal, 2003. "Monkeys reject unequal pay," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6955), pages 297-299, September.
    12. McCabe, Kevin & Houser, Daniel & Ryan, Lee & Smith, Vernon & Trouard, Ted, 2001. "A Functional Imaging Study of Cooperation in Two-Person reciprocal Exchange," MPRA Paper 5172, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Paul William Glimcher & Kenway Louie & Joseph Kable, 2007. "Neuroeconomic Studies of Impulsivity: Now or Just as Soon as Possible?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 142-147, May.
    14. Joseph Henrich & Robert Boyd & Samuel Bowles & Colin Camerer & Ernst Fehr & Herbert Gintis & Richard McElreath, 2001. "Cooperation, Reciprocity and Punishment in Fifteen Small-scale Societies," Working Papers 01-01-007, Santa Fe Institute.
    15. Bechara, Antoine & Damasio, Antonio R., 2005. "The somatic marker hypothesis: A neural theory of economic decision," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 336-372, August.
    16. Fehr, Ernst & Fischbacher, Urs & Kosfeld, Michael, 2005. "Neuroeconomic Foundation of Trust and Social Preferences," CEPR Discussion Papers 5127, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. William Taggart & Daniel Robey & K. Galen Kroeck, 1985. "Managerial Decision Styles And Cerebral Dominance: An Empirical Study [1]," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 175-192, March.
    18. Pillutla, Madan M. & Murnighan, J. Keith, 1996. "Unfairness, Anger, and Spite: Emotional Rejections of Ultimatum Offers," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 208-224, December.
    19. Steven Pressman, 2006. "Kahneman, Tversky, and Institutional Economics," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 501-506, June.
    20. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hsee, Christopher K. & Shen, Luxi & Zhang, Shirley & Chen, Jingqiu & Zhang, Li, 2012. "Fate or fight: Exploring the hedonic costs of competition," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 177-186.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Constant D. Beugré, 2010. "Brain and Human Behavior in Organizations: A Field of Neuro-Organizational Behavior," Chapters, in: Angela A. Stanton & Mellani Day & Isabell M. Welpe (ed.), Neuroeconomics and the Firm, chapter 15, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Angela A. Stanton & Mellani Day & Isabell M. Welpe (ed.), 2010. "Neuroeconomics and the Firm," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13502.
    3. Luca Stanca, 2011. "Social science and neuroscience: how can they inform each other?," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 58(3), pages 243-256, September.
    4. Reuben, Ernesto & van Winden, Frans, 2008. "Social ties and coordination on negative reciprocity: The role of affect," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 34-53, February.
    5. Tobias Hahn & Noël Albert, 2017. "Strong Reciprocity in Consumer Boycotts," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 145(3), pages 509-524, October.
    6. Cassar, Lea & Armouti-Hansen, Jesper & Dereky, Anna & Engl, Florian, 2021. "Efficiency Wages with Motivated Agents," CEPR Discussion Papers 15723, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. repec:dgr:uvatin:20040098 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    9. Jason Aimone & Daniel Houser, 2012. "What you don’t know won’t hurt you: a laboratory analysis of betrayal aversion," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 571-588, December.
    10. Jesper Armouti-Hansen & Lea Cassar & Anna Deréky & Florian Engl, 2020. "Efficiency Wages with Motivated Agents," CESifo Working Paper Series 8474, CESifo.
    11. He, Haoran & Wu, Keyu, 2016. "Choice set, relative income, and inequity aversion: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 177-193.
    12. Bicskei, Marianna & Lankau, Matthias & Bizer, Kilian, 2016. "Negative reciprocity and its relation to anger-like emotions in identity-homogeneous and -heterogeneous groups," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 17-34.
    13. Zarri, Luca, 2008. "Endogenous Social Preferences, Heterogeneity and Cooperation," AICCON Working Papers 51-2008, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    14. Charness, Gary & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2003. "Promises & Partnership," Research Papers in Economics 2003:3, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    15. Astrid Hopfensitz & Ernesto Reuben, 2009. "The Importance of Emotions for the Effectiveness of Social Punishment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(540), pages 1534-1559, October.
    16. Gary Charness & Martin Dufwenberg, 2006. "Promises and Partnership," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1579-1601, November.
    17. Frans van Winden & Mirre Stallen & K. Richard Ridderinkhof, 2008. "On the Nature, Modeling, and Neural Bases of Social Ties," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-063/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Eduard Marinov, 2017. "The 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 117-159.
    19. Wu, Steven Y. & Roe, Brian E., 2005. "Social Preferences and Relational Contracting: An Experimental Investigation," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19215, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    20. Sethi, Rajiv & Somanathan, E., 2003. "Understanding reciprocity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-27, January.
    21. Teck-Hua Ho & Xuanming Su, 2009. "Peer-Induced Fairness in Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2022-2049, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:110:y:2009:i:2:p:129-139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.