The winding road from employee to complainant: Situational and psychological determinants of wrongful-termination claims

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lind, EA; Greenberg, J; Scott, KS; Welchans, TD
• 署名单位: Duke University; University System of Ohio; Ohio State University
• 刊物名称: ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-8392
• DOI: 10.2307/2667109
• 发表日期: 2000
• 页码: 557-590
• 关键词: ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE; procedural justice; fairness; theft; CITIZENSHIP; SURVIVORS; inequity

摘要

Structured interviews with 996 recently fired or laid-off workers provided data for analyses of the situational and psychological antecedents of both thinking about filing a wrongful-termination claim and actually filing such a claim. Potential antecedents were drawn from relational theories of organizational justice, economic theories about claiming, and sociolegal studies of claiming in other contexts. Wrongful-termination claims were most strongly correlated with the way workers felt they had been treated at the time of termination and with their expected winnings from such a claim. Structural equation model analyses of panel data from follow-up interviews with 163 respondents four months later showed that the psychological variables were, in fact, causal antecedents rather than consequences of claiming thoughts and actions. These findings support relational models of organizational justice and lead to practical suggestions for managing the termination process so as to avoid wrongful-termination suits.