{"id":32627,"date":"2019-05-30T15:20:19","date_gmt":"2019-05-30T19:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/?p=32627"},"modified":"2019-12-19T10:54:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T15:54:57","slug":"are-managers-too-busy-to-be-fair-probably-an-fiu-business-study-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/2019\/05\/are-managers-too-busy-to-be-fair-probably-an-fiu-business-study-reveals\/","title":{"rendered":"Are managers too busy to be fair? Probably, an FIU Business study reveals."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32637\" src=\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-30-at-2.18.19-PM-compressor.png\" alt=\"Are managers too busy to be fair? Probably, an FIU Business study reveals.\" width=\"1001\" height=\"559\" srcset=\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-30-at-2.18.19-PM-compressor.png 1001w, https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-30-at-2.18.19-PM-compressor-300x168.png 300w, https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-30-at-2.18.19-PM-compressor-230x128.png 230w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1001px) 100vw, 1001px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Employees often complain that managers don\u2019t treat them fairly, meet with them, listen to their concerns, or update them about decisions. New research from FIU Business finds that \u201cunfairness\u201d may be less about bosses being biased and more about them lacking time to juggle multiple competing priorities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes they\u2019re just too busy,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/business.fiu.edu\/faculty\/expert-guides.cfm?FlagDirectory=Display&amp;Emp=gajendranr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ravi Gajendran<\/a>, assistant professor of<a href=\"https:\/\/business.fiu.edu\/academic-departments\/glam\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> global leadership and management<\/a> at FIU Business. \u201cWhen managers are forced to work under time pressure and have to deal with multiple projects and deliverables, they may often lose their focus on treating employees fairly.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_32631\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-32631\" style=\"width: 120px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-32631\" src=\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Ravi-Gajendran.jpg\" alt=\"Ravi Gajendran\" width=\"120\" height=\"170\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-32631\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ravi Gajendran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The research, published in the current issue of the <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aom.org\/doi\/abs\/10.5465\/amj.2016.1061\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Academy of Management Journal<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em> examined data from three studies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Twice-daily email surveys over 10 workdays among 107 U.S.-based managers in the healthcare, media, transportation, finance, retail, and education sectors<\/li>\n<li>A survey among 166 managers, each with two employees, in a variety of industries in India. Over the course of three months, managers answered questions about workload and how their organizations rewarded fairness; employees responded about how fairly they were treated; and<\/li>\n<li>A one-hour experiment among 239 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory management class at a U.S. public university. Students were made managers and given two tasks \u2013 preparing for a client presentation and updating an employee about a situation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Managers, he said, can take the lead in prioritizing fairness by changing up their management routine:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Set a daily or weekly schedule to check with employees, equipment, or on the status of ongoing work.<\/li>\n<li>Establish regular meetings with employees or team meetings where the focus is on explaining managerial as well as corporate decisions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, managers aren\u2019t the only ones responsible when employees feel they are being treated unfairly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCompanies can encourage bosses to balance technical tasks and fair treatment by rewarding and celebrating managers who act fairly,\u201d Gajendran said. \u201cDoing so clearly signals that fair treatment and engaging with employees are core leadership tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The studies conducted as part of the research paper revealed that managers prioritizing their actual work responsibilities harmed fairness and didn\u2019t improve the business\u2019 performance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOrganizations that reward fairness may see a win-win: busy leaders can act fairly without compromising their performance on core work tasks,\u201d Gajendran added.<\/p>\n<p>The paper was co-authored by Gajendran with Elad Sherf, assistant professor of organizational behavior at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Vijaya Venkataramani, associate professor of management and organization at University of Maryland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Employees often complain that managers don\u2019t treat them fairly, meet with them, listen to their concerns, or update them about decisions. New research from FIU Business finds that \u201cunfairness\u201d may be less about bosses being biased and more about them lacking time to juggle multiple competing priorities. \u201cSometimes they\u2019re just too busy,\u201d said Ravi Gajendran, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":32639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[4517,4387,4483,2229],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32627"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32677,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32627\/revisions\/32677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}