Hierarchy as a Mediator of Fairness: A Contingency Approach to Distributive Justice in Organizations¹

Employees of one organization were asked to indicate the fairness of six different ways of allocating a hypothetical lump sum. As expected, the results suggest an overall preference for equity‐based allocations. However, the employee's level in the hierarchy was found to mediate perceptions of fairness: upper managers viewed organization‐wide equity as being most fair; middle managers saw intra‐departmental equity as fairest; and clericals, unable to differentiate between equality and equity, perceived both these principles as being fairest. The results were interpreted in terms of a “contingency” approach to distributive justice which aims at integrating institutional, situational, and individual determinants of fairness.