Exploring Employee Attitudes on Fairness of Idiosyncratic Deals

Severin Hornung, Ramona Doenz, and Jürgen Glaser
University of Innsbruck, Institute of Psychology

Abstract: Research on idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) studies non-standard work arrangements negotiated between individual employees and employer agents, such as supervisors or HR managers. I-deals manifest in customized work tasks, learning and development opportunities, personalized work schedules or workload adjustments. Unlike dysfunctional preferential treatment of favouritism or cronyism, i-deals are based on procedural justice and promise benefits for both workers and organizations. Extending previous research, which has focused on the negotiating individuals, we investigate employee attitudes regarding the fairness of i-deals as a management practice. Surprisingly, social acceptance and legitimacy of i-deals have not been examined before. We report survey data of N=102 employed persons, analysed using pairwise t-tests and multiple regressions. Corresponding to our theorizing, developmental i-deals were generally perceived as fairer than those on working time flexibility. Overall, i-deals were deemed fairer when distributive justice in the current employment was low and personalized arrangements were common. A significant interaction indicated that fairness was evaluated particularly positive when both commonness of i-deals and procedural justice were high. Separate analyses produced weaker results for development i-deals and additional predictors for fairness of flexibility i-deals, specifically, a positive effect of procedural justice and a negative interaction of own negotiation and procedural justice. This study provides first results on employee attitudes regarding the fairness of i-deals. Findings are discussed with reference to study limitations and implications for research and management practice.

Keywords: Idiosyncratic deals, fairness, organizational justice, development, flexibility.