Justice versus fairness in the family business workplace: A socioemotional wealth approach

The organizational justice literature and the family business literature have developed independently, which limits our understanding of fairness and justice in the family business workplace. So far, the concepts of justice and fairness have been used interchangeably in the family business literature, as if objective measures that aim to increase justice in the workplace will automatically translate into fairness perceptions among family business employees. By integrating the organizational justice literature and the family business literature, we first differentiate between the two concepts of justice and fairness and argue that a utilitarian conceptualization of justice may come into direct conflict with fairness perceptions in the family business workplace. Second, we shed light on the importance of incorporating socioemotional goals, particularly those that reveal a bright side of socioemotional wealth, into rules and regulations designed to increase justice in the workplace, which, we argue, contributes to increasing fairness perceptions among employees and to building and maintaining an ethical family business workplace. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed at the end of the paper.