(Un) Fairness Treatment And Upward Indirect Reciprocity

With the development of knowledge-based economy and information-based economy,in order to quickly adjust the structure of the internal management of enterprises,production and business activities in response to the changing external environment and customer demand,many new organization forms have emerged,including the boundaryless organization,virtual organization,diversified organization,cross-cultural organization,network organization,etc.(Liu,2007;Liu & Zhang,2002).On the one hand,the dynamic and flat new organization form is conducive to the efficient integration of internal and external resources of enterprises.On the other hand,this kind of loose and transient dynamic alliance makes enterprises face great challenges in human resource management.Specifically,the work mode of employees in the new organizational form is mainly a combination of team,project and cross-functional methods centering on a certain project or target.In the new forms of organization,there are no departments in the traditional sense in the enterprise,but a work network of mutual cooperation.In this context,how human resource department and enterprise managers can fully mobilize employees’ enthusiasm for work and improve their coordination and cooperation ability has become an important problem to be solved urgently.Both clans and tribes in ancient society and complex networks in modern society rely on reciprocity to promote cooperation among members of society.Both enterprise managers engaged in management practice and economic management researchers specializing in theoretical research hold the same view that reciprocity,driven by individual reciprocity preference,is an important driving force to stimulate employee cooperation behavior.In the field of organizational behavior and human resource management,most research on reciprocity behavior in organizations are conducted under the framework of direct reciprocity where reciprocity behavior is considered as a direct social exchange relationship of repeated interaction between employees within organizations,between employees and leaders or between employees and organizations(Duan,Shi,& Ling,2017).In the new organizational form,employees may face new platforms,new colleagues and new leaders anytime and anywhere,and large-scale one-time anonymous social interaction is taking up an increasing proportion in the work environment.Therefore,how to maintain highly coordinated cooperation among employees in such a dynamic working environment is an important research direction of human resource management.As one of the most common forms of cooperation,indirect reciprocity is regarded as an important force to promote large-scale cooperation in human society.In recent years,indirect reciprocity has attracted extensive attention from evolutionary biologists,economists and psychologists,but there is a lack of relevant research in the field of management.Indirect reciprocity includes upward indirect reciprocity and downward indirect reciprocity(Nowak & Sigmund,2005).Considering that there is still no consensus on the mechanism of upward indirect reciprocity and that upward indirect reciprocity even shows a higher level of cooperation than downward indirect reciprocity(Stanca,2009),this study aims to explore whether and why upward indirect reciprocity exists in organizational contexts.Since equity theory was put forward,the issue of organizational equity has aroused extensive discussion in the field of management.On the basis of existing literature,this study integrates indirect reciprocity theory and equity theory,and uses survey experiment and behavior experiment to empirically explore the relationship between unfair treatment behavior and upward indirect reciprocity behavior.In addition,this paper explores two important factors influencing the relationship between unfair treatment and upward indirect reciprocity-distributor intention and social norm.With the increasingly improvement of brain functional imaging and brain monitoring,as well as the rapid development of cognitive neuroscience,cognitive neuroscience has a tendency to cross and merge with management,thus giving birth to neuromanagement(Ma & Wang,2006).Neuromanagement studies the neural activity and cognitive processing of people’s brain when they make economic management decisions by using the methods and techniques of neuroscience.Therefore,this research adopts one of the most widely used in neuroscience research,most mature and convenient technology-event related potentials technology(ERPs),aiming to find the neural evidence of effects of(un)fair treatment and intention on upward indirect reciprocity,thus to reveal neural mechanism of individual decision-making behavior in indirect reciprocity.This study consists of three sub-studies.In study 1,a large-scale survey experiment was conducted to explore whether there is upward indirect reciprocity between business operators and non-business operators in China,laying a foundation for the subsequent two sub-studies.Through reasonable experimental design,this study let subjects have a sense of fairness or unfairness,so as to study the influence of unfair treatment on individual indirect reciprocal behavior.Study 2 mainly discussed why and under what circumstances upward indirect reciprocity existed.Behavioral experiment is used to explore the influence of distributor intention and social norms on the relationship between unfair treatment and upward indirect reciprocity.In study 3,ERPs was used to collect behavioral and EEG data to explore the effects of unfair treatment and intention on individuals’ upward indirect reciprocity behavior and its neural mechanism,and to find neural indicators that can objectively represent individuals’ indirect reciprocity decision process.Through the above three studies,we got the following six conclusions.1)People still show upward indirect reciprocity in one-time anonymous social interaction.2)(Un)fair treatment significantly affected people’s level of upward indirect reciprocity.Compared with fair treatment,people’s level of indirect reciprocity significantly decreased when they were faced with unfair treatment.3)Intention is an important factor that affect upward indirect reciprocity behavior,which magnifies the relationship between(un)fair treatment and indirect reciprocity behavior.Indirect reciprocity was significantly lower when people received unfair human distribution than when they received unfair computer distribution.The level of indirect reciprocity was significantly higher when faced with fair distribution of human than when faced with fair distribution of computer.4)Social norm is another important factor affecting people’s upward indirect reciprocity behavior.Compared with no social norm,the positive correlation between distribution value and indirect reciprocity behavior will be weakened when high social norm is provided.However,the relationship between distribution value and indirect reciprocity behavior does not change significantly when low social norm is provided.5)In the distribution result presentation of the first stage in upward indirect reciprocal decision,intentional distribution result would induce larger FRN amplitude,and when people’s subjective expectation deviated from the actual feedback result would also induce larger FRN amplitude.6)In the cognitive processing stage after the presentation of the allocation result,the unintentional allocation result will make people devote more attention resources,and then produce a larger P300 amplitude.The level of allocation value does not affect the allocation of attention resources.The innovation of this research is mainly reflected in the following five aspects.1)This study not only expands the existing research of reciprocity theory,but also enriches the research of indirect reciprocity theory in organizational context.From the perspective of indirect reciprocity,this paper explores the indirect reciprocity behavior of Chinese business managers and non-business managers in the face of even one-time anonymous social interaction.As far as we know,our study is the first large-scale survey experiment in China to explore the indirect reciprocity behavior of business operators and non-business operators,providing sufficient evidence support for subsequent indirect reciprocity theory research.2)This paper combines equity theory with indirect reciprocity theory,innovatively studies the influence of unfair treatment on upward indirect reciprocity behavior,not only expands the research content of fairness in the field of organizational behavior,but also explores a new direction to improve indirect reciprocity behavior in the organization from the perspective of equity.3)As for the causation of indirect reciprocity,this study examines the specific effects of intention and social norm on the mechanism of the relationship between unfair treatment and upward indirect reciprocity.This study not only makes up for the deficiency of the existing research on the inducement mechanism of upward indirect reciprocity,but also inspires managers to convey good intention of allocation to employees and establish good social norm atmosphere in the organization in the process of allocation,so as to improve the overall level of reciprocity.4)By using the theory and research methods of cognitive neuroscience,our study not only broadens and enriches the research methods in the field of management,also reveals the indirect reciprocity behaviors of the neural mechanisms.In the distribution result feedback and cognitive processing phases we find two neural indicators during the cognitive process: FRN and P300 components.5)For the study of human resource management and organizational behavior,this study expands the research content of reciprocity,focusing on the upward indirect reciprocity of “you help me,I help him/her”.At the theoretical level,this study enriches the understanding of employee reciprocity in the field of organizational behavior,and discusses the inducement mechanism of upward indirect reciprocity.At a practical level,these research conclusions inspire organization managers and human resource management attach great importance to the training and development of employees’ indirect reciprocity behaviors in organizations.At the same time,conclusions of this study indicate that managers if you can do it in the process of distribution allocation fairness,establishing good social norms in organizations as well as in teams can largely improve the overall level of indirect reciprocity.