WHO DELIVERS JUSTICE - SOURCE PERCEPTIONS OF PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS

Tyler and Bies (1990) argue that how leaders enact and apply formal pr ocedures can affect perceptions of procedural fairness as much as the formal procedures themselves. This study examined directly the extent to which workers see either formal policies and procedures or their su pervisors as the source most responsible for the procedural fairness t hey receive in their performance evaluations. Group differences in the se source perceptions between exempt and nonexempt workers were also e xplored. Results indicate that workers attribute the responsibility fo r procedural fairness jointly and independently to both their organiza tion's formal policies and procedures and to their supervisors. Result s at the group level of analysis indicate that nonexempt workers perce ive formal policies and procedures to be more responsible for procedur al fairness than do exempt workers. Implications of these findings are discussed.