Why inconsistent leadership is regarded as procedurally unfair: the importance of social self-esteem concerns

Three experimental studies examined to what extent leader's consistent use of procedures constitutes an important procedural fairness rule and influences people's reactions as a function of social self-esteem. In line with a recent claim that more attention should be devoted to different procedural fairness rules (Brockner Ackerman, & Fairchild, 2001), the findings of Study I demonstrated that inconsistent leaders were evaluated as less procedurally fair and influenced feelings of uncertainty about oneself in ongoing interpersonal interactions. Study 2 showed that manipulating leader's consistency influenced people's procedural fairness judgments and willingness to replace the leader but only among those low in social self-esteem (SSE). Finally, Study 3, using another consistency manipulation, demonstrated that variations in consistency made participants feel bad about themselves, particularly when they were low in SSE. These findings are discussed in light of research on relational models of justice and sociometer theory. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.