MGMT 4400 Week 4 Organizational Justice Case Paper Example

Why Servers Whose Tips Went Up Still Objected to the New Tip Pool: An Applied Case Paper on Procedural Justice at a Family Restaurant Group's Newest Bistro

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 4400: Organizational Behavior and Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Why Servers Whose Tips Went Up Still Objected to the New Tip Pool: An Applied Case Paper on Procedural Justice at a Family Restaurant Group's Newest Bistro

Thesis

The objections to the new tip pool at the Overland Park bistro of Brennan Family Kitchens, a composite family-owned restaurant group, are best explained by a failure of procedural justice, the fairness of how the decision was made, rather than by the change in anyone's pay. The evidence is a detail that the obvious explanation cannot account for: servers whose take-home tips rose under the new pool complained as loudly as those whose tips fell.

The Situation

In June the bistro's general manager announced that, starting the following week, servers would contribute 15 percent of their tips to a pool shared with bussers and hosts, who had previously received only what servers chose to give them. The announcement came by text message on a Sunday evening. Over the next month, servers' average take-home tips fell by about 4 percent, but the change was uneven: servers on slow weeknight shifts, who had often tipped out generously by habit, actually took home slightly more, because the pool replaced their informal tip-outs with a fixed share. Yet in a staff meeting called to discuss the pool, several of those servers objected as strongly as anyone. One said, "Nobody asked us."

Three Kinds of Fairness

Research on organizational justice distinguishes three kinds of fairness people judge at work (Greenberg, 1987). Distributive justice concerns outcomes: whether what people receive is fair relative to their contributions. Procedural justice concerns the process: whether decisions are made consistently, with accurate information, without bias and with a chance for affected people to be heard. Interactional justice concerns treatment: whether people are dealt with respectfully and given honest explanations. Colquitt (2001) showed that these dimensions are distinct, that people judge them separately and that each predicts different reactions.

Why Distribution Does Not Explain It

If the objections were about distributive justice, they would track the change in pay. Servers whose tips fell would object and servers whose tips rose would not. That is not what happened. The servers who gained objected too, and some of those who lost money said in the meeting that they agreed bussers deserved a share. Distributive justice explains part of the reaction, but not its most telling feature.

Voice, and Its Absence

Procedural justice explains the puzzle. Every server, whether their pay rose or fell, experienced the same process: a decision made without consultation and announced by text on a weekend. The research on procedural justice consistently finds that having voice, a chance to express views before a decision, increases people's acceptance of outcomes, even unfavorable ones (Colquitt, 2001). Servers were given no voice. They did not know how the 15 percent figure was chosen, whether other options were considered or whether their input would have changed anything. "Nobody asked us" is a procedural complaint, and it came from people on both sides of the pay change.

The Treatment Dimension

Interactional justice adds a secondary explanation. Announcing a change to people's pay by text message on a Sunday evening, with no explanation of the reasons, is the kind of treatment that people experience as disrespectful. That may explain the intensity of the reaction, even if procedural justice explains why everyone reacted.

What the Staff Meeting Showed

The meeting itself offers more evidence. Of the eleven servers who spoke, four said they had lost money, three said they had gained and four did not mention their own pay at all. Yet nine of the eleven raised some version of the same point: that the decision had been made without them, that they did not know how the percentage was chosen or that they learned about it by text. Two servers who had gained said they would have supported the pool if asked, and one suggested a lower percentage for the first month while everyone adjusted. Bussers who attended said little, but one told a shift lead afterward that the servers' anger made them feel like a burden. The meeting thus shows the procedural complaint crossing the line between winners and losers, and it hints at a further cost the manager did not anticipate: tension between servers and the very staff the pool was meant to help.

What the Concept Recommends

The concept points to a remedy that does not require abandoning the tip pool, which many servers agreed was fair to bussers in principle. The manager could reopen the percentage for discussion, explain how 15 percent was chosen and invite servers, bussers and hosts to propose alternatives at a meeting, with a decision and its reasons communicated in person. Even if the pool stayed at 15 percent, a fair process would likely reduce the objections. Robbins and Judge (2019) note that managers often underestimate how much people care about process compared with outcome, and this case illustrates the point.

Limits

The paper rests on a single case and on what servers said in one meeting. Some objections may reflect concerns not voiced there, such as worries about how the pool would be divided among bussers. A short anonymous survey separating views on the outcome from views on the process would test the argument directly.

References

Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386-400. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.386

Greenberg, J. (1987). A taxonomy of organizational justice theories. Academy of Management Review, 12(1), 9-22. https://doi.org/10.2307/257990

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2019). Organizational behavior (18th ed.). Pearson.