In recent, the paper entitled “Is shooting for fairness always beneficial? The influence of promotion fairness on employees’ cognitive and emotional reactions to promotion failure”, was accepted and published in Human Resource Management, one of the Financial Times, one of the top 50 business school journals. This paper was jointly completed by Associate Professor Wang Qingjuan, the corresponding author, and four coauthors from other universities.
Promotion is an important link in human resources management practice, and it is also an important means for employees to realize their career development and gain a higher salary. Only a few people can succeed in the promotion process, and it is inevitable to avoid. However, current research pays little attention to the phenomenon of promotion failure, which leads to insufficient understanding of promotion failure and makes it difficult to manage employees’ psychology and work status after promotion failure in practice. In addition, although promotion fairness is usually used to reduce the negative reactions of employee after their promotion failure, the related research on the sense of fairness shows that it often leads individuals to attribute the failure result to themselves, thus strengthening the negative reaction to the failure result. Therefore, on the one hand, this study explores employees' psychological reaction and working status after failure in promotion, on the other hand, it explores the role of promotion justice.
By integrating social cognitive theory, emotional cognitive evaluation theory and organizational justice literature, this study constructed a theoretical model that promotion failure affects employee engagement through self-efficacy and anger, and discussed the role of promotion justice. The conclusion was drawn from two key event studies (Study I and Study II) and an experimental study (Study III). First, failure of promotion will reduce employees’ sense of self-efficacy, cause employee’ anger, and thus lead to a low employee engagement. Secondly, the sense of promotion fairness strengthens the positive impact of promotion failure on employees’ sense of self-efficacy, and weakens the impact of promotion failure on employees’ anger. Thirdly, the sense of promotion fairness strengthens the influence of promotion failure on employee’ employment participation through employee' self-efficacy, and weakens the influence of promotion failure on employee 'employment participation through employee’ anger.
With an impact factor of 6.235, Human Resource Management is one of the top 50 business school journals ranked by the Financial Times. It is authoritative in human resources management journals and has a high academic influence and reputation.
(Translator: DAI meiling, Proofreader: CHEN yujia )
