Is adhering to justice rules enough? The role of charismatic qualities in perceptions of supervisors’ overall fairness

Our study challenges the consensus that perceptions of overall fairness are driven solely by adherence to justice rules—that “what seems fair” depends solely on “what seems just.” Building on emerging theorizing on incidental affect and fairness appraisals, we argue that charismatic qualities of supervisors can predict employee perceptions of overall fairness, even when controlling for supervisors’ justice rule adherence. We develop theory for how and when charismatic qualities could exert such effects by drawing on existing models of affect and by introducing a new construct—event frequency—that captures how frequently supervisors make resource allocation decisions. The results of a field study suggest that supervisor charismatic qualities predict overall fairness by arousing positive affect that colors fairness perceptions. The effects of charismatic qualities become stronger as decision events become more frequent, presumably because the information processing associated with those events provides additional opportunities for fairness to be infused with affect.