FAIRNESS IN IDIOSYNCRATIC WORK ARRANGEMENTS: JUSTICE AS AN I-DEAL

Abstract

In response to demands and opportunities of the labor market, contemporary employers and employees voluntarily are entering into highly customized agreements regarding nonstandard employment terms. We refer to such idiosyncratic deals as “i-deals,” acknowledging that these arrangements are intended to benefit all parties. Examples of i-deals include an employee with highly coveted skills who is compensated more generously than other employees doing comparable work, and an employee who is granted atypically flexible working hours to accommodate certain personal life demands. The nonstandard nature of i-deals is likely to prompt questions about the fairness of the arrangement among three principal stakeholders – employees who receive the i-deal, managers with whom the i-deal is negotiated, and the co-workers of these employees and managers. We analyze issues of fairness that arise in the relationships among all three pairings of these stakeholders through the lenses of four established forms of organizational justice – distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. Our discussion sheds light on previously unexplored nuances of i-deals and identifies several neglected theoretical issues of organizational justice. In addition to highlighting these conceptual advances, we also discuss methods by which the fairness of i-deals can be promoted.

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