Critique of the Journal Article "why It Is So Hard to Be Fair"

Critique of the journal article "Why it is so hard to be fair" by Joel Brockner, 2006

Highly motivated, involved and committed workforce is the best resource for the company because highly enthusiastic and complete involvement and commitment of the employees brings great profit to the company (Carslen, 2003). Different from the traditional concept of money is the motivator to employees; many researchers have proved there are others things that can trigger employees' motivation better than money in many sectors (Panwar & Gupta, 2012; Hong & Waheed, 2011; Beavis, 2003).

Joel Brockner also gives a way for companies to get employees' motivation, involvement and commitment through his journal article "Why it is so hard to be fair". Brockner states the commitment to the companies is highest when employees perceive they have been treated fairly. So companies need to build that perception through sharing information openly for a quite depth and listening employees voices enthusiastically. In other word treat human being like a human being, let them know what they need to know and make them feel they are a part of the company not just a paid- hired workers. Brockner names this strategy into the process fairness. He builds his article with a three main parts. First, why is fairness important? Second, why does that fairness so hard to get or practice? Finally, he concludes with suggestion of how to overcome those difficulties.

The main idea of writing this paper is to explain why managers are hesitating to behave fairly. Instead of directly goes into the main point, he introduces why it is important to behave fairly showing wrongful termination suits examples which is the biggest problem for companies to face with. It not only costs legal defense cost but also damages the employment branding of the companies. By showing the biggest headaches problem bring attention of the companies' top executives. In other word, he knows how to grab the interest of the readers.

He persuades companies to use his process fairness by showing his depth understanding in human behavior like people only file sue when they believe that they are treated unfairly or employees will not frustrate even he is passed over for promotion if he is being told properly what places he has been lacked or people can tolerance negative experiences when they expect them, etc. This gives readers some kind of psychological feeling like respecting and leads to the mind of testing fairness process once in the work environment.

The structure that Brockner construct his paper using problems that companies face in their daily lives to show the important of process fairness and the reasons why managers are hesitate to use and the effectiveness of his suggestions to overcome hesitation makes the readers more understand and makes the point that he want to convince more clear.

Although many studies have suggested money is no longer motivators for employees, there are some areas that money can still be a reward to motivate employees and people are still motivated by money for different reasons (Utsugi, 2012; Bohlander, et al., 2001). Unlike other authors who totally ignore the important of money, Brockner takes account money in his paper