Balancing the scales in the wake of workplace injustice: Organizational punishment of transgressors increases third-party forgiveness

Abstract: In this paper, we build on deontic justice theory by examining third-party forgiveness as a downstream deontic response to organizational justice repair. Across three experiments and a recall study (N=1,185), we find that when organizations punish transgressors, third parties are more likely to forgive the transgressor and are more likely to want to interact with the transgressor. Additionally, organizational punishment seems to be more effective at eliciting third-party forgiveness than the absence of punishment and the occurrence of other negative, non-transgression-specific consequences for the transgressor. We find that this effect is driven by a decrease in perceptions of injustice and a decrease in beliefs about future harm to oneself and others. This work has implications for our understanding of third parties’ reactions to organizational justice repair and workplace conflict more broadly.

Keywords: Forgiveness, organizational justice, third parties