Justice and Fairness in Organizations

Abstract

Once upon a time there was a technology startup company. They recruited a team of highly skilled, extremely enthusiastic engineers. For reasons which remain shrouded in mystery, they insisted on assigning titles to the engineers as they were hired, such that some were designated senior engineers, some junior engineers, and some just engineers. This was initially seen as highly amusing by the engineers, who saw little significance in the titles since they were all doing the same work.