Organizational sexual harassment investigations: observers' perceptions of fairness.

Government statistics indicate that the number of sexual harassment claims filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and state and local Fair Employment Practice agencies rose from 10,532 in 1992 to 12,679 in 2005. Even more dramatic has been the rise in victims' benefits ordered by these agencies, increasing from $12.7 million to $47.9 million during this same time period (EEOC, 2006). Recent research has further indicated that sexually harassing behaviors can have a negative impact on the financial performance of teams in organizations (Raver and Gelfand, 2005). It should come as no surprise, therefore, that organizations have been looking for ways to reduce the costs associated with allegations of sexual harassment.

Prevention is obviously the "first line of defense" against the costs and poor public relations stemming from sexual harassment. It is, however, probably too idealistic to assume that all alleged incidents of harassment can be avoided regardless of how well an organization prepares its employees. Organizations will undoubtedly be called upon to resolve allegations of harassment, often under difficult circumstances such as those situations where the evidence of the harassment is ambiguous and may even boil down to "she said/he said"; many incidents of harassment are obviously cloaked in privacy.

Research has found that the more actions taken by an employer to address sexual harassment, the more favorably employees viewed the organization (DuBois et al., 1999). However, very little is known about employees' perceptions of the specific features of company's sexual harassment responses such as internal investigations. It is critical that organizations develop effective, unbiased investigation procedures. When employees perceive that employers' investigations are fair, they are much less likely to seek assistance outside of the organization to resolve their disputes (Neuser, 2005). Unfortunately, many of the alleged victims of sexual harassment file claims with government agencies as a result of their perceptions of bias and unfairness in the employer's internal investigations (Day, 2000; Dorfman et al., 2000; Bloch, 1995). Employees are skeptical of sexual harassment investigations conducted by management, thereby making them reluctant to accept an organization's findings, and equally anxious to legally challenge any unfavorable decision (Day, 2000). In fact, recent empirical research has indicated that when female subjects were told that an organization's response to a sexual harassment complaint was unfair, the subjects reported a greater interest in pursing litigation against the company than when they were told that the response was fair (Hogler et al., 2002).

While the Hogler et al. (2002) study clearly demonstrated a link between fairness and the likelihood of litigation, very little is actually known about the antecedents to these perceptions of fairness. Despite the lack of empirical research, lawyers, human resource managers, and the academic community have all offered common-sense advice regarding how organizations' investigation procedures can be designed to make their results more acceptable to the grieving parties (Bryson, 1990; Daniel, 2003; Ewing, 1989; Jossem, 1991; Oh, 1992; Wright and Bean, 1993). Specifically, it has been suggested that perceived bias might be decreased by using a sexual harassment investigator who is not an employee of the organization and who is the same gender as the victim (Montoya, 1998; Day, 2000; Morgan et al., 2001; Dorfman et al., 2000). The present study provides an empirical test of these prescriptions from the perspective of third-party observers utilizing an organizational justice framework.

Although alleged victims' perceptions are obviously vitally important, these persons do not live in a vacuum. The actions of both victims and observers are needed to effectively address sexual harassment in the workplace (Kulik et al., 1997). Theorists have suggested that those who observe sexual harassment may engage in a number of different intervention strategies to assist victims (Bowes-Sperry and O'Leary-Kelly, 2005). For example, empirical research has demonstrated that the social guidance that victims receive from observers is a critical determinant of the victims' reactions to an organization and their subsequent desire to pursue litigation (Goldman, 2001). Although research has examined observers' perceptions of victims' responses to socio-sexual behaviors (Gilson et al., 2005), studies have not yet explored how observers view organizations' responses to sexual harassment allegations. Thus, the focus of the present study was observers' perceptions of fairness and whether these fairness perceptions were related to the observers' desire to encourage the victim to pursue litigation.

To accomplish this goal, we felt that it was first important to determine whether practitioners' prescriptions about the use of external investigators and same-sex investigators were at least logically consistent with the extant literature on organizational justice perceptions. We then hoped to bridge the gap between these practitioner recommendations and the academic literature by empirically assessing their validity.

It should also be noted that we made a pragmatic decision to restrict our study to beliefs held by female observers. Research has demonstrated that men and women hold significantly different beliefs about the nature and severity of sexual harassment in organizations (Baugh and Page, 1998; Rotundo et al., 2001). As the reader will see in our subsequent discussion, there were reasons to suspect that observers' and victims' gender would not only interact with one another but also with the other substantive variables of interest in the study. Thus, a decision was made to only use female observers and a female victim at this time.

BIAS SUPPRESSION AND FAIRNESS

Perceived fairness is the focus of practitioners' recent recommendations about internal sexual harassment investigations. The issue is whether organizations can find investigators that will be viewed as impartial, thereby enhancing the acceptability of their decisions. Such an investigator would have to be, at the very least, perceived to be capable of setting aside any relevant personal biases that he/she may bring to the investigation. This capability is referred to as "bias suppression." The concept of bias suppression was first introduced by Leventhal (1980). Perceived bias suppression is, therefore, a rule that observers employ to evaluate the fairness of a decision. Generally speaking, decisions that are rendered by persons perceived to be unbiased or impartial are viewed as more fair than decisions that are rendered by someone who observers believe was biased.

Not only does bias suppression influence perceived distributive justice, it is also an important rule that people use for evaluating the interpersonal aspects of decision-makers (Colquit and Jackson, 2006; Tyler and Bies, 1990). Specifically, the manner in which decision-makers interact with targets of their decisions is purported to be an important component of fairness perceptions and it has been labeled interactional justice (Bies and Moag, 1986). The moral conduct of decision-makers such as their honesty, courtesy, respect, and the desire to act in the best interest of others are key interactional justice factors (Bies and Moag, 1986; Tyler and Bies, 1990; Folger and Cropanzano, 1998; Myyry and Helkama, 2002). A belief in an investigator's willingness to make critical decisions either without regard for, or at least without allowing personal biases to unduly influence decisions, should, therefore, provide the basis for interactional fairness perceptions.

Although research has indicated that employees perceive bias suppression as an important determinant of fairness judgments in organizations (Sheppard and Lewicki, 1987), there is essentially no direct empirical evidence addressing the relationship between salient investigators' characteristics, bias suppression, and perceptions of fairness. Theorists have, however, suggested that employees are suspicious of organizational decision-makers' motives (Cohen, 1985). Additionally, studies have found that men are less likely than women to determine that the behaviors of individuals and organizations constitute sex discrimination (Elkins and Phillips, 1999; Elkins et al., 2002) or sexual harassment (Rotundo et al., 2001). Similarly, research has found that women believe men do not view sexual harassment as severe as women do (Baugh and Page, 1998). For these reasons, a female investigator who is not an employee of the organization should, logically, be seen by female observers as far more fair than either a male investigator or an investigator of either gender who is an employee of the organization.

POTENTIAL MODERATING CONDITIONS FOR BIAS SUPPRESSION EFFECTS

The effects of one justice rule (bias suppression) may be moderated by other justice rules or by salient contextual cues (Gilliland, 1993). Therefore, the perceived favorableness of a decision has the potential to further confound how the decision maker is viewed by third-party observers. Likewise, the organizational context in which the decision is reached can also potentially exert an influence on such perceptions.

Outcome Favorableness