The Effects of Fairness on Female Managers’ Perception of Career Prospects and Job Satisfaction: A Study across Sectors

ABSTRACT

The perception of organizational fairness is particularly important to women employees, who constantly confront challenges while climbing the hierarchy. This study examines the impacts of the fairness of three organizational levels – Superior, CEO, and HR practices – on women’s career prospects and job satisfaction. We constructed a panel dataset using three waves of the Korean Women Manager Panel with 1,115 women managers across the three sectors in South Korea. We find that women managers’ job satisfaction is positively associated with the fairness of superiors and HR practices in all three sectors, while the fairness of CEO has no impact on job satisfaction in all three sectors. We also find that the fairness of CEO has a positive impact on career prospects in the for-profit sector but no such impact in the public and nonprofit sectors. The findings suggest that CEO fairness may involve procedural justice rather than interactional justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational justice
• career prospects
• job satisfaction
• women manager
• sectoral comparison