When a manager perceives that his/her subordinate has been treated unfairly, s/he behaves as Robin Hood by attempting to compensate the victim. This often happens without the consent of senior leadership and can involve rule breaking. Examples of Robin Hood behaviors include providing a gift from the department’s budget and giving days off to compensate the victim for working during the strike.
The purpose of this project is to explore when and why managers take steps to informally compensate subordinates whom they deem to have been unfairly treated by senior leaders. These Robin Hood (RH) behaviors are 1) triggered by a manager’s perception of the subordinate’s mistreatment, 2) an attempt to allocate the victim something extra that belongs to the company, and 3) can involve rule breaking. Drawing from deontic justice theory, we proposed and tested a theory of RH in four studies. In Study 1, we examined the premise of our definition and identified key RH behaviors using qualitative interviews. Managers freely admitted that they engaged in RH behaviors by allocating organizational resources to workers in response to an injustice committed by senior leadership. Some managers saw themselves as engaging in wrongful conduct, but for “good reasons,” so they felt that their actions were justified. In Study 2, we surveyed 265 participants, who reported observing RH behaviors at the workplace, and investigated different types of justice that can motivate RH. The findings confirmed Hypothesis 1 that RH can be triggered by interpersonal injustice (perceptions that the subordinate has been treated with a lack of dignity and respect by senior leadership) or by distributive injustice (perceptions that the subordinate has received an outcome that is low in fairness). These types of justice differ with respect to their moral relevance, with interpersonal justice being more likely to trigger moral concerns than distributive. In experimental Studies 3 and 4 (184 and 119 participants, respectively), we confirmed Hypothesis 2 that the effect of injustice on RH is a function of the strength and salience of the manager’s moral identity. When moral identity is high, interpersonal justice predicts RH regardless of the level of distributive justice. When moral identity is low, the two types of justice similarly predict RH.