Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy (reprint)

When employees don't trust managers to make good decisions or to behave with integrity, their motivation is seriously compromised. Their distrust and its attendant lack of engagement is a huge, unrecognized problem in most organizations. This issue has always mattered, but it matters now more than ever, because knowledge-based organizations are totally dependent on the commitment and ideas of their employees. Unfortunately, neither integrity nor good judgment can be magically conferred on all the managers in an organization. But it is possible for top executives to create processes that help keep managers honest--and that also help build employees' trust. In this article, the authors describe one such process, which grew out of their research into the links between trust, idea sharing, and corporate performance. Their central finding is that employees will commit to a manager's decision--even one they disagree with--if they believe that the process the manager used to make the decision was fair. Sounds simple, but most organizations don't practice fair process. And because they don't, they never know what they've lost in the way of ideas and initiatives.