Originally found at Yahoo Finance

Employees often complain that managers don’t treat them fairly, meet with them, listen to their concerns, or update them about decisions. New research from Florida International University’s College of Business (FIU Business) finds that “unfairness” may be less about bosses being biased and more about them lacking time to juggle multiple competing priorities.

"Sometimes they’re just too busy,” said Ravi Gajendran, assistant professor of global leadership and management at FIU Business. “When managers are forced to work under time pressure and have to deal with multiple projects and deliverables, they may often lose their focus on treating employees fairly.”

The research, published in the current issue of the Academy of Management Journal, examined data from three studies:

• Twice-daily email surveys over 10 workdays among 107 U.S.-based managers in the healthcare, media, transportation, finance, retail, and education sectors.
• A survey among 166 managers, each with two employees, in a variety of industries in India. Over the course of three months, managers answered questions about workload and how their organizations rewarded fairness; employees responded about how fairly they were treated.
• A one-hour experiment among 239 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory management class at a U.S. public university. Students were made managers and given two tasks – preparing for a client presentation and updating an employee about a situation.

Continue reading original article at Yahoo Finance.

Read the original research in AOM Insights

Learn more about the AOM Scholars and explore their work:

• Elad N. Sherf, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Vijaya Venkataramani, University of Maryland
• Ravi S. Gajendran, Florida International University