ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we discuss social-psychological and organizational contri-butions to understanding fairness within and between groups. This workon fairness has taken psychologists a long way from simple motivational models of personal self-interest; fairness rules do exist and people do follow them (Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978). Unfortunately, however, despite the forward movement, theory and research on fairness has encountered several problems, but they are problems that a social identity analysis is particularly well suited to address. Two of these problems pertain to the scope of the fairness theories (Foschi, 1997). For example, the traditional analyses of fairness rest at an individual level (Doise, 1986), despite many fairness concernssuch as contract negotiations between labor and management-obtaining at an intergroup level (Tajfel, 1982, 1984; van Knippenberg & van Oers, 1984). Moreover, although most fairness theorists place a “moral community” (Deutsch, 1975, p. 142) or some other in-group (e.g., organization, work team) as the scope of application of their work, very little fairness research, if any, has allowed for the a priori identification of this scope condition.
