When Faith in Legitimate Processes is Lost

By Tom Barth
October 8, 2020

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

As I teach my MPA class this fall entitled Public Organizations and Management, I always keep an eye on highly visible current events in the larger society and reflect on how they apply to our study of public organizations. As I recently watched the national news one morning I saw these three items receive heavy news coverage in sequence: protests about the decision not to indict the officers involved in the shooting of Breonna Taylor, the decision by the Senate to proceed to vote on replacing Justice Ginsburg’s seat right before the presidential election when these very same leaders refused to vote on President Obama’s appointee in 2016 until after the election and President Trump calling into question the integrity of the election in November due to the heavy use of mail-in ballots.

Regardless of where you stand on these issues, the underlying theme in all three is people questioning the legitimacy of fundamental processes, whether it is the judicial process, the Supreme Court nomination process or the electoral process. You are in real trouble as a democracy if citizens do not trust the processes that produce important outcomes and question the motives of those in power who are suspected of manipulating these processes whether it is due to bias, politics or self-interest.

 It is worth remembering that the importance of legitimate processes applies to the organizational level as well. If as a leader of a government or nonprofit agency your employees doubt that your core processes are legitimate, you will have serious problems generating the support you need to sustain current operations at an optimal level, let alone expect employees to get on board with any significant change proposals. Bob Denhardt cites the work of Gerald Ferris and colleagues who found that, “Although politics may be an inherent part of organizational life, the higher the perceived level of politics, the higher the stress for employees.”

Elaborating on this stress, other descriptive words are used such as a feeling of powerlessness, fear and uncertainty. I would add anger! Consider key organizational processes such as hiring and promotion decisions, resource allocation, and key strategic decisions that shape the agency’s mission and daily operations. I would wager that we have all been in situations where there is a concern that suspected bias has influenced a personnel decision, favoritism towards certain department has slanted budget decisions or key stakeholders have been left out of discussions that shape the agency’s direction.

These situations create an organizational environment that is perceived as fundamentally unjust and ultimately not sustainable in the long run, as good employees will either become cynical, not perform at their potential or perhaps exit. In another treatment of the importance of process, Denhardt notes the connection between process and fairness when he cites Jerald Greenberg’s framework of multiple types of organizational justice: distributive justice (the fairness of the outcome or decision), interactional justice (the nature of communication and how a person is treated) and, importantly for this essay, procedural justice (the fairness of the process used in making the decision). The key point here is that even if employees don’t agree with an outcome, if there are clear reasons and procedures that justify the decision, it will be less likely to provoke the anxiety, anger and overall stress outlined above.

Returning to the societal levels described at the beginning of this essay, there are angry social protests because segments of our citizenry believe that there is systemic bias in the form of racism in our criminal justice and judicial systems. In the case of the Senate’s decision to force a vote on a new Supreme Court justice before the upcoming election, some citizens are cynical about the exercise of raw political power in evidence given the clear hypocrisy of the decision. Finally, the President calling into question the legitimacy of the electoral process is a rejection of the voice of the citizens because he is clearly behind in the polls (he will certainly not be questioning the results if he wins!). All of these examples are illustrations of a perceived lack of procedural justice.

During a recent class one of my students lamented how, “There is no truth anymore, just people clashing over their definition of the truth.” My response speaks directly to this issue of legitimate processes. Fortunately, we don’t have a society where there is any one answer to any problem or issue that is dictated from one person or group of people. Indeed, the beauty of an evolving democratic government and society is that there are more voices being heard than ever before, instead of just a few dominant voices that gave the illusion of one accepted answer or truth. I would conclude by saying that although we may at times despair over what to do about the perceived lack of procedural justice at the highest levels of our government and society, there is much we can do within our own government and nonprofit organizations, which are also an essential part of the fabric of a democratic government and society.

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Author: Tom Barth is a Professor and MPA Director at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He teaches, conducts research, and consults in the areas of organizational behavior, strategic planning, human resource management and ethics. He is a member of the National Council of ASPA, representing District III.

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