男女差別を考える その①

Meyerson and Fletcher (1999) argued how invisible – even unintentional – gender discrimination thrives in today’s companies. Many tend to see this problem only from the gender perspectives, but I think this approach brings about a possibility that we misunderstand the essence of this problem. Despite what you may hear, I think this gender discrimination issue is essentially no different from the issue of “senseless increase” in the spread between executives’ compensation and the average salaries of the people they employ in corporate America. Thus, I’d like to define invisible gender inequality in the workplace as a matter of injustice. The reason I think this definition is so important is because organizations lacking in the sense of justice are more likely to find another scapegoat for oppression, even if one oppressed group is relieved.

That is, I think gender discrimination is a single manifestation of organizational injustice based on oppression and will be reproduced in the form of an injustice or combination of injustices, such as distributive injustice, procedural injustice, retributive injustice, moral exclusion (exclusion of a group or individuals from scope of justice) or cultural imperialism. Young (1990) explained that oppression is structural, rather than the result of a few people’s choices or policies. Deutsch (2006) also argued that we cannot eliminate this structural oppression by getting rid of the rulers or by making some new laws, because oppressions are systematically reproduced in the major economic, political, and cultural institutions. This means that we need to deal with the source of injustice, rather than the symptoms of injustice.

A couple of months ago, Business Week magazine said that customer service and employee morale at the Wal-Mart stores are at rock bottom and those situations lead to current slowing sales and a stagnant stock price. I hypothesize that such a situation was caused by an increase in perceived injustice by the oppressed. Probably many store staffs increasingly perceive that they are not treated as human beings by their employer because of lack of job autonomy and extreme distributive injustice. Why is GM's dominant position eroding rapidly against Toyota? I think this is the market-imposed decision based on the relativity of organizational injustice between the two companies. In other words, organizational injustice is revealed by day-to-day interactions with external stakeholders such as customers or the community. The more injustices in a company are, the less product or service quality will be, the more customers will be away from the company.

Therefore, I think that awakening the sense of injustice in an organization is increasingly important for future business continuity. Many businesses would have to go away from the market by leaving increased organizational injustices unsettled, not by succumbing in the external competition. Therefore, I conclude that for future HR professionals, sensitivity to injustice will be increasingly important and in the near future, I expect that the role of a “business partner” will be less important than the role of a “justice advocate” as HR function.