Unfairness lies in treating people in a way that they “do not deserve”. Fairness is an interesting challenge when working in different cultures in that local understandings of fairness differ. Every society has clear notions of what is fair and unfair. Every society has rules and norms that everyone understands as fair (and unfair). Breaking those rules demonstrates disrespect both for people and for their society.

Organizations and Unfairness

Organization policies and procedures can emphasize that the organization itself feels that some people are worth more than others. Security and evacuation policies show differences between local and expatriate staff. In some cases, evacuation policies make no mention of local staff at all, assuming they can survive.

Organizations can treat the distribution of scarce resources too casually for people in communities. Rather than have enough to go around, organizations can just distribute goods until they are gone, leaving some people without (and often having stood in line for hours to come away with nothing).

An organization in Iraq went to a neighborhood of one city to distribute goods. They were surprised by how many people showed up. They became frightened. They just threw the goods off the trucks and fled.

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Related Topics
Unfairness through demonstrating Different Value for Different Lives
Organizations and Fairness
Positive Patterns of Behavior based in Fairness
Using Fairness