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Distributive Justice and Higher Education Resource Allocation: Perceptions of Fairness

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Abstract

Although the organizational justice theoretical framework has been used frequently across a wide variety of settings, its use in examining higher education institutions has been limited. The purpose of the study reported here was to begin the process of applying this framework to higher education by identifying the distributive justice sub-principles of equity in this setting. For the study we interviewed nine academic deans across diverse disciplines and identified five sub-principles. These sub-principles of equity were (a) quantity and quality of research publications, (b) external research funding, (c) quality of teaching, (d) impact on students, and (e) quality service. There were differences in the relative importance of these five possible contributions to the institution, as well as how they were assessed. The five sub-principles can be used in future research to examine higher education resource distributions and their impact more fully.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Donor Relations for The Salvation Army, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Hope Bradley Hnat

  2. College of Education, Health, and Human Services, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA

    Daniel Mahony & Shawn Fitzgerald

  3. Accreditation, Assessment and Learning, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA

    Fashaad Crawford

Authors
  1. Hope Bradley Hnat
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  2. Daniel Mahony
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  3. Shawn Fitzgerald
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  4. Fashaad Crawford
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Mahony.

Appendix

Appendix

  1. 1.

    How is the college structured at the university?

  2. 2.

    How do you define faculty productivity?

  3. 3.

    How do you define program productivity?

  4. 4.

    What are your research expectations for faculty? How do you measure productivity? What research do you accept? How is lead authorship versus collaborative research viewed within your college?

  5. 5.

    What are the service expectations for faculty? How do you measure effective service?

  6. 6.

    How do you measure teaching effectiveness for your faculty?

  7. 7.

    Does individual faculty productivity impact your decisions when allocating resources to programs? If so, how?

  8. 8.

    What criteria do you use when allocating merit pay? In what other ways are productive faculty members rewarded?

  9. 9.

    Tell me about two of your most productive faculty members. What about those faculty members made you select them? What basis did you use for determining productivity in the examples provided?

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Hnat, H.B., Mahony, D., Fitzgerald, S. et al. Distributive Justice and Higher Education Resource Allocation: Perceptions of Fairness. Innov High Educ 40, 79–93 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-014-9294-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-014-9294-3

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