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A central premise of the procedural justice literature—based on studies conducted mainly in the United States—is that people react unfavorably when they have little voice in a decision-making process. The studies reported here evaluated whether the magnitude of voice effects varies across cultures. As predicted, Studies 1–3 showed that the tendency for people to respond less favorably (i.e., with lower organizational commitment) to lower levels of voice was greater in low power distance cultures (United States and Germany) than in high power distance cultures (People's Republic of China, Mexico, and Hong Kong). And in a single cultural setting, Study 4 found a similar interactive effect of voice and people's power distance beliefs on employees' work attitudes and job performance. Theoretical implications for the justice and cross-cultural literatures are discussed, as are practical implications and suggestions for future research.

Female undergraduates scoring high and low on the Mirels-Garrett Protestant Ethic (PE) Scale divided a fixed reward between themselves and a co-worker following competition on a clerical task. Half the subjects were told that they had either won or lost in fair competition. The remaining subjects were told they had either won or lost because of an error that gave a favorable advantage to one of the performers. When the competition was fair, high PEs distributed the rewards available according to an equity norm, keeping more than half when they won and less than half when they lost. When the competition was unfair, high PEs attempted to reestablish fairness by compensating the performer with the unfair disadvantage. However, low PEs kept approximately half the reward regardless of fairness and regardless of whether they won or lost.

Two-hundred male undergraduates, individually and in groups of five, divided a fixed reward between two performers with unequal inputs under conditions in which they either expected or did not expect future interaction with recipients. Individuals who anticipated future interaction with recipients divided the reward equally, while groups divided the reward equitably. When interaction was not expected, individuals divided the reward equitably by discriminating between recipients, while groups made more extreme discriminations (the group polarization effect). Experiencing group discussions made individuals more confident in the fairness of their subsequent allocations. The results are discussed in terms of the social and informational influences of groups on allocation decisions.