As a manager, fairness in teamwork, especially in performance management, is critical, and a sense of fairness is often the key to maintaining team morale.
Here are briefly my reflections.
First, fairness is an irrational judgment. Managers should not set team members as rational people. In this regard, there is a classic experiment in economics "ultimatum game". The basic assumption is that if A and B find a hundred dollars on the road, and then the two of them come together to share the money, A has the right to put forward a program to share the money. That is to say, A may put forward: I 50 you 50, or I 90 you 10. no matter what kind of program, as long as B accepted, according to this program to share the money; if B does not accept, the money will be handed over to the police, the two people who can not share the money.
According to the traditional economic assumptions about "rational man", A will propose the following scenario: he will share 99 dollars and give B 1 dollar. Because for B, something is better than nothing. This experiment has been verified countless times by academics, and in fact, the 99:1 situation rarely occurs, and the final acceptance of the program B will share more, but often not more than 50%. The same applies to the saying that "it is better not to have too much than not to have enough".
Secondly, fairness is a subjective judgment, and as the saying goes, "justice lies in the hearts of men", but hearts are different and changeable, so this standard will vary from person to person and from time to time. Therefore, in this sense, there can be no absolute fairness, that is, a fairness that is recognized by all.
Having said that, do we want fairness? Undoubtedly, we still want it. Fairness and justice, which are important hallmarks of modern civilization, are measured by universal values. So, in a team, if the performance results match the majority's standard of what is fair or not, it is considered fairer and a better state of affairs. However, managers cannot passively wait for this to happen because a naturally occurring standard of fairness is likely to be inconsistent with organizational goals, and in extreme cases, there is not even a consensus among team members to form this standard at all.
The formation of this standard is guided by managers, constantly inculcated on a daily basis, and should be flagrantly and consistently implemented, not taboo and repeated back and forth. Those who do not agree may leave, and those who stay will erupt into a stronger fighting force.
In fact, the Party's "coming from the masses to the masses" is largely along the same lines. It is reproduced below:
From the masses, to the masses. This means that the opinions of the masses (dispersed and unsystematic opinions) are gathered together (and, after study, transformed into concentrated and systematic opinions), and then they go to the masses for propaganda and explanation, and are transformed into the opinions of the masses, so that the masses will adhere to them, see them in action, and test the correctness of these opinions in the course of mass action. Then they are centralized again from the masses, and then persisted in the masses. This is an infinite cycle, more correct, more vivid, and richer than ever.
To conclude, fairness is what people are looking for and is the basis for managing a team well, but it is not a passive compromise. Managers need to define standards of fairness in terms of universal values and in the context of organizational goals, clearly stated and repeated over and over again to gain buy-in from members to practice the set of standards.