A question of fit:cultural and individual differences in interpersonal justice perceptions

This study examined the link between employees’ adult attachment orientations and perceptions of line managers’ interpersonal justice behaviors, and the moderating effect of national culture (collectivism). Participants from countries categorized as low collectivistic (N = 205) and high collectivistic (N = 136) completed an online survey. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were negatively related to interpersonal justice perceptions. Cultural differences did not moderate the effects of avoidance. However, the relationship between attachment anxiety and interpersonal justice was non-significant in the Southern Asia (more collectivistic) cultural cluster. Our findings indicate the importance of ‘fit’ between cultural relational values and individual attachment orientations in shaping interpersonal justice perceptions, and highlight the need for more non-western organizational justice research.

The grip of personalization in adult social care:between managerial domination and fantasy

This paper examines the 'ideological grip' of personalization. It does so empirically, tracking the trajectory of personalization through austerity budgeting in one English local authority. In this case, personalization continued to signify hope and liberation even though the most draconian cuts in the Council's history effectively rendered personalization a practical impossibility. This requires critical theorization. Two bodies of theory are interrogated. First Boltanski's sociology of critique, and, in particular, his notion of managerial domination illuminate the way in which change imperatives and crises come to cement ideological formations. Here it is argued that the articulation of personalization with transformation lends itself to managerial domination. It is further argued, though, that while institutional actors may be able to manipulate the symbolic to evade, what Boltanski terms, deconstructionist critique, this cannot entirely explain the hold of this particular discourse. Here, the Lacanian concept of enjoyment is deployed to interrogate its extra-symbolic function and fantasmatic form. Finally, the paper explores the political implications of such affective attachment and, in particular, the guarantee that personalization offers in a period of welfare state decline. © The Author(s) 2012.