It is assumed that fairness perceptions in family firms are complex to apprehend due to the overlap between family and business systems. In this context, one of the most critical challenges experienced by family firms is the fairness perceptions of non-family employees. Drawing upon the fairness literature, our in-depth ethnographic study of a Middle Eastern family firm reveals that fairness perceptions result from social and spiritual evaluation processes through which non-family employees interpret salient events. Specifically, we found that non-family employees combine rational and religious interpretations to generate fairness judgments through two main cognitive processing mechanisms. Labelled as horizontal-social evaluation and vertical-spiritual evaluation, these cognitive mechanisms are rational and supra-rational fairness assessment processes, respectively. Counterintuitively, our findings unveil that depending on the religiosity levels of both the dominant family coalition and non-family employees, the vertical-spiritual evaluation could affect the horizontal social-evaluation, and ultimately the overall fairness perceptions, to different extents. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

由于家族系统和企业系统之间的重叠，人们假设家族企业的公平观念很难理解。在这种情况下，家族企业面临的最严峻挑战之一是非家族员工对公平的看法。借鉴公平文献，我们对一家中东家族企业的深入民族志研究表明，公平认知源于社会和精神评估过程，非家族员工通过该过程解释突出事件。具体而言，我们发现非家族员工通过两种主要的认知加工机制将理性和宗教解释相结合，从而产生公平判断。标记为横向社会评价和纵向精神评价，这些认知机制分别是理性和超理性的公平评估过程。与直觉相反，我们的研究结果揭示，根据占主导地位的家族联盟和非家族雇员的宗教信仰水平，纵向精神评估会在不同程度上影响横向社会评估，最终影响整体公平感。还讨论了理论和实践意义。