Reintegration in the workplace: a restorative justice perspective

Purpose When employees engage in wrongdoing, an alternative to traditional punishment and retribution is to reintegrate the offender back into the workplace community. The purpose of this paper is to examine how offenders can reintegrate themselves back into the workplace and whether the process of reintegration differs for managerial versus non-managerial offenders. Design/methodology/approach To test hypotheses regarding relationships among offender amends, perceived forgiveness by affected parties and perceived offender reintegration, we surveyed samples of non-managerial offenders and managerial offenders across three studies. Findings Study 1, involving non-managers, supports the restorative justice perspective by showing that reintegration requires offenders to make amends and obtain forgiveness from key parties. Study 2, involving managers, generally does not support the restorative justice perspective, showing that making amends may be less important for receiving forgiveness and reintegration for managers compared to non-managers. Study 3, involving both managers and non-managers, suggests that managers are more likely than non-managers to be reintegrated regardless of forgiveness, possibly due to their authority or status in the organization. Practical implications The findings suggest that both managers and non-managerial offenders seeking reintegration should focus on repairing workgroup relationships and seeking forgiveness from the workgroup. However, compared to non-managers, managers’ reintegration may be more compliance-based, surface-level and transactional and workgroup members may feel obligated to forgive and reintegrate their manager regardless of whether amends are offered. Originality/value This is the first study to empirically examine the influence of amends and forgiveness on offender reintegration in work organizations, both for managers and non-managerial offenders.