When Is It Fairer to Allocate Resources for Training to Lower Performing Versus Higher Performing Employees?

ABSTRACT Professional development and training are essential for organizational growth and success, but resource constraints often force managers into a dilemma: Should they train their lower performing or higher performing employees? While lower performers with greater skill gaps can benefit more from training than higher performers, managers must also consider employees’ fairness concerns. Using an interactive experiment, we predict and find that how employees react to their manager's allocation of training resources depends on the prevailing fairness norms in the work environment. When egalitarian norms dominate, such as when employees have little control over their job tasks, lower performers take the receipt of resources for training for granted and react negatively when the manager allocates those resources to higher performers instead. In contrast, when meritocratic norms dominate, such as when employees have more control over their job tasks, higher performers react more negatively than lower performers to not receiving training resources. Additional experiments suggest that these fairness‐norm–dependent reactions are most pronounced under tournament incentives and may disappear under individual performance‐based pay. Overall, our study highlights the importance for managers to consider both employee productivity and the prevailing fairness norms of the work environment when allocating scarce training resources.