Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Psychology

Advisor

Charles Scherbaum

Committee Members

Yochi Cohen-Charash

Deepshikha Chatterjee

Harold Goldstein

Seymour Adler

Subject Categories

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Keywords

Workplace accommodations, religion, organizational justice, fairness, OCB, knowledge hiding

Abstract

This study examines coworker reactions to religious accommodations in the workplace, a growing necessity as religious diversity increases, and recent legislation strengthens protections for religious observances. Religious accommodations can provoke perceptions of differential treatment, impacting coworker morale, cooperation, and organizational cohesion. While extensive research exists on disability accommodations, religious accommodations differ fundamentally as they often relate to moral beliefs and are viewed variably in terms of necessity and controllability. Drawing on organizational justice theories, this dissertation applies and modifies Colella’s (2001) and Colella et al.’s (2004) models for coworker perceptions of distributive and procedural fairness of disability accommodations to the religious accommodation context.

Two experiments investigated factors affecting distributive and procedural fairness judgments of religious accommodations and the impact of those judgments on employee helping and harming behaviors. Study 1 explored how accommodation characteristics (manifestation vs. observance; single vs. multiple employees) influenced fairness perceptions through sincerity and controllability judgments. Study 2 tested the impact of organizational interventions such as universal policies (e.g., floating holiday) and how organizations communicate accommodations (e.g., as part of inclusion efforts) on fairness perceptions. Results revealed that perceived sincerity strongly predicted distributive fairness, confirming the central role of need-based justice rules. However, accommodation features did not significantly influence sincerity or controllability perceptions. Universal floating holiday policies showed no effect on fairness perceptions, while inclusion framing significantly improved procedural fairness compared to legal requirement framing. Both studies confirmed robust relationships between fairness perceptions and workplace behaviors, with higher fairness predicting increased organizational citizenship behaviors and decreased knowledge hiding toward accommodated colleagues. Findings demonstrate that communication strategies are an effective intervention for improving fairness perceptions of religious accommodations, and that fairness perceptions translate into meaningful behavioral consequences affecting workplace relationships and organizational functioning.

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