Remedy‐seeking responses to wrongful dismissal

Purpose This study's purpose is to investigate the antecedents of an employee's remedy‐seeking behavioral intentions in response to wrongful dismissal. Design/methodology/approach Hypotheses generated by two paradigms are tested, the similarity‐attraction and the similarity‐betrayal paradigms, using Tobit regression and data from a scenario‐based survey of employees. Findings Consistent with the similarity‐attraction paradigm, the management team's racial and deep‐level similarity to the employee both were negatively related to the employee's propensity to consult a lawyer. Consistent with the similarity‐betrayal paradigm, the employee's propensity to consult a lawyer increased with the supervisor's deep‐level similarity to the employee; among men, the propensity to complain to regulatory agencies increased with the management team's gender similarity and the propensity to not seek a remedy declined with the supervisor's gender similarity. Research limitations/implications Limitations of the study include the use a single‐source, cross‐sectional, convenience sample; the small size and heterogeneity of the non‐white sub‐sample; and the limited number of control variables. Future research should explore whether the findings are robust when tested using alternative types of data; alternative wrongful dismissal scenarios; a more extensive set of controls for organizational, job, and personal characteristics; and larger, more diverse sub‐samples of non‐whites. Practical implications Organizations should manage dismissals in a manner that encourages employees to favor internal remedy‐seeking over external remedy‐seeking options. Originality/value This study is the first to investigate the antecedents of a wrongfully dismissed employee's propensity to engage in internal as well as external remedy‐seeking and to explore the effects of management's similarity to the employee on the employee's remedy‐seeking actions.