Effect of public servants’ social connections on citizens’ perception of promotion fairness

We examined the effect of social connections of public servants in China on citizens’ perception of promotion fairness. We conducted a survey with 401 citizens employed in various different sectors in China, who were provided with a vignette involving the social connections/lack of social connections of public servants as the manipulated variable. The results showed that having social connections was significantly and negatively correlated with citizens’ perception of public servants’ promotion fairness. Our findings offer new insight into the importance of an informal factor in citizen perceptions of fairness, contribute to the literature on promotion fairness, and generate managerial implications for public servants’ promotion process in regard to increasing citizen trust in the government. Study limitations are discussed and directions for future research are presented.