Getting fired is undoubtedly one of the most unenjoyable experiences we face in our professional lives.  The way we are let go tends to vary significantly however, and a recent study finds that something as seemingly irrelevant as the number of people on hand to give us our marching orders makes a big difference to how we perceive things.

The paper, led by researchers from Northwestern University and Cornell University, suggests that we tend to perceive such judgements as less fair when they’re received from a committee than when they’re received from an individual manager.

Unfair dismissal

“The way we think about the wisdom of the crowd usually means that if you make a decision, you make a group decision because in this way it’s going to be a better and wiser decision. But then we started thinking of some instances when this might not be necessarily true” the authors say. “Perhaps when a decision is made by a group rather than an individual, the perception of the final decision could be less positive. So if the group makes the decision and the decision is negative, this adds more of the savor taste.”

The authors tested this hypothesis across a couple of experiments.  When it appeared to have experimental support, they further tested it and found that it is the mere presence of a group as the decision making body that causes our perceptions to darken.

For instance, when a group of recently laid off workers were analyzed, it emerged that those who had received the news from a group not only thought the decision was unfair, but they subsequently took a dim view of the organization, to the extent that they would no longer endorse it to a peer.

“The interesting thing about our study is that we think about the wisdom of the crowd as something good, but this is not a rule organizations should be following” the researchers explain.

Making people redundant is an inevitable part of a managers life, but this study suggests that when we do it, it might be better to take responsibility ourselves as individuals rather than deliver it from the comfort of a group.