Recognition Has a Nationality: How Power, Color, and Credibility Shape Organizational Quality Management

Abstract

Recognition and credibility are nothing more than niceties in any given workplace. They are currencies that drive facilitation and safeguarding of employee morale and organizational break/bound shifts of effective systems of quality management. Employees who feel they are appreciated and recognized for their direct contributions appreciate more encourage innovation, and rally organizational goals more. However, in many organizations around the world, particularly in the developing and transitioning economies, the ideal remains the desired. Here and now, recognition is more often than not about systemic inequities and deficiencies of power, country of passport, color of skin, immigration, managerial favouritism and, in general, the equity of recognition. This paper examines the systemic inequities of management, loss of employee motivation, and gaps in the systems of quality management, caused by practices of appropriation of credit, exertion of authority, and power of identity. We take a mixed approach in order to create a broad perspective. We juxtapose the hard quantitative data of a time-lagged survey, analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), with qualitative auto-ethnographic narratives, and the global workforce statistics. Our findings present recognition injustice as a strong predictor for psychological damage, work disconnection, and turnover intention. Conversely, consistent ethical leadership along with transparent and fair human resource systems reinforces a strong mitigating effect. From this research, we offer a significant contribution to the HRM literature regarding recognition injustice as an issue of structural injustice, as opposed to being an issue of manager incivility, an inter-personal issue, or an issue of systemic incivility within the organization. We conclude with an imperative: Organizations and regulators need to move away from ambiguous ideas and implement regulatory, defensible, evidence-based recognition structures that, in an ethical and quality assurance framework, make recognition governance a standard for operational compliance.

Keywords: Recognition injustice; Credit theft; Power abuse; Ethical leadership; Structural Equation Modelling; Auto-ethnography; Nationality bias; Quality management; HRM; Structural violence; Psychological safety; Workplace discrimination; Global inequality; Managerial favouritism; Employee disengagement

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18247109