People care more about the fairness of the process than they care about the actual outcome

Fairness is the extent to which decisions at work are perceived as being fair and equitable. Relevant research on procedural justice (e.g., Lawler, 1968; Tyler, 1990) has shown that people are more concerned with the fairness of the process than with the favorableness of the outcome.

– Maslach and Leiter (2008) in Early Predictors of Job Burnout and Engagement

References