Fair Enough — One Promotion, Three Kinds of Justice

A four-round, intermediate leadership and organizational-behaviour simulation set inside Nordlys Forsikring AS, a Bergen-headquartered Norwegian insurer (NOK 6.4 billion in gross written premiums, 720 employees). You started six weeks ago as head of the 28-person, deliberately multigenerational Claims Excellence department. The long-serving Senior Team Lead retires on 1 May and there is budget for exactly one promotion — a 140 000 kr salary uplift and a leadership track. Two strong internal candidates have applied: Astrid (58, 22 years, the deepest technical expert and mentor to half the team, twice passed over) and Henrik (29, 4 years, led the claims-automation pilot that cut settlement time 22%, high executive visibility). A live grievance alleges the last promotion was decided opaquely; the perceived-fairness score has fallen to 58/100 from 71 two years ago; exit-risk modelling flags 3 younger and 2 senior experts at elevated flight risk (each loss costing 600 000–900 000 kr); and a “Great Place to Work” finalist result lands in eight weeks while an angry team-channel screenshot circulates. The danger is not the choice but the justice of how it is made and explained. Round 1: diagnose which kind of fairness Nordlys has been failing across the three dimensions of organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interactional) — and discover the score fell over an opaque process, not over who won. Round 2: design the decision process before choosing anyone — weighted criteria declared in advance, structured voice, a bias-checked and documented record, trading process depth against the 1 May deadline. Round 3: commit to Astrid, Henrik, or a designed third option, where the model rewards consistency between the criteria set in Round 2 and the choice made here, and punishes a quiet re-weighting (a rigged process), an unspoken seniority norm, or visibility bias. Round 4: deliver the team announcement and the one-on-one with the candidate not chosen — honest and respectful, not platitudes — face the circulating screenshot and reputational clock, and commit a 60-day plan to rebuild fairness. Sticky penalty flags mean the headline anti-patterns (outcome before process, criteria–choice inconsistency, conflict avoidance via seniority, visibility bias, platitudes over honesty) cap the KPIs and cannot reach the top verdict even when other rounds are played well. Final KPIs track perceived fairness (/100), team trust (/10), conflict resolution (/100) and retention of the five flight-risk experts. Currency throughout is the Norwegian krone (kr).