Organizational justice
Greenberg introduced the concept of organizational justice with regard to how an employee judges the behavior of the organization and the employee's resulting attitude and behaviour. For example, if a firm makes redundant half of the workers, an employee may feel a sense of injustice with a resulting change in attitude and a drop in productivity.
Justice or fairness refers to the idea that an action or decision is morally right, which may be defined according to ethics, religion, fairness, equity, or law. People are naturally attentive to the justice of events and situations in their everyday lives, across a variety of contexts. Individuals react to actions and decisions made by organizations every day. An individual's perceptions of these decisions as fair or unfair can influence the individual's subsequent attitudes and behaviors. Fairness is often of central interest to organizations because the implications of perceptions of injustice can impact job attitudes and behaviors at work. Justice in organizations can include issues related to perceptions of fair pay, equal opportunities for promotion, and personnel selection procedures.
There are two forms of Organizational Justice; outcome favorability and outcome justice. Outcome favorability is a judgement based on personal worth, and outcome justice is based on moral propriety. Managers often believe that employees think of justice as merely the desired outcome.
Overview
Four components of organizational justice are distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice. Research also suggests the importance of affect and emotion in the appraisal of the fairness of a situation as well as one's behavioral and attitudinal reactions to the situation. Much literature in the industrial/organizational psychology field has examined organizational justice as well as the associated outcomes. Perceptions of justice influence many key organizational outcomes such as motivation and job satisfaction.Recent criticism of the conception of organizational justice as an attitudinal perception note the danger of mistaking a worker’s perception of just treatment with a worker being treated fairly.
Corporate social responsibility
A concept related to organizational justice is corporate social responsibility. Organizational justice generally refers to perceptions of fairness in treatment of individuals internal to that organization while corporate social responsibility focuses on the fairness of treatment of entities external to the organization. Corporate social responsibility refers to a mechanism by which businesses monitor and regulate their performance in line with moral and societal standards such that it has positive influences on all of its stakeholders. Thus, CSR involves organizations going above and beyond what is moral or ethical and behaving in ways that benefit members of society in general. A study by Susen and Etter found that perceptions of organizational justice mediate the link between ESG performance and employee satisfaction, underscoring the role of fairness in shaping employee responses to corporate sustainability. Other scholars such as Rupp et al. have furthermore proposed that an employee's perceptions of their organization's level of corporate social responsibility can impact that individual's own attitudes and perceptions of justice even if they are not the victim of unfair acts.Roots in equity theory
The idea of organizational justice stems from equity theory, which posits that judgments of equity and inequity are derived from comparisons between one's self and others based on inputs and outcomes. Inputs refer to what a person perceives to contribute while outcomes are what an individual perceives to get out of an exchange relationship. Comparison points against which these inputs and outcomes are judged may be internal or external.Types
Researchers have classified three main components of organizational justice: distributive, procedural, and interactional.Distributive
Distributive justice is conceptualized as the fairness associated with decision outcomes and distribution of resources. The outcomes or resources distributed may be tangible or intangible. Perceptions of distributive justice can be fostered when outcomes are perceived to be equally applied. Distributive justice may involve one or more of three different rationales for how resources are distributed: equity, equality and need. Equity focuses more on rewarding employees based on their contribution, and thus can be viewed as capitalist justice: the ratio of one's inputs to one's outcomes. Equality on the other hand provides each employee with the same compensation. Finally, need is providing a benefit based on one's personal requirement.Procedural
Procedural justice is defined as the fairness of the processes that lead to outcomes. When individuals feel that they have a voice in the process or that the process involves characteristics such as consistency, accuracy, ethicality, and lack of bias then procedural justice is enhanced. Procedural justice is the appropriateness of the allocation process. It includes six main points which are consistency, lack of bias, accuracy, representation of all concerned, correction and ethics. Procedural justice seems to be essential to maintaining institutional legitimacy. What is more interesting is that procedural justice affects what workers believe about the organization as a whole.Interactional
Interactional justice refers to the treatment that an individual receives as decisions are made and can be promoted by providing explanations for decisions and delivering the news with sensitivity and respect. A construct validation study published in 2001 suggests that interactional justice should be broken into two components: interpersonal and informational justice. Interpersonal justice refers to perceptions of respect and propriety in one's treatment while informational justice relates to the adequacy of the explanations given in terms of their timeliness, specificity, and truthfulnessInterpersonal justice "reflects the degree to which people are treated with politeness, dignity, and respect by authorities and third parties involved in executing procedures or determining outcomes".
Informational justice "focuses on explanations provided to people that convey information about why procedures were used in a certain way or why outcomes were distributed in a certain fashion".
Proposed models
Three different models have been proposed to explain the structure of organizational justice perceptions including a two factor model, a three factor model, and a four factor model. Many researchers have studied organizational justice in terms of the three factor model; while others have used a two factor model in which interpersonal justice is subsumed under procedural justice while yet some other studies suggest a four factor model best fits the data. Greenberg proposed a two-factor model and Sweeney and McFarlin found support for a two-factor model composed of distributive and procedural justice. Through the use of structural equation modeling, Sweeney and McFarlin found that distributive justice was related to outcomes that are person-level while procedural justice was related to organization-level outcomes.The accuracy of the two-factor model was challenged by studies that suggested a third factor may be involved. Some argue that interactional justice is distinct from procedural justice because it represents the social exchange component of the interaction and the quality of treatment whereas procedural justice represents the processes that were used to arrive at the decision outcomes. Generally researchers are in agreement regarding the distinction between procedural and distributive justice but there is more controversy over the distinction between interactional and procedural justice. Colquitt demonstrated that a four-factor model fit the data significantly better than a two or three factor model. Colquitt's construct validation study also showed that each of the four components have predictive validity for different key organizational outcomes.
Another model of organizational justice proposed by Byrne and colleagues suggested that organizational justice is a multi-foci construct, one where employees see justice as coming from a source - either the organization or their supervisor. Thus, rather than focus on justice as the three or four factor component model, Byrne suggested that employees personify the organization and they distinguish between whether they feel the organization or supervisor have treated them fairly, use fair procedures, or allocate rewards or assignments fairly. A number of researchers used this model exploring the possibility that justice is more than just 3 or 4 factors.
The role of affect in perceptions
One of the key constructs that has been shown to play a role in the formation of organizational justice perceptions is affect. The precise role of affect in organizational justice perceptions depends on the form of affectivity being examined as well as the context and type of justice being measured. Affect may serve as an antecedent, outcome, or even a mediator of organizational justice perceptions.Barsky, et al. provide a model that explains the role of affect and emotions at various stages of the appraisal and reaction stages of justice perception formation and illustrates that injustice is generally an affect-laden and subjective experience. Affect and emotions can be part of the reactions to perceived injustice, as studies have shown that the more injustice that is perceived, the higher degrees of negative emotions are experienced. In addition, affect can act as a mediator between justice perceptions and actions taken to redress the perceived injustice. Affect plays this role in equity theory such that negative affective reactions act as a mediator between perceptions and actions, as emotional reactions to justice motivate individuals to take action to restore equity.
A 2007 meta-analysis by Barsky and Kaplan condenses many studies on this topic and explains that state and trait level affect can influence one's perceptions of justice. It supports the idea that both state and trait level negative affect can act as antecedents to justice perceptions. State and trait level negative affect are negatively associated with interactional, procedural, and distributive justice perceptions. Conversely, positive state and trait affectivity was linked to higher ratings of interactional, procedural and distributive justice.
Based on the research regarding the central role of affect in justice perceptions, Lang, Bliese, Lang, and Adler extended this research and studied the idea that sustained clinical levels of negative affect could be a precursor to perceptions of injustice in organizations. They tested longitudinal cross-lagged effects between organizational justice perceptions and employee depressive symptoms and found that depressive symptoms do lead to subsequent organizational justice perceptions. Thus, affect can serve as an antecedent to justice perceptions in this instance.