Retaliation in the workplace: The roles of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice.

The authors investigated the relationship between organizational justice and organizational retaliation behavior—adverse reactions to perceived unfairness by disgruntled employees toward their employer—in a sample of 240 manufacturing employees. Distributive, procedural, and interactional justice interacted to predict organizational retaliation behavior. A relation between distributive justice and retaliation was found only when there was low interactional and procedural justice. The 2-way interaction of distributive and procedural justice was observed only at a low level of interactional justice, and the 2-way interaction of distributive and interactional justice was observed only at a low level of procedural justice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships Between Organizational Justice and Burnout at the Work-Unit Level.

Relationships between organizational justice and well-being are traditionally investigated at the individual level. This article extends previous efforts by testing such relationships at the work-unit level. Three corridors of influence were examined. First, the level (work units' average scores) of justice is related to the level of burnout. Second, justice climate strength (level of agreement among work-unit members) moderates the predictability of the level of burnout. Third, justice strength is related to burnout strength. The authors interviewed 324 contact employees from 108 work units in 59 service organizations. Findings showed the predominance of interactional justice over distributive and procedural justice in all 3 corridors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Justice-based opposition to social policies: Is it genuine?

Three studies examined whether the concern for justice can be a genuine determinant of attitudes toward affirmative action (AA) or whether justice-based opposition merely masks prejudice. In line with the hypothesis of justice as a cause, we found that, independent of their level of prejudice, people were opposed to AA programs that violate distributive and procedural justice norms, as a result of genuine beliefs in the principles of fairness that the programs violate. Nevertheless, in line with the hypothesis of justice as a rationalization, we also found that people's prejudice level was positively associated with opposition to AA programs that were not explicitly justice violating; moreover, the effect of prejudice was mediated through the tendency to construe these programs as justice violating. The present research has implications for understanding attitudes toward social policies where it is possible that justice concerns could be a genuine source of opposition or a rationalization of prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Claiming in the name of fairness: Organizational justice and the decision to file for workplace injury compensation.

This article explored the relationship among injured workers' perceptions of workplace justice (i.e., distributive, interactional, and procedural), perceptions of employers' disability-related policies, and the decision to file a workers' compensation claim. Using a 2-wave sample of 1,077 workers with repetitive motion injuries, the authors tested a structural equation model. Results revealed that Time 1 interactional justice was negatively related to filing a claim, whereas Time 1 distributive justice was positively related to perceptions of employer disability-related practices measured a year after the date of injury report. At Time 2, the claim decision was unrelated to perceptions of justice, yet perceptions of disability-related practices were significantly related to all 3 types of justice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Got political skill? The impact of justice on the importance of political skill for job performance.

The present study examined the moderating effects of procedural and distributive justice on the relationships between political skill and task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among 175 supervisor–subordinate dyads of a government organization. Using Mischel’s (1968) situationist perspective, high justice conditions were considered “strong situations,” whereas low justice conditions were construed as “weak situations.” We found that when both procedural and distributive justice were low, political skill was positively related to performance. Under conditions of both high procedural and high distributive justice, political skill was negatively related to performance. Finally, under conditions of low distributive justice, political skill was positively related to OCB, whereas under conditions of high distributive justice, political skill had little effect on OCB. These results highlight the importance of possessing political skill in weak but not strong situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Work gets unfair for the depressed: Cross-lagged relations between organizational justice perceptions and depressive symptoms.

The organizational justice literature has consistently documented substantial correlations between organizational justice and employee depression. Existing theoretical literature suggests this relationship occurs because perceptions of organizational (in)justice lead to subsequent psychological health problems. Building on recent research on the affective nature of justice perceptions, in the present research we broaden this perspective by arguing there are also theoretical arguments for a reverse effect whereby psychological health problems influence perceptions of organizational justice. To contrast both theoretical perspectives, we test longitudinal lagged effects between organizational justice perceptions (i.e., distributive justice, interactional justice, interpersonal justice, informational justice, and procedural justice) and employee depressive symptoms using structural equation modeling. Analyses of 3 samples from different military contexts (N? = 625, N? = 134, N? = 550) revealed evidence of depressive symptoms leading to subsequent organizational justice perceptions. In contrast, the opposite effects of organizational justice perceptions on depressive symptoms were not significant for any of the justice dimensions. The findings have broad implications for theoretical perspectives on psychological health and organizational justice perceptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure.

This study explores the dimensionality of organizational justice and provides evidence of construct validity for a new justice measure. Items for this measure were generated by strictly following the seminal works in the justice literature. The measure was then validated in 2 separate studies. Study 1 occurred in a university setting, and Study 2 occurred in a field setting using employees in an automobile parts manufacturing company. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a 4-factor structure to the measure, with distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice as distinct dimensions. This solution fit the data significantly better than a 2- or 3-factor solution using larger interactional or procedural dimensions. Structural equation modeling also demonstrated predictive validity for the justice dimensions on important outcomes, including leader evaluation, rule compliance, commitment, and helping behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of overall justice judgments in organizational justice research: A test of mediation.

Organizational justice research traditionally focuses on the unique predictability of different types of justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional) and the relative importance of these types of justice on outcome variables. Recently, researchers have suggested shifting from this focus on specific types of justice to a consideration of overall justice. The authors hypothesize that overall justice judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice facets and outcomes. They present 2 studies to test this hypothesis. Study 1 demonstrates that overall justice judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice judgments and employee attitudes. Study 2 demonstrates the mediating relationship holds for supervisor ratings of employee behavior. Implications for research on organizational justice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal analysis of organizational fairness: An examination of reactions to tenure and promotion decisions.

Most organizational justice research takes a cross-sectional approach to examining the relationship between perceived fairness and individuals' attitudes. This study examines the effect of procedural and distributive justice over time. It is suggested that individuals acquire more information and experience with procedures and outcomes over time. These changes in information and experience affect the influence of procedural and distributive justice on organizational attitudes. Faculty perceptions of tenure and promotion decisions were assessed 3 times (preallocation, short-term postallocation, long-term postallocation) over a 2-year period. Results generally supported the hypotheses. Procedural justice was most influential prior to and soon after outcome decisions were made. Distributive justice was most influential 1 year later. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Support for affirmative action, justice perceptions, and work attitudes: A study of gender and racial–ethnic group differences.

Do gender and race-ethnicity moderate people's reactions to perceptions that their organization supports affirmative action/equal opportunity (AA/EO)? This study compared relationships between perceptions of support for AA/EO, distributive and procedural justice, career development opportunities, and work attitudes in 4 groups of federal employees: White men (n?=?4,919), White women (n?=?1,622), Blacks/Hispanics (n?=?492), and Asians (n?=?195). Surprisingly, White men did not associate support for AA/EO with a loss in career development opportunities, organizational injustice, or negative work attitudes. For women and racial-ethnic minorities, support for AA/EO was positively linked to perceptions of organizational justice and increased career development opportunities. As predicted, Blacks/Hispanics had more positive reactions than other employee groups. We conclude that support for AA/EO is generally viewed as fair and has positive attitudinal consequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

If you feel bad, it's unfair: A quantitative synthesis of affect and organizational justice perceptions.

Whereas research interest in both individual affect/temperament and organizational justice has grown substantially in recent years, affect's role in the perception of organizational justice has received scant attention. Here, the authors integrate these literatures and test bivariate relationships between state affect (e.g., moods), trait affect (e.g., affectivity), and organizational justice variables using meta-analytically aggregated effect sizes. Results indicated that state and trait positive and negative affect exhibit statistically significant relationships with perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice in the predicted directions, with mean population-level correlations ranging in absolute magnitude from Mρ? = .09 to Mρ? = .43. Correlations involving state affect generally were larger but not significantly different from those involving trait affect. Finally, the authors propose ideas for investigations at the primary-study level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organization structure as a moderator of the relationship between procedural justice, interactional justice, perceived organizational support, and supervisory trust.

Organizational justice researchers recognize the important role organization context plays in justice perceptions, yet few studies systematically examine contextual variables. This article examines how 1 aspect of context--organizational structure--affects the relationship between justice perceptions and 2 types of social exchange relationships, organizational and supervisory. The authors suggest that under different structural conditions, procedural and interactional justice will play differentially important roles in determining the quality of organizational social exchange (as evidenced by perceived organizational support [POS]) and supervisory social exchange (as evidenced by supervisory trust). In particular, the authors hypothesized that the relationship between procedural justice and POS would be stronger in mechanistic organizations and that the relationship between interactional justice and supervisory trust would be stronger in organic organizations. The authors' results support these hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antecedents and outcomes of abusive supervision: Test of a trickle-down model.

The authors examined antecedents of abusive supervision and the relative importance of interactional and procedural justice as mediators of the relationship between abusive supervision and the work outcomes of affective organizational commitment and individual- and organization-directed citizenship behaviors. Data were obtained from subordinate-supervisor dyads from a telecommunication company located in southeastern China. Results of moderated regression analysis revealed that authoritarian leadership style moderated the relationship between supervisors' perceptions of interactional justice and abusive supervision such that the relationship was stronger for supervisors high rather than low in authoritarian leadership style. In addition, results of structural equation modeling analysis revealed that subordinates' perceptions of interactional but not procedural justice fully mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and the work outcomes. Implications for future investigations of abusive supervision are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sympathy and support for industrial actions: A justice analysis.

Investigated the effects of different causes of grievance and different types of industrial action on observers' justice perceptions and their sympathy toward and support for grievants in industrial actions. Results indicated that grievances based on interactional injustice generated a stronger perception of unfairness, more sympathy, and more support than did grievances based on procedural injustice, which in turn generated a stronger perception of unfairness, more sympathy, and more support than did grievances based on distributive injustice. Ss also expressed less support for strikes than for sit-ins, but no such difference because of the types of industrial action taken was found for perceived fairness and sympathy. Finally, the ratings on perceived fairness, sympathy, and support were more discrepant among the 3 types of grievance for sit-ins than for strikes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of fair treatment and rewards in perceptions of organizational support and leader-member exchange.

This study examined a model of the antecedents and consequences of perceived organizational support (POS) and leader-member exchange (LMX). It was predicted that organizational justice (procedural and distributive justice) and organizational practices that provide recognition to the employee (feelings of inclusion and recognition from upper management) would influence POS. For LMX, it was predicted that leader reward (distributive justice and contingent rewards) and punishment behavior would be important antecedents. Results based on a sample of 211 employee-supervisor dyads indicated that organizational justice, inclusion, and recognition were related to POS and contingent rewards were related to LMX. In terms of consequences, POS was related to employee commitment and organizational citizenship behavior, whereas LMX predicted performance ratings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research.

The field of organizational justice continues to he marked by several important research questions, including the size of relationships among justice dimensions, the relative importance of different justice criteria, and the unique effects of justice dimensions on key outcomes. To address such questions, the authors conducted a meta-analytic review of 183 justice studies. The results suggest that although different justice dimensions are moderately to highly related, they contribute incremental variance explained in fairness perceptions. The results also illustrate the overall and unique relationships among distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice and several organizational outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, evaluation of authority, organizational citizenship behavior, withdrawal, performance). These findings are reviewed in terms of their implications for future research on organizational justice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring the Role of Emotions in Injustice Perceptions and Retaliation.

Although organizational justice scholars often describe unfairness as an emotionally laden experience, the role of emotion is underresearched. In a study of individuals who experienced being laid off (N = 173), the authors found that outcome favorability interacts with both procedural and interactional justice to predict participants' emotions. The pattern of interaction differed for inward-focused (i.e., shame and guilt) and outward-focused (i.e., anger and hostility) negative emotions. Attributions of blame mediated the relationship between fairness perceptions and outward-focused negative emotion. Outward-focused emotion mediated the relationship between fairness perceptions and retaliation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Four-factor justice and daily job satisfaction: A multilevel investigation.

This study examined the differential effects of 4 types of organizational justice on daily job satisfaction at between- and within-individual levels. Specifically, the authors predicted that interpersonal justice and informational justice would exhibit meaningful daily variations and would have direct impacts on individuals’ job satisfaction on a daily basis. They further theorized that distributive justice and procedural justice at a between-person level would moderate the within-person relationships. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to test their hypotheses with a sample of 231 full-time employees in Hong Kong over the course of 25 working days. The results showed that both daily interpersonal and informational justice were positively related to daily job satisfaction. As hypothesized, between-individual distributive justice moderated the relationship between daily interpersonal justice and daily job satisfaction, and between-individual procedural justice moderated the relationship between daily informational justice and daily job satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational Injustice and Psychological Strain.

Characterizing perceived injustice as a form of stress, we examined the main and interactive relationships among interactional, procedural, and distributive injustice and psychological strain while controlling for job insecurity. Using moderated multiple regression analysis with a sample of 1,083 government employees, we show that interactional, procedural, and distributive injustice are all unique predictors of psychological strain that account for significant unique variance beyond that explained by job insecurity. Those individuals who perceive more interactional, procedural, or distributive injustice at work reported a higher degree of strain. However, there were no significant interactive effects, suggesting that these three categories of perceived injustice do not interact to predict symptoms of psychological strain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of organizational structure on perceptions of procedural fairness.

This study explored the relationship between 3 dimensions of organizational structure—centralization, formalization, and size—and perceptions of procedural and interactional fairness. Data from 11 organizations (N? = ?209) indicated that, as predicted, centralization was negatively related to perceptions of procedural fairness, and organizational size was negatively related to interactional fairness. However, contrary to predictions, formalization was not related to perceptions of procedural fairness. Results suggest that organizational structure and design should play a more prominent role in our thinking about organizational fairness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)