Organizational justice and time: a review of the literature on justice reactions over time and directions for future research

Irina Cojuharenco, Marion Fortin, Hayley German

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Organizational justice has emerged as one of the dominant theories of work motivation (Latham & Pinder, 2005). Perceptions of fairness have been shown to increase employee commitment and satisfaction, acceptance of organizational change, citizenship behaviors, and positive evaluations of management, and decrease counterproductive and deviant work behaviors (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). Significant research progress has also been made in our understanding of the facets of organizational justice. Today, we are able to elicit both overall fairness perceptions (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009), and perceptions of fairness that arise specifically in relation to work outcome allocations (distributive justice), processes and procedures used to decide on the outcomes (procedural justice), and interpersonal treatment and information received during the implementation of the foregoing processes and procedures (interactional justice) (Bies & Moag, 1986; Colquitt, 2001). Facet-specific justice perceptions, such as perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice, have – despite their strong correlations with each other – been shown to differentially predict specific workplace outcomes. For example, distributive justice is known to be a particularly strong predictor of job satisfaction and withdrawal (Colquitt et al., 2001), while procedural justice has been found to exert a strong influence on organizational commitment and productivity (Viswesvaran & Ones, 2002). Interactional justice has been found to strongly impact perceptions of leader-member exchange and other evaluations of authority in organizations (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001). Retaliatory behaviors in the workplace have been shown to result from three-way interactions between perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice (Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). Overall fairness perceptions, on the other hand, are important mediators of the effects of facet-specific perceptions (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009). The justice literature has thus built over the last 40 years an impressive body of knowledge allowing for the diagnosis of workplace injustice and its consequences. Regrettably, much of the research progress so far has been achieved through static analysis that did not take into account possible changes in the importance of various justice perceptions over time, and did not examine temporal characteristics of justice reactions. Yet there are several reasons why understanding the temporal characteristics of justice reactions is important to both theoretical advances in the field of organizational justice and managerial practice.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationTime and Work, Volume 1
Subtitle of host publicationHow time impacts individuals
EditorsAbbie Shipp, Yitzhak Fried
PublisherPsychology Press Ltd
Chapter7
Number of pages28
Volume1
ISBN (Print)9781848721333
Publication statusPublished - 18 Feb 2014
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NameCurrent Issues in Work and Organizational Psychology
PublisherPsychology Press

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