Organizational Justice

Transcription

1 2 Organizational Justice The roots of the concept of organizational justice can be traced back to the concept of relative deprivation described by Cropanzano and Randall (1993) and Byrne and Cropanzano (2001), which was based on a study conducted by Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney, Star, and Williams (1949). The fundamental principle underlying relative deprivation is that individuals make social comparisons and experience injustice based on the judgments resulting from these comparison. The central premise of relative deprivation is that justice is defined relative to some referent standard. In other words, assessments of fairness are relative rather than absolute. Under the appropriate circumstances, people will happily accept meager rewards or complain bitterly about what would appear to be extravagant rewards. Cropanzano and Randall (1993) and Byrne and Cropanzano (2001) argued that it was within the intellectual climate of relative deprivation and social comparison that Adams (1965) developed his equity theory, incorporating the notion of social comparison into a quasimathematical formula. Adams argued that individuals determine fairness by comparing their ratio of outcomes over inputs to the ratio of similar others. The equity theory predicted that comparatively low rewards would produce dissatisfaction. However, a variety of researchers raised concerns over the validity of Adams construct of inequity manipulation (Cropanzano & Randall, 1993). This form of justice is known as distributive justice, the perceived fairness of outcome distributions (Adams, 1965; Leventhal, 1976), where the distributed outcomes in the context of general employment include pay, benefits, or redundancies. According to research on distributive justice, a distribution is perceived to be fair if it is consistent with chosen norms of allocation (Fortin, 2008). 23 A. Cohen, Fairness in the Workplace Aaron Cohen 2015

2 24 Components of Organizational Fairness As mentioned by Fortin (2008) early contributions focused on the equity norm of allocation, according to which outcomes should be distributed in proportion to merit (Homans, 1961). According to Adams (1965) equity theory, those who perceive their own ratio to be greater than the just ratio will feel guilty; those who perceive their own ratio to be less than the norm will feel angry. People try to alter this unpleasant state of inequity by altering the inputs or outcomes, cognitively distorting the inputs or outcomes, leaving the exchange relationship, altering the inputs or outcomes of the referent others, or changing the object of comparison (Fortin, 2008). Researchers showed that the justice perspective typified by the notions of relative deprivation and the equity theory was still incomplete. The criticism focused on the fact that the studies on these concepts focused only on the outcomes of an allocation decision. Such an approach was tantamount to saying that people are concerned only with what they receive and are less interested in how they are treated; however, our everyday experience tells us that this is not the case. According to Cropanzano and Randall (1993), the failure to address this issue was the main weakness of the early theories of justice, leading to the development of the current organizational justice theories. Another criticism was that because the equity theory does not include procedures, it does not allow for clear predictions. As a result of these criticisms, theories of relative deprivation were modified to take procedures into account. The resulting modification stated that perceptions about justice involve two considerations. First, people ask themselves if they would have received the desired outcome under different conditions. This is the outcome discrepancy or distributive justice part of the theory, which is based on the referent comparison. Second, people ask themselves if they should have received the desired outcome (Cropanzano & Randall, 1993). This assessment involves a moral judgment. For example, an individual who believes that he or she was denied a raise because of unfair discrimination on the part of management is likely to respond in a much more negative way than if he or she believes that it was because he or she did not meet the minimum standards of performance. Cropanzano and Randall (1993) argued that perceived procedural justice has been shown to influence employee attitudes toward both superiors and the organization as a whole. This second category of fairness is called procedural justice, referring to the fairness of the process that leads to outcomes. According to Fortin (2008), Thibaut and Walker (1975), who conducted their research in

3 Organizational Justice 25 courtroom settings, introduced this dimension, which distinguishes the fairness of the verdict from the fairness of the process leading to the verdict. They investigated the role of process control (being able to voice one s opinion during the procedure) and decision control (the ability to influence the outcome). In simulated dispute resolution procedures, process control was shown to increase the acceptance of the verdicts and their perceived fairness, even if the outcome could not be influenced. This finding has become known as the voice phenomenon. Subsequently, Leventhal (1980) applied the concept of procedural justice to non-legal contexts and identified six criteria of perceived procedural fairness. Typically, procedures are perceived to be fair when they are consistent across people and over time, free of bias, accurate (relying on good information), contain mechanisms for correcting incorrect decisions, adhere to prevalent conceptions of morality and are representative. Being representative means taking into account the opinions of all the groups affected, which implies process control and decision control (Fortin, 2008). The voice phenomenon has been confirmed in a number of contexts, such as citizen encounters with police officers or students with their teachers (Lind & Tyler, 1988), and performance appraisals (Greenberg, 1990), relying largely on survey methods. The introduction of procedural justice led researchers to use a model consisting of two dimensions of fairness: distributive and procedural (Fortin, 2008). Brockner, Ackerman, and Fairchild (2001) argued that procedural justice provides information on the degree to which people can trust the other party involved in the exchange relationship. In other words, people whose sense-making concerns are aroused by unfavorable outcomes may ultimately be trying to evaluate the trustworthiness of the other party. As people look toward the future, their perceptions of the procedural elements in the focal situation may inform them about the trustworthiness of the other party. The fairer the other party s decisionmaking procedures are, the more likely it is that it will be seen as trustworthy. Moreover, to the extent that the other party is seen as trustworthy, people are likely to support that party s decisions or the institution that the party represents. As mentioned by Fortin (2008), a third type of justice that was proposed by Bies and colleagues (Bies & Moag, 1986; Bies & Shapiro, 1987, 1988; Bies, Shapiro & Cummings, 1988) is that of interactional justice, the term implies that people also judge the fairness of the interpersonal treatment they receive when organizational procedures are enacted (Bies & Moag, 1986). Previous models had either confounded

4 26 Components of Organizational Fairness the issue of formal procedures with concerns about interpersonal treatment or neglected the interactional aspects altogether (Bies & Moag, 1986; Bies, 1987). Early research suggested four central concerns of interactional fairness: truthfulness (honesty), justification (explanations), respect (politeness), and propriety (no prejudicial statements or improper questions) (Bies & Moag, 1986; Bies, 1987). These elements have been confirmed in a number of contexts, such as recruitment (Bies, 1986) or police and courtroom interactions (Tyler, 1988). Subsequently, Greenberg (1993) proposed splitting interactional justice into two main elements: the quality of treatment (respect and sensitivity) and explanations and information about decision-making. Consequently, Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, and Ng (2001) treated these two elements as separate dimensions of justice and called them informational justice and interpersonal justice. Interpersonal justice refers to the quality of personal treatment, respect, and sensitivity accorded to an individual (Greenberg, 1990). Honesty, respect, and politeness generally improve perceptions of interpersonal justice (Colquitt et al., 2001). According to Bies (2001), concerns about interpersonal treatment include everyday encounters, not just those in formal decision-making contexts. In that regard, Fortin (2008) mentioned that a broad range of interactions, such as those involving deception, invasion of privacy, derogatory judgments, and disrespect, might fall into the category of interpersonal justice (Roch & Shanock, 2006). Fortin also noted that informational justice focuses on the amount and quality of information provided concerning procedures and outcomes (Greenberg, 1990; Colquitt, 2001). The clarity, adequacy, and sincerity of communications about a decision are important antecedents of informational justice. Fortin mentioned that a meta-analytic review found that explanations had the strongest beneficial effects on people s reactions when they were excuses rather than justifications, when they were given after unfavorable outcomes, and when they were given in contexts with instrumental, relational, and moral implications (Shaw, Wild, & Colquitt, 2003). Bies and Moag (1986) (in Cropanzano & Randall, 1993) noted that individuals usually make assessments about justice based on the quality of the interpersonal treatment they receive. Bies and Moag (1986) called such perceptions interactional justice, which could be distinguished from procedural justice because procedures refer to the structural quality of the decision process, whereas interactional justice refers to the social exchange between two participants. Common attributes of interpersonally fair procedures are truthfulness (divided further into

5 Organizational Justice 27 deception and candidness), respect, propriety of questions, and justification. Cropanzano and Randall (1993) noted that researchers no longer separate procedural and interactional justice. In many studies, the correlations between the two were very high, leaving the researchers no choice but to combine the two dimensions (Cohen, 2012). Research on organizational justice has generally focused on how and why managers and their organizations are judged as (un)fair by employees, and how these perceptions affect their performance and well-being at work. Organizational justice research has thus tended to be more descriptive (what people actually do or think) than prescriptive (what people should do or think), seeking to discover the factors affecting the determination that an outcome, procedure, or interaction is fair or unfair rather than prescribing particular ethical norms or standards of justice (Crawshaw, Cropanzano, Bell, & Nadisic, 2013). The general perspective is that organizations should see justice in a broader social context. Both interpersonal treatment and formal decision processes are attributes of this broader context (Greenberg, 1993). However, Cropanzano and Randall (1993) contended that despite their similarity, it is important to emphasize that both formal procedures and interactional justice are key in predicting work outcomes. What should be included in organizational justice? Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, and Rupp (2001) dealt extensively with the question of what elements should be included in organizational justice. They contended that there is virtual consensus that people do indeed care deeply about the social side of fairness. Nevertheless, they also maintained that there is ongoing controversy within the scholarly community about how best to conceptualize the various dimensions of justice. A basic question they raised is whether the elements of interpersonal interaction are conceptualized merely as facets of existing concepts of justice namely, procedural justice or distributive justice or do interpersonal considerations represent a fundamentally different concept? Cropanzano and colleagues identified three answers to this question. According to one view, interactional justice should be perceived as separate from procedural justice. This view relies on Bies (1987), who claimed that the interpersonal or social aspects of fairness are separate from the existing concepts of justice. More specifically, Bies suggested that it was theoretically and empirically meaningful to distinguish the concept of interactional justice from those of procedural justice and distributive justice.

6 28 Components of Organizational Fairness According to the second view, interactional justice should be conceptualized as a component of procedural justice. This view relies primarily on Lind and Tyler (1988), who argued that judgments about procedural justice inherently involve considerations of both the structure of procedures and the quality of treatment. Hence, it is best to broaden the concept of procedural justice to include both structural and interpersonal facets. The idea that procedural and interactional justice are parts of a single dimension had an effect on the research operationalizations of the day. For example, in correlational studies, researchers used measures of procedural justice that included items to assess both the formal structure of procedures and their interpersonal enactment. Similarly, Ambrose (2002) argued that there is currently a debate about the status of interactional justice. Some researchers (e.g., those who support the relational model) treat it as a component of procedural justice. Others treat it as a third form of justice, independent of procedural and distributive justice. Moreover, Colquitt (2001) advanced a four-factor model of justice: distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational. The third approach that Cropanzano et al. (2001) described highlighted the distinction between the components of justice. To support this argument, they relied on Bies (2001), who made the compelling argument that, although people s perceptions of the fairness of decision procedures and the fairness of interpersonal treatment are interrelated, people can and do make distinctions between them. Cropanzano and colleagues contended that, based on evidence, procedural and interactional justice can be treated separately. Furthermore, there may be value in separating formal processes from interpersonal behaviors for another reason: the two seem to work together to affect responses to the work environment. In other words, the effect of one may moderate the effect of the other. Another practical way to distinguish between procedural and interactional justice is to consider their unique contributions to predicting various criterion variables. To the extent that each form of justice accounts for unique variance, there is conceptual utility in considering them separately. Generally speaking, individual studies have tended to find evidence of differential validity. In addition, three meta-analyses of the organizational justice literature (Bartle & Hayes, 1999; Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001) were all unanimous in arguing for the separation of procedural from interactional justice. This is strong evidence for maintaining procedural and interactional justice as separate constructs. Historically, the three notions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice were based upon appraisals of events (Cropanzano et al.,

7 Organizational Justice ). Based on their meta-analysis, Cohen-Charash and Spector (2001) concluded that the three dimensions are strongly related, yet distinct, constructs. This conclusion was based on the level of correlation among the three types of justice and on the different relationships between the three types of justice and their correlates. In two studies, Colquitt (2001) concluded that organizational justice is best conceptualized as four distinct dimensions: procedural, distributive, interpersonal, and informational justice. He contended that many have debated whether interactional justice should be considered a subset of procedural justice (e.g., Tyler & Bies, 1990), but the results of his studies suggest that collapsing procedural and interactional justice together would mask important differences between them. Moreover, the results of the measurement model also suggest that interactional justice should be broken down into its interpersonal and informational justice components, as they too had differential effects. In Fortin s (2008) view, the question of whether we should distinguish two, three, or four dimensions of justice has been surprisingly long debated within the justice literature. Some authors have argued that the interactional elements (interpersonal and informational) form part of procedural justice (e.g., Tyler & Bies, 1990; Sweeney & McFarlin, 1993). According to this view, judgments about procedural justice include considerations of structure and quality of treatment, and therefore, there is no need for a separate interactional construct (e.g., Lind & Tyler, 1988). Bobocel and Holmvall (2001) provided a summary of the research on the difference between procedural and interpersonal justice, pointing to the possibility that the two types of justice are distinct. The authors refrained from any final conclusions and recommended that a wider variety of research methodologies be employed to improve our insights into the phenomenon of organizational justice, specifically using longitudinal methods and distinguishing clearly between the constructs of interactional and procedural justice. Fortin (2008) also mentioned that meta-analyses of research (Cohen- Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001) argued for a separation between procedural and interactional justice, based on the level of correlations among the three types of justice, as well as on their different relationships with their correlates. This is also the view put forward in the review by Bies (2005). Much less conclusive evidence exists regarding the question of whether the two elements of interactional justice interpersonal treatment and the provision of adequate and timely information should be treated as separate dimensions. Fortin argued that the study by Colquitt and colleagues (2001) is the only

8 30 Components of Organizational Fairness meta-analysis of organizational justice differentiating between these elements. Their review of 183 justice studies finds that procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice have different correlates, and separate measurements of the three explain incremental variance in the perception of fairness. Further support for the existence of four distinct justice dimensions is provided in Colquitt s study (2001), which developed and validated measures for the four dimensions of fairness. A four-factor model fits the data better than one-, two-, or three-factor models. Ambrose (2002) argued that despite disagreements about which justice constructs are conceptually distinct from others, there is no disagreement about the importance of these constructs to individuals and the impact they have on individual behavior. Research demonstrates that the perceived fairness of outcomes, procedures, and interpersonal treatment are each associated with important organizational behaviors and attitudes. When individuals feel unfairly treated by their organizations, they respond both affectively (e.g., with less commitment) and behaviorally (e.g., with increased turnover, theft, and fewer helping behaviors). According to Ambrose (2002), after more than 30 years of research on justice in organizations, it can be stated with confidence that people care about the fairness of their outcomes, the procedures to which they are subjected, and the interpersonal treatment that they receive. As mentioned above, organizational justice is one of the main components of fairness in this book. There is some ambiguity regarding how many and which of its dimensions should be included in any conceptualization of fairness. Considering the fact that organizational justice is only one component of organizational fairness, the rule of thumb should be to include as few dimensions as possible. The minimum number of dimensions to be incorporated from organizational justice should include only procedural justice (Rosen et al., 2009) and the maximum number of dimensions should include procedural justice and distributive justice (Andrews & Kacmar, 2001).