Organizational Justice: People, Perceptions, and Productivity
Organizational justice refers to people’s perceptions of fairness in organizations along with their associated reactions to these perceptions. Everyone desires to be treated fairly, and being treated fairly at work is no different.
There are three organizational justice applications that organizations should emphasize. Distributive justice refers to perceptions of fairness related to distributions of rewards/resources. Procedural justice refers to the perceived fairness related to how outcomes are determined. Interactional justice refers to perceived fairness concerning which outcomes and procedures are explained. All three types of justice are important to successful organizational functioning, because when people believe they are not being treated fairly, they act out.
The tricky thing about organizational justice is that it’s focused on perceptions of fairness. This means that everyone will differ in how they perceive justice regarding work outcomes. Despite perceptual differences among employees, organizations can still implement organizational justice systems in their workplace. By having equal distribution of rewards, clear standards in place for how those rewards are determined, and transparency regarding these rewards, organizational justice perceptions should be high.
Without these systems in place, people will feel like they are treated unfairly, and will start acting out toward the organization and other members; these include behaviors such as absenteeism, theft, withdrawal, and bullying. Engagement in these behaviors can lead to a negative work environment, high rates of counter-productive work behavior, and high turnover. Consequently, caring about employee perceptions of organizational justice actually reduces inefficiencies within organizations.
Greenberg, J. (2011). Organizational justice: The dynamics of fairness in the workplace. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA handbook of industrial and organizational psychology, Vol. 3. Maintaining, expanding, and contracting the organization (pp. 271–327). American Psychological Association.
