Justice,Fairness,and Employee Reactions Jason A.Colquitt and Kate P.Zipay Department of Management,Terry College of Business,University of Georgia;email:colq@uga.edu Annu.Rev.Organ.Psychol.Organ.Behav.2015.2:75–99First published online as a Review in Advance on December 24,2014The Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior is online at This article ’s doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032414-111457Copyright ©2015by Annual Reviews.
All rights reserved Keywords exchange,affect,heuristic,uncertainty,status,ethics Abstract Of all the issues that employees consider in organizational life,justice and fairness are among the most salient.Justice reflects the perceived adherence to rules that represent appropriateness in decision contexts (e.g.,equity,consistency,respect,truthfulness).Fairness reflects a more global perception of appropriateness that lies downstream of justice.Our review integrates justice theories (fairness heuristic the-
ory,the relational model,the group engagement model,fairness the-
ory,deonance theory,uncertainty management theory)and broader
theories (social exchange theory,affective events theory)to examine
three questions:(a )Why do employees think about justice issues in
the first place?(b )how do employees form fairness perceptions?and
(c )how do employees react to those perceptions?We close by de-
scribing how justice and fairness can be managed in organizations,
especially given new technological trends in how people work.
75
A n n u . R e v . O r g a n . P s y c h o l . O r g a n .
B e h a v . 2015.2:75-99. D o w n l o a d e d  f r o m  w w w .a n n u a l r e v i e w s .o r g  A c c e s s  p r o v i d e d  b y  T s i n g h u a  U n i v e r s i t y  o n  07/22/15. F o r  p e r s o n a l  u s e  o n l y .Onlin
e Video: What We Learned from Our Justice Review: Takeaways from a Veteran and a Newcomer to the Justice Literature
Click here for quick links to Annual Reviews content online, including:• Other articles in this volume • Top cited articles • Top downloaded articles • Our comprehensive search Further ANNUAL REVIEWS
INTRODUCTION Justice and fairness are issues that resonate in many realms of life.Children consider the fairness of rewards and punishments.Students ponder the justice of grades.Citizens debate the fairness of national elections and governmental policies.Employees focus on the justice of key decisions and events in the workplace.It is this latter thread that interests scholars in organizational psychology and organizational behavior.Indeed,it was 30years ago that Folger &Greenberg (1985,p.176)drew a bridge between “pure science ”and “applied science ”by describing the relevance of justice and fairness to performance appraisal,compensation,participative decision making,and conflict resolution.Although the literature has tended to treat justice and fairness as interchangeable construct
justice rules reflect appropriateness in decision outcomes and include equity,equality,and need (Adams 1965,Leventhal 1976).Procedural justice rules reflect appropriateness in decision-making procedures and include voice,consistency,accuracy,bias suppression,and correctability (Leventhal 1980,Thibaut &Walker 1975).Interpersonal justice rules reflect appropriateness as procedures are enacted and include respect and propriety (Bies &Moag 1986,Greenberg 1993).Informational justice rules reflect the appropriateness of the explanations offered for procedures and include truthfulness and justificatio
n (Bies &Moag 1986,Greenberg 1993).We define fairness as a global perception of appropriateness —a perception that tends to lie theoretically downstream of justice (Colquitt &Rodell 2015).Consider an employee who is struck by the accuracy of a boss ’s data gathering during a performance appraisal and thinks highly of her boss as a result.That scenario represents (procedural)justice shaping fairness.Note that past reviews tended to treat the justice –fairness distinction as one of measurement style,with as-sessments of justice rules described as indirect measures and assessments that used the word fair described as direct measures (Colquitt &Shaw 2005,Lind &Tyler 1988).We believe it is time to use distinct terms for justice and fairness because more and more scholars are operationalizing both in their studies,often with fairness mediating the effects of justice (Ambrose &Schminke 2009,Kim &Leung 2007).Our performance appraisal example highlights additional points needed to understand justice and fairness.As shown in Figure 1,justice and fairness are focused on some target —typically a supervisor or an organization (Rupp &Cropanzano 2002).Our example focuses on a super-visor,but scholars could just as easily study the accuracy of an organization ’s appraisal system or the fairness of the firm.Regardless of the focus,measuring justice and fairness involves bracketing an employee ’s experiences in some way (Cropanzano et al.2001).The justice in our example was
bracketed around a single appraisal event —an approach that is fairly common in the literature.Other times justice will be measured by focusing employees on a collection of multiple events.For example,Colquitt ’s (2001)measure is often tailored to focus on decisions about pay,rewards,evaluations,promotions,etc.(Colquitt &Rodell 2015).The fairness in our example referenced the supervisor as a complete entity —presumably representing an aggregate of all relevant events.Figure 1also illustrates that justice and fairness can be referenced to any or all of the distributive,procedural,interpersonal,and informational dimensions.Those dimensions have been made translucent for fairness in the figure because it has become more common to eschew those di-mensional distinctions in favor of a focus on overall fairness (Ambrose &Schminke 2009,Kim &Leung 2007).
Scholars draw on a number of models and theories to understand the antecedents and con-sequences of justice and fairness.Indeed,the literature has become one of the more theory-rich 76Colquitt  Zipay A n n u . R e v . O r g a n . P s y c h o l . O r g a n . B e h a v . 2015.2:75-99. D o w n l o a d e d  f r o m  w w w .a n n u a l r e v i e w s .o r g
A
c
c
e
s
s
p
r
o
v
i
d
e
d
b
y
T
s
i
n
g
h
u
a
U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
o
n
7
/2
2
/1
5
.
F
o
r
p
e
r
s
o
n
a
l
u
s
e
o
n
l
y
.
content areas in organizational psychology and organizational behavior.Many of those models and theories were introduced by justice scholars to explain phenomena in the justice literature.Those include fairness heuristic theory (Lind 2001a,Van den Bos 2001a),the relational model and group engagement model (Tyler &Blader 2003,Tyler &Lind 1992),fairness theory and deonance theory (Folger 2001,Folger &Cropanzano 2001),and uncertainty management theory (Lind &Van den Bos 2002,Van den Bos &Lind 2002).Although these lenses have been instrumental for examining a number of research questions,justice scholars also draw on theories in other realms of organizational psychology and organizational behavior.The most notable examples are social exchange theory and affective events theory (Blau 1964,Weiss &Cropanzano 1996).
The purpose of our review is to integrate all of these theoretical lenses to examine three questions.Firs
t,why do employees think about justice issues in the first place —what causes them to ponder issues of equity,accuracy,respect,truthfulness,and the like?Second,how do employees form fairness perceptions —how do they aggregate specific justice experiences into an overall perception?Third,how do employees react to fairness perceptions —what behaviors result,and why do they result?As our review shows,the justice-specific theories and the two broader theories are all needed to attempt to answer these questions.Our review then explores how these insights can be used to manage justice and fairness in organizations,especially given new technological trends in how people work.
Figure 1Measurement decisions when assessing justice and fairness.77
  Justice,Fairness,and Employee Reactions A n n u . R e v . O r g a n . P s y c h o l . O r g a n . B e h a v . 2015.2:75-99. D o w n l o a d e d  f r o m  w w w .a n n u a l r e v i e w s .o r g  A c c e s s  p r o v i d e d  b y  T s i n g h u a  U n i v e r s i t y  o n  07/22/15. F o r  p e r s o n a l  u s e  o n l y .Online Video: How Exactly Should You Measure Justice?
WHY DO EMPLOYEES THINK ABOUT JUSTICE ISSUES?
Before employees can judge how just or fair their supervisors or organizations are,they have to attend
to such issues in the first place.How do the theories described in our review explain that attention to justice issues?As shown in Figure 2,most of the theories involve uncertainty —a condition under which something is not known or something is doubted.Employees feel a sense of uncertainty about something and —as a result —devote more focused attention to justice issues.The theories vary in how explicit a role they devote to uncertainty and what exactly it is that employees are uncertain about.Uncertainty About Trustworthiness
In explaining why employees think about justice issues,two of the theories shown in Figure 2emphasize uncertainty about trustworthiness.We begin with social exchange theory because it is the oldest theory in our set,it was the first to be applied to justice phenomena,and it remains the most oft-evoked lens in the literature.Blau (1964)contrasted two kinds of exchange relationships.Economic exchanges are contractual in character and are governed by a clearly specified schedule of benefits and reciprocations.For example,an employee completes required tasks in exchange for a regular paycheck.Social exchanges,by contrast,are marked by a deeper level of investment in which unspecified benefits and reciprocations are exchanged over a long-term,open-ended time frame.For example,an employee “goes the extra mile ”to help a newcomer while believing that —at
Social exchange theory Fairness heuristic theory Relational model/group engagement model Fairness theory/deonance theory Affective events theory Uncertainty Management theory Figure 2
Different theoretical perspectives on the experience of justice and fairness.
78Colquitt  Zipay
A n n u . R e v . O r g a n . P s y c h o l . O r g a n .
B e h a v . 2015.2:75-99. D o w n l o a d e d  f r o m  w w w .a n n u a l r e v i e w s .o r g  A c c e s s  p r o v i d e d  b y  T s i n g h u a  U n i v e r s i t y  o n  07/22/15. F o r  p e r s o n a l  u s e  o n l y .Online Video: Putting It all Together: Integrating Justice Theories
some point and in some way —he will get “repaid ”by his supervisor for those efforts.Because of their inherent flexibility and depth of investment,social exchanges are viewed as more effective in the long term than economic exchanges.
What if an employee doubts that “extra mile ”efforts will be repaid in time?Blau (1964,p.98)addresses such concerns in describing how social exchanges take root:“Since social exchange requires trusting others to reciprocate,the initial problem is to prove oneself trustworthy ....As individuals regularly discharge their obligations,they prove themselves trustworthy of further credit.”Thus,if faced with an opportunity to do something “extra,”an employee should stop to consider whether his supervisor is trustworthy.If she is,then his behaviors will likely be rewarded somewhere down the line.Although Blau (1964)did not discuss justice issues in this context,Organ (1990)did so in a subsequent articulation of social exchange principles.He argued that justice could serve a similar exchange-deepening function o
ver time,noting,“If the person feels that the overall exchange,over some relevant interval,is ‘fair,’he or she will not feel the need to provide any precise accounting of marginal benefit for marginal contribution ”(p.64).Thus,at least implicitly,social exchange theorizing views uncertainty about trustworthiness as a reason for
focusing on justice issues.
The linkage between uncertainty about trustworthiness and a focus on justice is much more
explicit in fairness heuristic theory —the first justice-centric theory covered in our review (see Lind
2001a,Van den Bos 2001a).This theory is inspired by what Lind (2001a)termed the fundamental
social dilemma —that employees must repeatedly decide whether to embrace cooperation or avoid
cooperation.Embracing cooperation opens up avenues for greater gains but brings with it the risk
of exploitation and rejection.Avoiding cooperation encourages self-sufficiency but forgoes the
chance at the outcomes that can be achieved only with collective action.Trustworthiness becomes
relevant to that fundamental social dilemma because the risks of exploitation seem lower if
authorities are trustworthy.That dynamic is not unlike one exchange partner deciding that
another is worthy of some benefit —even though repayment cannot be guaranteed (Blau 1964).
Importantly,fairness heuristic theory argues that trustworthiness is difficult to ascertain,as it is
dependent upon qualities and characteristics that are difficult to observe and evaluate.Here is
where the connection to justice becomes more explicit than in social exchange theory.Van den Bos
(2001a,p.73)writes,“Do people often have direct information about an authority ’s trust-
worthiness?We suggested that they frequently do not ....We suggested that in such situations —in
which information about the authority ’s trustworthiness is missing —people refer to the fairness of
the authority ’s procedures to decide how to react to the outcome.”The argument is that adherence
to rules like equity,consistency,respect,and justification is more observable than qualities like
competence,integrity,and benevolence.Many of the theory ’s propositions have been supported in laboratory research.For example,Van den Bos et al.(1998)showed that the effects of justice on reactions were stronger when information on authority trustworthiness was lacking than when it was present.
Uncertainty About Status
Lind ’s (2001a)discussion of the fundamental social dilemma also describes how being rejected by an authority can harm one ’s identity.That observation echoes earlier theorizing on the relational model (Tyler &Lind 1992).That model argues that employees are social creatures who are especially attentive to signals that convey their status in relevant groups.Status is a key con-sideration because group memberships validate people ’s identities and comprise a large part of their esteem.The relational model argues that justice is one of the most potent signals of status (Tyler &Lind 1992).When a supervisor treats an employee with respect,that act signals that the
  Justice,Fairness,and Employee Reactions A n n u . R e v . O r g a n . P s y c h o l . O r g a n . B e h a v . 2015.2:75-99. D o w n l o a d e d  f r o m  w w w .a n n u a l r e v i e w s .o r g
A c
c e
s
s
p
r
o
v i
d
e d
b
y
T
s i
n
g
h u
a
U
n
i v
e
r
s i
t
y
o
n
07
/22
/1
5.
F
o r
p e
r
s
o n
a
l
u
s
e
o
n
l y
.
employee is valued by the workgroup —that the employee has a certain standing.By contrast,when a supervisor treats an employee in a biased manner,it signals that the employee is at the fringe of the group and is someone of questionable status.Although applications of the relational model have tended to focus more on the effects of justice than on the conditions that increase the focus on it,some tests do support the arguments described above.For example,a laboratory study by Smith et al.(1998)showed that the relationship be-tween favorable treatment by an authority and participant self-esteem was stronger when the experimenter was from the same university as the participants.Presumably the existence of the shared affiliation aroused concerns about status,making treatment more salient.The relational model ’s focus on status and group memberships has since been folded into Tyler &Blader ’s (2003)group engagement model.That model focuses more explicitly on the outcomes of justice,so it is described in a subsequent section.Uncertainty About Morality An outsider to the literature would likely assume that morality concepts were tightly woven into discussions of justice.
After all,justice plays a salient role in philosophical treatments of ethics (Kant 1795,Rawls 1971),and Leventhal (1980)argued that ethicality is an important procedural justice rule.Surprisingly,morality concepts stayed at the fringes of the justice literature for its first few decades,largely due to its roots in social psychology rather than philosophy.That separation began to change with the introduction of fairness theory (Folger &Cropanzano 2001).Fairness theory focuses on when authorities are held accountable for their conduct,with that accountability dependent on three counterfactuals.Specifically,authorities are held accountable when some event could have played out differently,when authorities should have acted differently,and when well-being would have been better if those alternatives had transpired.Consider a case in which an employee receives a smaller than expected raise from her boss.That employee will blame the boss when the raise could have been higher (e.g.,the merit pool was big enough to allocate more funds),when the raise should have been higher (e.g.,a bigger raise would have been more equitable and deserved),and when well-being would have been better given alternative events (e.g.,a larger raise would have significantly affected well-being).Issues of morality are wrapped up in the “should ”portion of fairness theory.In deciding whether authorities should have acted differently,employees compare authority actions to prevailing ethical and moral standards (Folger &Cropanzano 2001).Deciding that an authority should have acted differently means the authority violated some norm of conduct —a decision that should trigger a sense of unfairness and blame.In practice,most studies employing fairness theory
have either manipulated the should counterfactual or left it as an unmeasured aspect of their theorizing (Colquitt &Chertkoff 2002,Gilliland et al.2001).An exception was a study by Nicklin et al.(2011).Using a policy-capturing design,the authors gave participants a chance to react to an event by describing their thoughts in an open-ended fashion.The results revealed that authorities who failed to act appropriately in an adverse situation triggered more counterfactual thoughts,with those counterfactual thoughts being associated with lower fairness perceptions.
Whereas concerns about morality are wrapped up in one of fairness theory ’s three mechanisms,they stand front and center in a subsequent offshoot of it.Deonance theory argues that employees think about justice issues because virtue is its own reward (Folger 2001,Folger et al.2005).That is,individuals care about adherence to norms of morality in and of itself,whether in the evaluation of their own behavior,the behavior of their authority figures,or even the behavior of some un-connected third party.Because justice represents the way people ought to behave —indeed,the deon in the theory ’s moniker comes from the Greek word for obligation —it is of central interest in 80Colquitt  Zipay A n n u . R e v . O r g a n . P s y c h o l . O r g a n . B e h a v . 2015.2:75-99. D o w n l o a d e d  f r o m  w w w .a n n u a l r e v i e w s .o r g  A
c
c
e
s
s
p
r
o
v
i
d
e
d
b
y
T
s
i
n
g
h
u
a
U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
o
n
7
scholars
/2
2
/1
5
.
F
o
r
p
e
r
s
o
n
a
l
u
s
e
o
n
l
y .

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。