Distributive and procedural justice in the workplace

The interrelatedness of procedural and distributive justice has implications for organizational practice, especially in the area of performance appraisal. I explore these implications by first describing how procedures can influence perceptions of distributive justice: Procedural improprieties can bring to mind the possibility that a more just outcome might have been obtained if only more acceptable practices had been followed. Next I discuss a second form of interrelatedness — how distributive consequences can influence perceptions of procedural justice — by suggesting that the fairness of a procedure can be assessed in terms of its expected-value (typical or most probable) outcome. These points are illustrated by a discussion of howvoice, or the opportunity for employees to contribute information during the performance appraisal process, can affect both appraisal accuracy and perception of fairness.     

Distributive and procedural justice: Multifaceted meanings and interrelations

Distributive, procedural, and interactional justice have taken on various interpretations. Even when the meaning assigned to each term has been specified and clarified, however, no single set of unique interpretations for each term allows for an unambiguous set of interrelations among the terms. That is, definitional clarity alone cannot resolve all of the questions that can be raised about how one construct is related to another. My discussion raises some of those questions to illustrate that point. A related point is that although an agreed upon set of conceptual defintions might allow for independence of the constructs and thus their independent manipulation, in practice—and as measured (rather than manipulated) variables—these constructs inevitably reveal considerable overlap. Several different reasons for this overlap are explored and the implications discussed.     

Distributive and procedural justice in interpersonal and intergroup situations: Issues,solutions, and extensions

This paper addresses theoretical issues relating to distributive and procedural justice. Specifically, comparisons are made between interpersonal and intergroup situations. Within the realm of distributive justice, two reinterpretations of the ingroup allocation bias are offered. One reinterpretation states that people show this bias to prevent being exploited by the outgroup. The other reinterpretation states that the bias can be regarded as a measure of the perceived worth of the ingroup in relation to the outgroup. The related issue of the procedure used for allocating resources is addressed by extending Tyler and Lind's (1992) Relational Model of Authority to all ingroup members in both interpersonal and intergroup situations. Reinterpretations and extensions offered in this paper lead to new theoretical insights and to several suggestions and predictions for future empirical research.     

Distributive justice: Theory and research

The concept of distributive justice and the theoretical and empirical work conducted on it during the past two decades are examined. Three questions provide the structure for this examination: (i) What are fundamental conceptual dimensions of distributive justice and the specific substantive issues to which they are related? (ii) What central questions has recent work on distributive justice addressed? and (iii) What are the most important emerging issues on which work in the near-term future should focus? Much of the theory and research examined in the paper is social psychological in nature, but reference is made to related work in related disciplines, particularly sociology and philosophy.     

Privacy and procedural justice in organizations

This paper advances the argument that individual privacy is a procedural justice issue in organizations. A review of the organizational privacy literature supports this argument, and new directions for procedural justice research are suggested. In addition, it is argued that a focus on individual privacy highlights the political and paradoxical implications of procedural justice issues in organizations.     

论司法程序公正要素

司法程序公正要素的结构体系应以人的主体性为理论基础。只有能够体现当事人的尊严和人格,保护当事人的程序主体地位的要求和内容,才可以纳入结构体系的架构。     

Introduction: Emotions and justice

The articles in this collection all assume that emotions are an essential foundation for justice. Within this broad framework, many different possibilities are explored. These range from the role of empathic emotions to the role played by a desire for vengeance. They involve the examination of emotional responses to injustice in different cultures. And they include an exploration of the different sorts of selves that are possible and how one of these may be the self of a just person.     

Why procedural justice in organizations?

This article reviews the existing research and theory on procedural justice and considers how it may be applied to the study of organizational behavior. It begins by distinguishing between the concepts of distributive justice and procedural justice and noting the historical contexts within which they emerged. Existing conceptual contributions and the research inspired by them are reviewed. The few existing studies applying procedural justice notions to organizational contexts are summarized, and the contributions of the articles to the present issue of this journal are reviewed relative to these efforts. The article closes by discussing the dual benefits of studying procedural justice in organizations: the enhanced understanding of the concept of justice and the behavior of people in organizations.     

Understanding gender differences in distributive and procedural justice

Gender differences in treatment and in judgments of distributive and procedural justice were examined. Three hundred nine litigants who had been involved in arbitrated auto negligence lawsuits responded to exit surveys. Two mechanisms by which gender might influence justice perceptions were explored. First, we examined whether a “chivalry bias” might be operating, in which the procedures systematically favor women over men. If such biases occur, women might feel they had been treated more fairly because of egocentric biases. Results provided only modest support for the chivalry bias. While women received slightly better awards and perceived somewhat more control than men, these differences had no effect on perceptions of distributive or procedural justice. Second, we examined whether men and women differ systematically in the factors they use as indicators of distributive and procedural justice. On the basis of group-value theory we predicted that women might place more emphasis on standing or on outcome favorability. The study revealed that men and women did differ in how they defined distributive justice, with women placing more emphasis on their perceived standing and on their perceptions of the favorability of their outcomes. There were no substantial gender differences in how procedural justice was defined. Results are interpreted in terms of how women might be responding to insecurity about facing a justice system historically dominated by men. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Context effects on procedural justice: Effects of interrelatedness,trust, and penalty on procedural preferences

The relationship of context to procedural preferences was studied by examining the effects of interrelatedness, trust, and penalty on preferences for adversary and inquisitorial hearing procedures. Subjects imagined themselves members of different communities and were led to believe that they had been accused of committing an offense of which they knew they were innocent. Interrelatedness, trust, and penalty interacted to affect subjects' ratings of both hearing procedures. Subjects in highly trusting settings (i) preferred the inquisitorial procedure more than those in nontrusting settings and (ii) preferred the adversary procedure less than their nontrusting counterparts. A penalty effect was also found. As penalty increased, subjects increased in their preference for the adversary procedure and decreased in their preference for the inquisitorial procedure, but only in noninterrelated communities. The implications for prior research and for the role of interrelatedness in procedural choice are discussed.     

Perspective and procedural justice: Attorney and litigant evaluations of court procedures

A comparison of the procedural justice judgments of attorneys and those of lay people judging the same procedures offers an opportunity to generate new information on what factors affect judgments of fairness. In a survey of reactions to conventional and innovative procedures in a United States district court, attorneys and lay people involved in tort and contract cases were asked to judge the overall fairness of court procedures and the fairness of specific procedures used in arbitration hearings. The respondents were also asked for their judgments concerning the favorability of the procedure's outcome, the opportunity to have the case heard and decided by an impartial third party, and their side's control over what happened in the case, all of which are factors found in previous studies to affect procedural fairness judgments. The results showed that, while attorneys gave higher overall fairness ratings than did litigants, the difference was not affected by the procedure assigned to the case. In addition, attorneys and litigants appeared to use the same standards to evaluate the fairness of procedures, although they disagreed about where the procedures they experienced fell on these dimensions. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Group representation and procedural justice in multigroup decision-making bodies

Representation of groups in policy-making bodies is increasingly at the center of intergroup conflicts in plural societies. This paper proposes a social psychological approach to the issue of group representation which is based on procedural justice and intergroup-relations research and on cross-national analyses of constitutional arrangements. The allocation of representation is central in intergroup relations because it determines the relative control various groups have in important decision-making processes. It is, however, not the only determinant of control. After discussing the principles that people believe to be relevant in the allocation of representation, the paper presents a quantitative model describing how the distribution of control in two-group decision-making bodies varies as a function of both group representation and decision rule. This model is then extended to cases of multigroup decision-making bodies.     

Examining macro-level impacts on procedural justice and police legitimacy

Purpose

Many studies have lent empirical support to the procedural justice model of police legitimacy; however, there has, as yet, not been widespread consideration of the potential impact of neighborhood- and community-level factors on people's perceptions of procedural justice or police legitimacy. The present study integrates the macro-level policing literature with the psychological-based procedural justice framework to uncover what effects, if any, the sociostructural environment has on procedural justice and police legitimacy.

Methods

Hierarchical linear modeling integrates census and survey data within a single, mid-sized city.

Results

Concentrated disadvantage exerted a marginally-significant impact on procedural justice, and on police legitimacy while controlling for procedural justice. Procedural justice remained the strongest predictor of legitimacy, even when accounting for macro-level characteristics.

Conclusions

The effect of procedural justice on police legitimacy appears to be robust against the deleterious impacts of concentrated disadvantage. This has implications for procedural justice research, theory, and policing.     

Distributive justice and willingness to pay for municipality child care

With the aim of investigating factors affecting willingness to pay for municipality child care, a survey was undertaken in Sweden of 1840 parents living in five municipalities of different sizes. On the basis of the greed-efficiency-fairness hypothesis (Wilke, 1991) which is supported by results from experimental social dilemma research, it was hypothesized that perceived fairness of how the quality of child care is distributed (equal, proportional to need, or proportional to payment) as well as of method of payment (collectively by taxes or proportional to use by fees) would be important determinants of willingness to pay. Results showed that perceived fairness of how quality of child care is distributed played some role but that other factors had stronger effects. Perhaps also reflecting fairness considerations, willingness to pay by fees was on average higher than willingness to pay by taxes. Predicted from previous research, willingness to pay by taxes was furthermore found to increase with income and degree of use. However, willingness to pay by taxes showed an increase rather than the predicted decrease with municipality size.     

The role of procedural and distributive justice in organizational behavior

To investigate the relationship between fairness and organizational outcomes, the present study examined the survey responses of government employees at six Federal installations. Indices of procedural and distributive fairness were factor-analytically derived. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both the procedural measures and the distributive measures were significantly related to measures of job satisfaction, evaluation of supervisor, conflict/harmony, trust in management, and turnover intention. Procedural fairness accounted for significantly more variance than distributive fairness in each of these criterion measures, except for turnover intention. These findings are related to conceptual and methodological issues concerning procedural fairness and organizational behavior.