Jerald Greenberg

Organizational Justice: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

The present article chronicles the history of the field of organizational justice, identifies current themes, and recommends new directions for the future. A historical overview of the field focuses on research and theory in the distributive justice tradition (e.g., equity theory) as well as the burgeoning topic of procedural justice. This forms the foundation for the discussion offive popular themes in contemporary organizational justice research: (a) attempts to distinguish procedural justice and distributive justice empirically, (b) the development of new conceptual advances, (c) consideration of the interpersonal determinants of procedural justice judgments, (d) new directions in tests of equity theory, and (e) applications of justice-based explanations to many different organizational phenomena. In closing, a plea is made for future work that improves procedural justice research methodologically (with respect to scope, setting, and scaling), and that attempts to integrate and unify disparate concepts in the distributive and procedural justice traditions.

Employee Theft as a Reaction to Underpayment Inequity: The Hidden Cost of Pay Cuts

Employee theft rates were measured in manufacturing plants during a period in which pay was temporarily reduced by 15%. Compared with pre- or postreduction pay periods (or with control groups whose pay was unchanged), groups whose pay was reduced had significantly higher theft rates. When the basis for the pay cuts was thoroughly and sensitively explained to employees, feelings of inequity were lessened, and the theft rate was reduced as well. The data support equity theorys predictions regarding likely responses to underpayment and extend recently accumulated evidence demonstrating the mitigating effects of adequate explanations on feelings of inequity.

Determinants of Perceived Fairness of Performance Evaluations

Middle managers from three organizational samples responded to an open-ended questionnaire in which they described the determinants of particularly fair or unfair performance appraisals. By Qsort procedure, the responses were categorized and combined to yield seven distinct determinants of fairness in performance evaluations. Ratings of the perceived importance of these determinants were factor analyzed, revealing two distinct factors---procedural determinants and distributive determinants. The implications of the reported determinants are discussed with respect to existing research and theory on justice in organizations.

Procedural Justice, Participation, and the Fair Process Effect in Groups and Organizations

The vast body of theory and research on justice in groups and organizations has focused primarily on issues of distributive justice (Homans, 1961), that is, the manner in which resources are distributed, and on responses to these distributions (for recent reviews, see Freedman & Montanari, 1980; Greenberg, 1982). Another fundamental type of justice manifest in groups and organizations, but one that has received considerably less attention, concerns the rules and processes through which resources are allocated, that is, procedural justice (Leventhal, 1976; Thibaut & Walker, 1975; Tyler & Caine, 1981). For example, in considering the fairness of pay raises, workers may not only take into account how much pay they receive relative to others, but also such procedural factors as who made the decision, and what criteria were taken into account (see Lawler, 1971). Concerns of this type, focusing on the process of allocation, rather than on the outcome of allocation per se, fall into the domain of procedural justice.

Equity and Workplace Status: A Field Experiment

There can be little doubt about the existence of certain trappings of success in organizations—physical symbols (cf . Good sell, 1977 ) reflecting the organizational status of job incumbents (Steele, 1973). Indeed, previous research has confirmed that certain indicators of status demarcation (cf. Konar & Sundstrom, 1985) , such as large offices (Langdon, 1966), carpeting (Joiner, 1976) , and proximity to windows (Halloran, 1978), are recognized as rewards symbolizing ones high standing in an organizational status hierarchy. Although these environmental rewards typically are associated with relatively highstatus individuals, thereby reinforcing the social order of organizations (Edelman, 1978), there are some occasions in which the status of th e jo b incumbent and th e physical symbols associated with that status are not matched (Wineman, 1982). Such instances may be recognized as cases of status inconsistency, (cf. Stryke r & Macke, 1978) and, as such, reactions to them may be explained by equity theory (e.g., Adams, 1965; Walster , Walster, & Berscheid, 1978).

The Winding Road from Employee to Complainant: Situational and Psychological Determinants of Wrongful-Termination Claims

Structured interviews with 996 recently fired or laid-off workers provided data for analyses of the situational and psychological antecedents of both thinking about filing a wrongful-termination claim and actually filing such a claim. Potential antecedents were drawn from relational theories of organizational justice, economic theories about claiming, and sociolegal studies of claiming in other contexts. Wrongful-termination claims were most strongly correlated with the way workers felt they had been treated at the time of termination and with their expected winnings from such a claim. Structural equation model analyses of panel data from follow-up interviews with 163 respondents four months later showed that the psychological variables were, in fact, causal antecedents rather than consequences of claiming thoughts and actions. These findings support relational models of organizational justice and lead to practical suggestions for managing the termination process so as to avoid wrongful-termination suits.

The quest for justice on the job : essays and experiments

PART ONE: BACKGROUND: WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE? A Taxonomy of Organizational Justice Theories Organizational Justice Past, Present, and Future The Social Side of Justice in Organizations PART TWO: PERCEIVING FAIRNESS ON THE JOB: THE ROLE OF IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT How Do People Manage Impressions of Organizational Justice? Looking Fair on the Job Does It Really Matter? PART THREE: PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS: EVALUATING OTHERS FAIRLY What Makes a Performance Evaluation Fair? The Distributive Justice of Performance Evaluations The Procedural Justice of Performance Evaluations Using Diaries to Promote Fair Performance Appraisals PART FOUR: EMPLOYEE THEFT AND ACCEPTANCE OF A SMOKING BAN Employee Theft as a Reaction to Underpayment Inequity Interpersonal Deterrents to Employee Theft Promoting Acceptance of a Work Site Smoking Ban PART FIVE: MONETARY REWARDS: PAY FAIRNESS Comparable Worth Is It Fair? Reactions to Procedurally Unfair Payment PART SIX: NONMONETARY REWARDS: JOB TITLES AND THE WORK ENVIRONMENT Equity and Workplace Status Injustice and Cognitive Re-Evaluation of the Work Environment High-Status Job Titles as Compensation for Underpayment Epilogue Lessons Learned and Work to Be Done

The Role of Role Playing in Organizational Research

The present article analyzes role playing as an organizational research technique. A survey of organizational journals for 1978-1988 reveals that role playing was used in 11.55 percent of the published studies. Role playing studies are conducted to learn about attitudes and behaviors in organizational contexts and to learn about basic psychological contexts. The studies differ along three key dimensions: subjects’ level of involvement, the role being played, and the degree of response specificity provided. We recommend that role playing studies be designed in a manner that is appropriate to the purpose of the study, and offer guidelines for doing so.

The Justice Concept in Social Psychology

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the major theoretical conceptions of justice in social psychology. It discusses the early work in social psychology, specifically the statements by George Homans, Blau, and J. Stacy Adams, which shaped much of the work that followed. It also discusses the theoretical statements derived from the research activity of the 1960s and the 1970s. The chapter presents a set of issues that are considered to be most important in underlying past work and in establishing the outlines of an agenda for the future. Philosophers writing on justice have addressed two different kinds of issues. The first involves the definition of the concept of justice and what it could be argued to entail. The second issue involves attempts to establish material principles of justice, specifications of the conditions that must be met if justice is to exist. The chapter discusses several classical and contemporary philosophical statements on justice.

When is it "a pleasure to do business with you?" The effects of relative status, outcome favorability, and procedural fairness

Abstract Previous research on encounters between parties of differing status tend to examine the influence of the higher status party (e.g., managers) on the lower status party (e.g., their direct reports), rather than the other way around. We suggest that it is important to examine the reactions of both higher and lower status parties (e.g., their desire for future interaction) to their encounters with one another. Furthermore, both parties’ relative status is hypothesized to influence their desire for future interaction with one another, in conjunction with the outcome favorability associated with the encounter and the other’s procedural fairness. This hypothesis was tested in a pilot study as well as in two full-scale studies. All three studies showed that outcome favorability and procedural fairness interacted to influence participants’ desire for future interaction with the other party. However, the nature of the interactive relationship differed as a function of participants’ relative status. For lower status people, high procedural fairness reduced the positive relationship between outcome favorability and their desire for future interaction with the other party, relative to when procedural fairness was low. For higher status people, high procedural fairness heightened the positive relationship between outcome favorability and desire for future interaction, relative to when procedural fairness was low. Implications for the literatures on relationships in work organizations, organizational justice, and status are discussed.