Although a flurry of meta-analyses summarized the justice literature at the turn of the millennium, interest in the topic has surged in the decade since. In particular, the past decade has witnessed the rise of social exchange theory as the dominant lens for examining reactions to justice, and the emergence of affect as a complementary lens for understanding such reactions. The purpose of this meta-analytic review was to test direct, mediating, and moderating hypotheses that were inspired by those 2 perspectives, to gauge their adequacy as theoretical guides for justice research. Drawing on a review of 493 independent samples, our findings revealed a number of insights that were not included in prior meta-analyses. With respect to social exchange theory, our results revealed that the significant relationships between justice and both task performance and citizenship behavior were mediated by indicators of social exchange quality (trust, organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, and leader‐member exchange), though such mediation was not apparent for counterproductive behavior. The strength of those relationships did not vary according to whether the focus of the justice matched the target of the performance behavior, contrary to popular assumptions in the literature, or according to whether justice was referenced to a specific event or a more general entity. With respect to affect, our results showed that justice‐performance relationships were mediated by positive and negative affect, with the relevant affect dimension varying across justice and performance variables. Our discussion of these findings focuses on the merit in integrating the social exchange and affect lenses in future research.

http://media.terry.uga.edu/socrates/publications/2013/05/ColquittScottRodellLongZapataConlonWesson2013.pdf

Justice at the millennium, a decade later: a meta-analytic test of social exchange and affect-based perspectives.

The procedural justice literature has grown enormously since the early work of Thibaut and Walker in the 1970s. Since then, the finding that citizens care enormously about the process by which outcomes are reached - even unfavorable outcomes - has been replicated using a wide range of methodologies (including panel surveys, psychometric work, and experimentation), cultures (throughout North America, Europe, and Asia), and settings (including tort litigation, policing, taxpayer compliance, support for public policies, and organizational citizenship). We have learned a great deal about the antecedents and consequences of these judgments. In particular, the work of Tom Tyler and Allan Lind and their colleagues suggests that people care about voice, dignity, and respect for relational and symbolic rather than (or in addition to) instrumental reasons. This has benevolent implications for governance and social cooperation, but also some troubling implications, leaving people susceptible to manipulation and exploitation.

/pdf/voice-control-and-belonging-the-double-edged-sword-of-y1lzf6zved.pdf

VOICE, CONTROL, AND BELONGING: The Double-Edged Sword of Procedural Fairness

Introduction Most workers who incur an injury on the job follow a relatively straightforward path through a workers’ compensation claim, recovery and return to work. However, a minority of compensation claims is prolonged and can be disproportionately costly. We conducted this qualitative study in order to gain an understanding of systemic, process-related problems affecting injured workers who had failed to return to work as expected. Method A total of 69 in-depth interviews were conducted with injured workers with complex and extended workers’ compensation claims and with return-to-work (RTW) providers such as health care providers, insurers, legal advisors, and workplaces. The study was based in Ontario, Canada. A modified grounded theory analysis led to the identification of common mechanisms in RTW problems. Results We identify problems with return to work and extended workers’ compensation claims in dysfunctions in organizational dynamics across RTW systems including the workplace, healthcare, vocational rehabilitation and workers’ compensation. These system problems are difficult to identify because they appear as relatively mundane and bureaucratic. These appeared to have damaging effects on workers in the form of a ‘toxic dose’ affecting the worker beyond the initial injury. Conclusions Worker’s problems with extended claims were linked to RTW policies that did not easily accommodate conflict or power imbalances among RTW parties and by social relations and processes that impeded communication about RTW situations and problems. Avenues for intervention are located in a shift to a critical lens to RTW process that addresses differences of knowledge, resources, and interests among different parties.

The "toxic dose" of system problems: why some injured workers don't return to work as expected.

Employment-based social capital, job stress, and employee burnout: A public child welfare employee structural model

Research in leadership effectiveness has paid less attention to the role of leader fairness than probably it should have. More recently, this has started to change. To capture this development, we review the empirical literature in leadership and fairness to define the field of leadership and fairness, to assess the state of the art, and to identify a research agenda for future efforts in the field. The review shows that leader distributive, procedural, and especially interactional fairness are positively associated with criteria of leadership effectiveness. More scarce and scattered evidence also suggests that fairness considerations help explain the effectiveness of other aspects of leadership, and that leader fairness and other aspects of leadership, or the leadership context, may interact in predicting leadership effectiveness. We conclude that future research should especially focus on interaction effects of leader fairness and other aspects of leadership, and on the processes mediating these effects.

/pdf/leadership-and-fairness-the-state-of-the-art-1vmwzk0k5s.pdf

Leadership and Fairness: The State of the Art

This article explored the relationship among injured workers' perceptions of workplace justice (i.e., distributive, interactional, and procedural), perceptions of employers' disability-related policies, and the decision to file a workers' compensation claim. Using a 2-wave sample of 1,077 workers with repetitive motion injuries, the authors tested a structural equation model. Results revealed that Time 1 interactional justice was negatively related to filing a claim, whereas Time 1 distributive justice was positively related to perceptions of employer disability-related practices measured a year after the date of injury report. At Time 2, the claim decision was unrelated to perceptions of justice, yet perceptions of disability-related practices were significantly related to all 3 types of justice.

Karen S. Markel

Papers

Claiming in the name of fairness: organizational justice and the decision to file for workplace injury compensation.