Academy of Management Perspectives -2007

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The Management of Organizational Justice
by Russell Cropanzano, David E. Bowen, and Stephen W. Gilliland

Executive Overview
Organizational justice has the potential to create powerful benefits for organizations and employees alike.
These include greater trust and commitment, improved job performance, more helpful citizenship behaviors, improved customer satisfaction, and diminished conflict. We demonstrate the management of
organizational justice with some suggestions for building fairness into widely used managerial activities.
These include hiring, performance appraisal, reward systems, conflict management, and downsizing.

Justice, Sir, is the greatest interest of man on earth
—Daniel Webster

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usiness organizations are generally understood
to be economic institutions. Sometimes implicitly, other times explicitly, this “rational”
perspective has shaped the relationship that many
employers have with their workforce (Ashforth &
Humphrey, 1995). Many organizations, for example, emphasize the quid pro quo exchange of monetary payment for the performance of concrete
tasks (Barley & Kunda, 1992). These tasks are
often rationally described via job analysis and
formally appraised by a supervisor. Hierarchical
authority of this type is legitimized based upon the
manager’s special knowledge or expertise (Miller
& O’Leary, 1989). Employee motivation is viewed
as a quest for personal economic gain, so individual merit pay is presumed to be effective. Using
the rational model, one can make a case for downsizing workers who are not contributing adequately to the “bottom line.” And the rational
model is found at the heart of the short-term
uptick in the stock price of firms that carry out
aggressive cost-cutting measures (Pfeffer, 1998).

Businesses certainly are economic institutions,
but they are not only economic institutions. Indeed, adherence to this paradigm without consideration of other possibilities can have problematic
side effects. Merit pay is sometimes ineffective
(Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006), downsizing often has
pernicious long-term effects (Pfeffer, 1998), and
bureaucratic management can straitjacket workers
and reduce innovation. We should attend to economic matters, but also to the sense of duty that
goes beyond narrowly defined quid pro quo exchanges. It includes the ethical obligations that
one party has to the other. Members may want a
lot of benefits, but they also want something more.
Organizational justice—members’ sense of the
moral propriety of how they are treated—is the
“glue” that allows people to work together effectively. Justice defines the very essence of individuals’ relationship to employers. In contrast, injustice is like a corrosive solvent that can dissolve
bonds within the community. Injustice is hurtful
to individuals and harmful to organizations.
In this paper we will discuss organizational justice, with an emphasis on how it can be brought to

* Russell Cropanzano ([email protected]) is a Professor of Management at the Eller College of Management, the University of
Arizona.
David E. Bowen ([email protected]) is the G. Robert & Katherine Herberger Chair in Global Management at the Thunderbird School
of Global Management.
Stephen W. Gilliland ([email protected]) is Arnold Lesk Chair in Leadership, Professor, and Head of the Department of Management
and Organizations at the Eller College of Management, the University of Arizona.
Copyright by the Academy of Management; all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, e-mailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder’s express written
permission. Users may print, download, or e-mail articles for individual use only.

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the workplace. We first define justice, paying careful attention to its three core dimensions: distributive, procedural, and interactional. We then examine why justice is important; we will consider
various criterion variables that justice favorably
influences. Once we understand the nature of
justice we will be in a better position to describe
how it can be brought about. The lesson here is
that organizational justice actually has to be managed. This paper will provide specific techniques
and recommendations for doing so.
What Is Organizational Justice?
Prescription vs. Description

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hilosophers and social commentators were
writing about justice long before management
scientists were. Among the ancient Greeks, for
example, Herodotus’ History and Plutarch’s Lives
described the achievements of the lawgiver Solon,
who reformed Athenian government. These are
the prescriptive approaches, since they seek to logically determine what sorts of actions truly are just.
As such, they reside comfortably within the domain of business ethics.
While organizational justice borrows from
these older traditions, it has its own distinctions.
Unlike the work of philosophers and attorneys,
managerial scientists are less concerned with what
is just and more concerned with what people believe to be just. In other words, these researchers
are pursuing a descriptive agenda. They seek to
understand why people view certain events as just,
as well as the consequences that follow from these
evaluations. In this regard, justice is a subjective
and descriptive concept in that it captures what
individuals believe to be right, rather than an
objective reality or a prescriptive moral code. As
defined here, organizational justice is a personal
evaluation about the ethical and moral standing
of managerial conduct. It follows from this approach that producing justice requires management to take the perspective of an employee. That
is, they need to understand what sorts of events
engender this subjective feeling of organizational
justice. On this important competency, many fall
short.

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Why Employees Care About Justice

Managers too often assume that justice, in the
minds of employees, means only that they receive
desirable outcomes. These managers are confusing
outcome favorability with outcome justice. The
former is a judgment of personal worth or value;
the latter is a judgment of moral propriety. Evidence shows that outcome justice and outcome
favorability are distinct (Skitka, Winquist, &
Hutchinson, 2003) and correlated between .19
and .49, depending on where and how the variables are measured (Cohen-Charash & Spector,
2001). In so many words, it’s important to get
what you want, but other things matter as well.
For this reason it is useful to consider three reasons
justice matters to people (for details, see Cropanzano, Rupp, Mohler, & Schminke, 2001).
Long-range benefits. People often “sign on” for
the long haul. Consequently, they need to estimate now how they are likely to be treated over
time. A just organization makes this prediction
easy. According to the “control model,” employees prefer justice because it allows them to predict
and control the outcomes they are likely to receive from organizations. According to the control model of justice, appropriate personnel policies signal that things are likely to work out
eventually. Most of us understand that every personnel decision cannot go our way, but justice
provides us with more certainty regarding our future benefits.
For this reason the control model proposes that
people are often motivated by economic and quasi-economic interests (cf. Tyler & Smith, 1998).
People want fairness because fairness provides
things they like. There is more than a little truth
to this idea. For instance, when individuals are
rewarded for successfully completing a task they
report being happy (Weiss, Suckow, & Cropanzano, 1999) and having pride in their performance
(Krehbiel & Cropanzano, 2000). This is so even
when their success resulted from cheating. At the
same time, these individuals also report feeling
guilty for their unfair behavior, suggesting that
individuals can recognize and react to injustice,
even when it is personally beneficial.
There is sometimes a certain tension between

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getting what we want and playing by the rules.
The two tend to go together, but less so than
many believe. For example, pay satisfaction is only
modestly correlated with perceptions of pay justice (Williams, McDaniel, & Nguyen, 2006). If
“justice” were based exclusively on obtaining benefits, then one would expect a higher association.
Later we shall discuss evidence suggesting that
individuals can accept an unfortunate outcome as
long as the process is fair and they are treated with
interpersonal dignity (e.g., Goldman, 2003; Skarlicki & Folger, 1997).
Social considerations. People are social animals.
We wish to be accepted and valued by important
others while not being exploited or harmed by
powerful decision-makers. In the “group-value
model,” just treatment tells us that we are respected and esteemed by the larger group. We are
also at less risk for mistreatment. This sense of
belonging is important to us even apart from the
economic benefits it can bring (Tyler & Blader,
2000; Tyler & Smith, 1998). As you might expect, this can pose a potential problem for organizations. To the extent that justice signals our
value to an employer, the more we care about the
organization the more distressed we become when
Table 1
Components of Organizational Justice
1. Distributive Justice: Appropriateness of outcomes.
● Equity: Rewarding employees based on their contributions.
● Equality: Providing each employee roughly the same compensation.
● Need: Providing a benefit based on one’s personal requirements.
2. Procedural Justice: Appropriateness of the allocation process.
● Consistency: All employees are treated the same.
● Lack of Bias: No person or group is singled out for discrimination or illtreatment.
● Accuracy: Decisions are based on accurate information.
● Representation of All Concerned: Appropriate stakeholders have input into
a decision.
● Correction: There is an appeals process or other mechanism for fixing
mistakes.
● Ethics: Norms of professional conduct are not violated.
3. Interactional Justice: Appropriateness of the treatment one receives from
authority figures.
● Interpersonal Justice: Treating an employee with dignity, courtesy, and
respect.
● Informational Justice: Sharing relevant information with employees.

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we are treated unfairly. Brockner, Tyler, and Cooper-Schneider (1992) assessed the commitment of
a group of employees before a layoff occurred.
After the downsizing those people who were initially the most committed responded the most negatively to the downsizing. When we treat workers
unfairly, we may end up doing the most harm to
those who are most loyal.
Ethical considerations. People also care about
justice because they believe it is the morally appropriate way others should be treated (Folger,
2001). When individuals witness an event they
believe is ethically inappropriate, they are likely
to take considerable risks in the hopes of extracting retribution (Bies & Tripp, 2001, 2002). Such
unfortunate (from the organization’s point of
view) reactions may occur even when an employee simply witnesses the harm and is not personally wronged (Ellard & Skarlicki, 2002; Spencer & Rupp, 2006). Consider, for example, a dayto-day problem faced by many service workers.
When these employees see a customer treating
one of their coworkers unfairly, the observing
worker is apt to experience stress symptoms.
Through this mechanism, injustice may spread ill
will throughout a workgroup.
Three Components of Justice
esearch has shown that employees appraise
three families of workplace events. They examine the justice of outcomes (distributive
justice), the justice of the formal allocation processes (procedural justice), and the justice of interpersonal transactions they encounter with others (interactional justice). These are shown in
Table 1.
Distributive, procedural, and interactional justice tend to be correlated. They can be meaningfully treated as three components of overall fairness (Ambrose & Arnaud, 2005; Ambrose &
Schminke, 2007), and the three components can
work together. However, if one’s goal is to promote workplace justice, it is useful to consider
them separately and in detail. This is because each
component is engendered in distinct ways, arising
from different managerial actions.

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Distributive Justice

Researchers call the first component of justice
distributive justice because it has to do with the
allocations or outcomes that some get and others
do not. Distributive justice is concerned with the
reality that not all workers are treated alike; the
allocation of outcomes is differentiated in the
workplace. Individuals are concerned with
whether or not they received their “just share.”
Sometimes things are distributively just, as when
the most qualified person gets promoted. Other
times they are not, as when advancement goes to
corporate “insiders” with a political relationship
to upper management.
Equity theory. Perhaps the earliest theory of
distributive justice can be attributed to Aristotle.
In his Nicomachean Ethics, the philosopher maintained that just distribution involved “something
proportionate,” which he defined as “equality of
ratios.” Specification, and a bit of rearrangement,
led Adams (1965) to represent his influential equity theory of distributive justice with the following equation:

O1 O2
⫽
I1
I2
According to equity theory, we are interested
in how much we get (outcomes or O1) relative to
how much we contribute (inputs or I1). Such a
ratio is meaningless, however, unless anchored
against some standard. To accomplish this, we
examine the outcomes (O2) and inputs (I2) of
some referent. Usually, though not necessarily,
this is another person who is similar to us. Things
are “equitable” when the ratios, not the individual
terms, are in agreement. When the ratios are out
of alignment, employees may feel uneasy. They are
motivated to “balance” the equation by modifying
the terms. For example, one who is underpaid
might reduce inputs by a corresponding amount.
This simple equation leads to a number of
predictions, some of which are not obvious. For
example, an individual who earns less than another may still be satisfied, as long as he or she also
contributes less. Likewise, a person who is paid
equally to another may feel unjustly treated if he
or she also contributes substantially more to the

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organization. These consequences often do not
occur to managers, but they make good sense in
light of equity theory. But by far the most famous
prediction from equity theory is the “over-reward
effect”—that is, what happens when the equation
is unbalanced in one’s own favor.
According to equity theory, when one is overpaid the two sides of the ratios are misaligned.
Consequently, one must work harder (i.e., increase inputs) in order to be equitable. These
effects seem to occur. Greenberg (1988) studied
managers who were temporarily moved to higheror lower-status offices than their position actually
warranted. Those moved to higher-status offices
boosted performance, whereas those moved to
lower-status offices showed decrements. These
gains and losses later disappeared when individuals were returned to status-appropriate office
spaces. Apart from its impact on performance,
inequity can also cause workplace sabotage (Ambrose, Seabright, & Schminke, 2002) and employee theft (Greenberg, 1993). It is personally
painful for employees, as distributive injustice is
associated with stress symptoms (Cropanzano,
Goldman, & Benson, 2005).
Recent advances in distributive justice. As Table 1
makes clear, there is more to distributive justice
than simple equity. These different standards can
be in conflict with one another. Generally speaking, we can distinguish three allocation rules that
can lead to distributive justice if they are applied
appropriately: equality (to each the same), equity
(to each in accordance with contributions), and
need (to each in accordance with the most urgency). These rules map onto Aristotle’s famous
dictum that all men wish to be treated like all
other people (equality), like some other people
(equity), and like no other person (need). While
it is no mean task to find the correct alchemistic
combination among these three allocation rules,
there are three basic suggestions that can be helpful.
First, it is useful to consider one’s strategic goals
(Colquitt, Greenberg, & Zapata-Phelan, 2005).
Equity tends to provide individual rewards for
high performance, whereas equality tends to build
esprit de corps among teammates. If one desires to
stimulate individual motivation, err toward eq-

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uity. If one desires to build group cohesion, err
toward equality. We shall return to this issue later
when we discuss reward systems.
Second, organizations can balance these considerations by mixing equality and equity together. It need not be either-or. Experiments with
work groups suggest that it is often best to provide
team members with a basic minimum of benefit.
This is analogous to equality. Above that minimum, however, it can be useful to reward based on
performance. This is analogous to equity. This sort
of hybrid approach has been adopted by many
organizations. Their compensation systems contain a “fixed” base; everyone in a particular job
class and with a particular tenure receives this
base. Employees are also encouraged to go beyond
this minimum, earning additional pay through the
allocation of merit bonuses (Milkovich & Newman, 2005, see especially Chapters 9 and 10).
Third, different rewards should be provided in
accordance with different rules. Equity works well
for some things, such as money, but less well for
others, such as status symbols. Among American
managers, it is often seen as fair to allocate economic benefits in accordance with equity (i.e.,
those who perform better might earn more). On
the other hand, social-emotional benefits, such as
reserved parking places, are best allocated equally
(Martin & Harder, 1994). Employees often see
themselves and their peers as belonging to a group
or, in the most beneficial case, a community.
Allocating social-emotional rewards equally signals that everyone in the organization matters and
is worthy of respect.
Procedural Justice

Procedural justice refers to the means by which
outcomes are allocated, but not specifically to the
outcomes themselves. Procedural justice establishes certain principles specifying and governing
the roles of participants within the decision-making processes. In three papers, Leventhal and his
colleagues (Leventhal, 1976, 1980; Leventhal,
Karuza, & Fry, 1980) established some core attributes that make procedures just; these are displayed in Table 1. A just process is one that is
applied consistently to all, free of bias, accurate,
representative of relevant stakeholders, correct-

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able, and consistent with ethical norms. Though
surprising to some, research has shown that just
procedures can mitigate the ill effects of unfavorable outcomes. Researchers have named this the
“fair process effect.”
To illustrate let us consider the case of strategic
planning. Kim and Mauborgne (1991, 1993) reported that when managers believed that their
headquarters used a fair planning process, they
were more supportive of the plan, trusted their
leaders more, and were more committed to their
employers. In their well-known book, Blue Ocean
Strategy, Kim and Mauborgne (2005) explain why.
Fair processes lead to intellectual and emotional
recognition. This, in turn, creates the trust and
commitment that build voluntary cooperation in
strategy execution. Procedural injustice, on the
other hand, produces “intellectual and emotional
indignation,” resulting in “distrust and resentment” (p. 183). Ultimately, this reduces cooperation in strategy execution.
We can go further. Procedural justice seems to
be essential to maintaining institutional legitimacy. When personnel decisions are made, individuals are likely to receive certain outcomes. For
instance, one may or may not be promoted. According to Tyler and Blader (2000), outcome favorability tends to affect satisfaction with the particular decision. This is not surprising. What is
more interesting is that procedural justice affects
what workers believe about the organization as a
whole. If the process is perceived as just, employees show greater loyalty and more willingness to
behave in an organization’s best interests. They
are also less likely to betray the institution and its
leaders.
Interactional Justice

In a sense, interactional justice may be the simplest
of the three components. It refers to how one
person treats another. A person is interactionally
just if he or she appropriately shares information
and avoids rude or cruel remarks. In other words,
there are two aspects of interactional justice
(Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001).
The first part, sometimes called informational justice refers to whether one is truthful and provides
adequate justifications when things go badly. The

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second part, sometimes called interpersonal justice,
refers to the respect and dignity with which one
treats another. As shown in Table 1, both are
important.
Because interactional justice emphasizes oneon-one transactions, employees often seek it from
their supervisors. This presents an opportunity for
organizations. In a quasi-experimental study,
Skarlicki and Latham (1996) trained union leaders to behave more justly. Among other things,
these leaders were taught to provide explanations
and apologies (informational justice) and to treat
their reports with courtesy and respect (interpersonal justice). When work groups were examined
three months later, individuals who reported to
trained leaders exhibited more helpful citizenship
behaviors than individuals who reported to untrained leaders.
Working Together: The Three Components of
Justice Interact

Maintaining the three components of justice simultaneously is a worthwhile task, but it may also
seem daunting. Fortunately, there is good news.
Evidence suggests that the three components of
justice interact (Cropanzano, Slaughter, & Bachiochi, 2005; Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). Though
this interaction can be described in different ways,
the key point is this: The ill effects of injustice can
be at least partially mitigated if at least one component of justice is maintained. For example, a
distributive and a procedural injustice will have
fewer negative effects if interactional justice is
high.
To understand this phenomenon one can look
at a study by Goldman (2003). Goldman studied
the relationship between justice and filing legal
claims for alleged workplace discrimination. He
found that claimants were most likely to purse
litigation when distributive, procedural, and interactional justice were all low. If just one component of justice was judged to be high, the likelihood of a legal claim dropped. This is good news,
because it suggests that organizations have three
bites at the apple. If they can get at least one
component of justice right, some important benefits should result. We will consider the beneficial
consequences of justice in our next section.

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The Impact of Organizational Justice
ver the past few decades a considerable body
of research has investigated the consequences
of just and unjust treatment by work organizations. This literature has been summarized in
three different meta-analytic reviews (CohenCharash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001;
Viswesvaran & Ones, 2002). While these quantitative reviews differ in some specifics, they all
underscore the propitious effects of workplace justice. We will look at each of the findings individually.

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Justice Builds Trust and Commitment

Trust is a willingness to become vulnerable with
respect to another party. As one might expect
given our comments so far, Colquitt and his colleagues (2001) found that all three components of
justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional) predict trust. These relationships can be
quite strong. For example, the association between perceptions of just procedures and trust can
be as high as .60. In a like fashion, justly treated
employees are also more committed to their employers. Findings again vary somewhat with how
justice is measured, but the correlation of perceived justice and affective commitment can
range between .37 and .43 (Cohen-Charash &
Spector, 2001).
Justice Improves Job Performance

As is true for other scholars, we use the term
“job performance” to refer to formal job duties,
assigned by organizational authorities and evaluated during performance appraisals (for a similar discussion, see Organ, 1988). Workplace
justice predicts the effectiveness with which
workers discharge their job duties (Colquitt et
al., 2001), though more so in field settings and
less so in the undergraduate laboratory (CohenCharash & Spector, 2001). As Lerner (2003)
observed, justice effects are often strongest in
real life. In part, this is because, over time,
fairness leads to strong interpersonal relationships. In two studies, Cropanzano, Prehar, and
Chen (2002) and Rupp and Cropanzano (2002)
examined whether supervisors treated their reports with interactional justice. When they did,

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the leader and the subordinate had a higherquality relationship. This strong relationship, in
turn, motivated employees to higher job performance. Supervisors worried that just pay and
process are expensive and time-consuming
might take heart. These costs may be partially
defrayed by higher productivity.
Justice Fosters Employee Organizational
Citizenship Behaviors

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are
employee behaviors that go beyond the call of
duty (Organ, 1988). Several studies have found
that justly treated employees are more likely to
comply with workplace policies, show extra conscientiousness, and behave altruistically toward
others (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001). Indeed, workers tend to tailor their citizenship behaviors carefully, doling them out to those groups
or individuals who have treated them justly and
withholding them from those who have not.
To illustrate this point, consider the case of
temporary employees. A contingent worker is
likely to be associated with two different organizations—the temporary agency and the organization that contracts with it. In an interesting study,
Liden, Wayne, Kraimer, and Sparrowe (2003) surveyed contingent workers who were assigned to a
Fortune 500 manufacturing firm. Liden and his
colleagues discovered that citizenship behaviors
toward this manufacturing organization were influenced by the procedural fairness with which the
manufacturing company treated the workers.
Contingent employees who received just processes
from the contracting organization (the manufacturing firm) performed more OCBs. However, the
procedural justice these workers received from the
employment agency did nothing to boost citizenship behaviors toward the manufacturing firm. In
other words, individuals repaid procedural justice
with hard work, but they reciprocated only to the
organization that treated them justly in the first
place. The manufacturing firm did not benefit
from the temporary agency’s efforts at procedural
justice. If you want justice to work to your benefit,
you have to do it yourself.

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Justice Builds Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Justice-inspired employee OCBs, such as behaving
altruistically toward others, sound much like employee customer service– oriented behaviors, such
as helping others and listening carefully to their
needs. Building on this, Bowen, Gilliland and
Folger (1999) suggested that just treatment of
employees would lead to OCBs that “spill over” to
customers. This “just play” results in customers
feeling appropriately treated, thereby yielding customer satisfaction and loyalty. These types of internal-external relationships have been empirically validated by such scholars as Masterson
(2001) and Maxham and Netemyer (2003). For
example, Masterson (2001) asked a large group of
university instructors how they were being
treated. When teachers felt that they received
distributive and procedural justice they tended to
report higher organizational commitment. This
commitment, in turn, improved student responses
toward the instructor. Since small gains in customer loyalty can translate into much larger gains
in profitability (e.g., Heskett, Sasser, &
Schlesinger, 1997; Smith, Bolton, & Wagner,
1999), these are very potent effects.
Thoughts Before Moving On

More broadly, we suggest that justice can be a core
value that defines an organization’s identity with
its stakeholders, both internally and externally.
When justice is espoused as a core value of an
organization’s management philosophy and enacted through a set of internally consistent management practices, it can build a “culture of justice,” a system-wide commitment that is valuable
and unique in the eyes of employees and customers, and tough to copy in the minds of competitors. And that can translate into the makings of
sustainable competitive advantage. In our next
section, we will look at management practices
that can help develop a culture of justice.
How to Create Perceptions of Justice
e will now turn to common and important
workplace situations, discussing a variety of
managerial and personnel functions. These
are displayed in Table 2. In each case, we will

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provide a lesson for promoting justice, including
some normative recommendations regarding how
individuals should be treated. And in each case we
will return to one or more of our conceptual
observations, such as the fair process effect and
the two-factor model, illustrating how these phenomena affect real-life organizations.
Selection Procedures: Positive Job Candidates

For most job candidates, the recruiting and selection process is their first introduction to an organization. How they are treated at this time can
have ramifications later. Applicants who feel
justly treated are more likely to form positive
impressions of the organization (Bauer et al.,
2001) and recommend it to their friends (Smither,
Reilly, Millsap, Pearlman, & Stoffey, 1993). And
the flip side is also true. When applicants feel
unjustly treated they are more likely to consider
litigation as a potential remedy (Bauer et al.,
2001). This research suggests that it pays for organizations to put their best foot forward. By treating applicants justly in the hiring process, organizations are setting the foundation for a
relationship of justice and trust when those applicants become employees.
The research on job candidates’ reactions to
recruiting and hiring processes suggests that it is
about much more than whether or not someone
gets the job. Further, because applicants don’t
often know why they didn’t get the job or the
qualifications of the person who did, distributive
justice is less of a concern in selection. However,
managers do need to be mindful of procedural and
interactional justice. It is also important to realize
that the selection process begins with recruiting
and initial communication, and encompasses all
Table 2
Building Justice Into Management Systems
1. Positive Job Candidates: The Justice Paradox in Selection Procedures.
2. Justly Balancing Multiple Goals: The Two-Factor Model in Just Reward
Systems
3. You Don’t Have to Win: How the Process by Outcome Interaction Helps Us
Resolve Conflicts
4. Softening Hardship: The Fair Process Effect in Layoffs
5. Keeping Score Fairly: A Due Process Approach to Performance Appraisal.

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contact with job candidates up to and including
extending an offer and rejecting an individual for
a job (Gilliland & Hale, 2005). In terms of procedural justice, research has identified two broad
sets of concerns:
●

Appropriate questions and criteria are critical for
procedural justice. Job candidates expect interview questions and screening tests to be related
to the job, or at least to appear to be related to
the job (Gilliland, 1994; Ryan & Chan, 1999).
Overly personal interview questions and some
screening tests, such as honesty tests, are often
seen as inappropriate and an invasion of candidates’ privacy (Bies & Moag, 1986; Kravitz,
Stinson, & Chavez, 1996).
● Adequate opportunity to perform during the selection process means giving job candidates the
chances to make a case for themselves and
allowing sufficient time in interviews (Truxillo,
Bauer, & Sanchez, 2001). If standardized tests
are used to screen applicants, justice can be
enhanced by allowing candidates to retest if
they feel they did not perform their best (Truxillo et al., 2001).
On the face, these two criteria seem reasonable
and pretty straightforward. However, when compared with recommended hiring practices, managers are often faced with a “justice paradox”
(Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). That is, many of
the selection procedures with the highest predictive validity—those that are the best screening
tools—are unfortunately those that fail to satisfy
these justice concerns. Consider cognitive ability
and personality tests. These screening methods
have high demonstrated validity (Schmidt &
Hunter, 1998), but both are seen by job applicants
as not particularly fair (Steiner & Gilliland,
1996). Questions on these tests are often not
related to the job, and applicants don’t feel they
have an opportunity to present their true abilities.
The converse is also observed with the justice
paradox. Traditional unstructured interviews have
long demonstrated weak predictive validity, not
much better than chance (Huffcutt & Arthur,
1994). However, job applicants perceive these
interviews as having high procedural justice because they are able to demonstrate their qualifi-

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cations (Latham & Finnegan, 1993). Adding
structured situations and questions to the interview increases predictive validity, but decreases
perceptions of procedural justice.
So how can this justice paradox be managed
effectively? We have three suggestions. First, there
are some screening tools that have both predictive
validity and procedural justice. Work sample tests
and performance-based simulations demonstrate
reasonable predictive validity (Roth, Bobko, &
McFarland, 2005) and are also seen as procedurally just (Steiner & Gilliland, 1996). A second
solution is to modify existing screening tools to
increase job applicants’ perceived procedural justice. Smither and colleagues (1993) found that
cognitive ability tests with concrete, rather than
abstract, items tended to be viewed more positively by job applicants. Based on the observation
that applicants perceive greater justice in unstructured interviews, Gilliland and Steiner (1999)
suggest a combined interview that has both structured behavioral questions to maximize predictive
validity and unstructured questions to allow applicants the “opportunity to perform.”
The third suggestion is based on our earlier
discussion of interactional justice. Recall that interactional justice can attenuate the negative effects of procedural injustice. Research has demonstrated that interactional justice is very important
for job candidates (Bies & Moag, 1986; Gilliland,
1995). With attention to considerate interpersonal treatment, honest information, and timely
feedback, organizations can create hiring processes
that embody interactional justice. Research has
demonstrated that the informational components
are particularly important if there are unanticipated delays or unusual screening procedures involved in the process (Rynes, Bretz, & Gerhart,
1991).
Reward Systems: Justly Balancing Multiple Goals

At the most basic level, rewards systems need to
accomplish two goals: They need to motivate individual performance, and they need to maintain
group cohesion. While both goals are worthwhile,
distributive justice research tells us that it is difficult to accomplish them simultaneously. Equity
allocations, which reward for performance, can

November

spur individual effort. But the resulting inequality
that is likely to occur can be disruptive. In a study
of academic faculty, Pfeffer and Langton (1993)
examined wage dispersion in their home departments. When wage dispersion was high, faculty
reported less satisfaction and less collaboration
with colleagues. Overall research productivity
dropped as well. This is not what merit pay is
supposed to do.
Paying everyone the same thing, though, is not
the answer either. Indeed, equality distributions
can boost group harmony, but they bring troubles
of their own. A key problem is one of external
equity. High-performing employees, or those with
rare skills, may be worth more in the external
marketplace. If their salaries are “capped” to maintain internal equality, these workers may seek
employment elsewhere. This is just another way of
saying that no matter how people are paid, not
everyone will be satisfied.
How then to position rewards? The research
discussed earlier underscores an opportunity. To
be sure, individuals who do not receive the compensation they desire will want more. However,
they often remain loyal to their employer if the
pay administration procedures are viewed as fair.
Consequently, if an organization needs to maintain external equity, it can do so and risk internal
inequality, but only as long as the allocation process is just. To illustrate, McFarlin and Sweeney
(1992) surveyed more than 600 banking employees. As expected, when distributive justice was
low, workers reported less pay satisfaction and less
job satisfaction. This is bad news, but it is partially
compensated for by the procedural justice results.
When procedural justice was high, workers experienced higher organizational commitment and a
positive reaction to their supervisors. This is the
two-factor model in action. Individuals who were
not necessarily satisfied with their pay were still
unlikely to derogate the organization when the
procedures were just.
In addition to procedural justice, interactional
justice can be helpful in administering pay fairly.
To illustrate this point, let us consider a situation
that everyone dislikes: pay cuts. Greenberg (1993)
found that differences in how pay cuts were managed at two manufacturing plants produced dra-

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Cropanzano, Bowen, and Gilliland

matically different outcomes. The key is interpersonal treatment. In one, an executive politely, but
quickly in about 15 minutes, announced a 15%
pay cut. In the other, an executive spent about an
hour and a half speaking, taking questions, and
expressing regrets about making an identical pay
cut. During a subsequent 10-week period, employee theft was about 80% lower in the second
case, and employees in that plant were 15 times
less likely to resign. No one wanted to have his or
her pay cut. But workers understood why it happened, appreciated the supportive interpersonal
treatment, and did not vent their ire on the organization.
Conflict Management: You Don’t Have to Win

Thomas and Schmidt (1976) tell us that managers
may spend about 20% of their time settling disputes among employees, and they are not always
successful (Schoorman & Champagne, 1994).
Conflict resolution is likely to be most difficult
when one or both parties is intransigent. At this
point the manager may listen to both disputants,
but will need to impose a settlement on them.
This is called arbitration, and it is ultimately autocratic. As a result, arbitration may sound risky
because it hazards a distributive injustice; the settlement is imposed and not approved in advance
by other parties.
There is good news, however. If any component of justice is present during arbitration (distributive or procedural or interactional), the overall appraisal of the situation will be improved
(Goldman, 2003). Because arbitration preserves
procedural justice, an unfortunate outcome is less
destructive than one might imagine. Or, we might
say, managers can make hard choices, but they
have to make them justly (for details see Folger &
Cropanzano, 1998). This illustrates a simple yet
powerful lesson from research on conflict resolution: If you can’t give people the outcome they
want, at least give them a fair process.
Layoffs: Softening Hardship

So far we have reviewed evidence pertaining to
justice in the context of hiring, reward systems,
and conflict resolution. These are everyday events
in a large organization, and each will function

43

more effectively if justice is taken into account.
Even a reader willing to indulge our arguments so
far might be wondering whether justice helps
when something really bad happens.
Among common management situations that
affect employees, downsizing is among the worst
(Richman, 1993). Layoffs have pernicious effects,
harming the victims while undermining the morale of survivors who remain employed. Though
downsizing is a widely used cost-cutting strategy, it
is highly risky. The costs of workforce reductions
often outweigh the benefits (Kammeyer-Mueller,
Liao, & Arvey, 2001). In these circumstances
people not only lose, they lose big. The event can
be so negative that a sense of distributive injustice
is virtually a given. Can the guidelines suggested
in this paper do any good at all?
As a matter of fact, they can. When a layoff is
handled with procedural and interactional justice,
victims are less likely to derogate their former
employers (Brockner et al., 1994, Study 1). Indeed, justice can have direct bottom-line effects.
Lind, Greenberg, Scott, and Welchans (2000) interviewed a large number of layoff victims. Many
of these individuals considered legal action following their downsizing, and almost a quarter of
the victims went so far as to speak to an attorney.
The single best predictor of willingness to take
legal action was the justice of the treatment they
received at the time of their discharge. Among
those who felt unjustly treated, Lind and his colleagues found that a full 66% contemplated litigation. Among those who felt justly treated, this
dropped to just 16%. These are impressive findings. Although managers are often coached by
attorneys or HR representatives to avoid apologizing—an apology can be seen as an admission of
guilt—these results suggest that an apology may
help promote the feelings of interactional justice
that actually reduce the risk of litigation. Justice,
it would seem, provides a useful way to survive a
crisis with one’s business reputation intact.
While we have so far discussed the victims of
layoffs, workforce reductions also affect survivors.
Those left behind, though retaining their jobs,
tend to suffer from “survivor guilt” (Brockner &
Greenberg, 1990). However, if organizations provide a good explanation as to why the downsizing

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is necessary—an aspect of interactional justice—
the remaining employees respond much less negatively (Brockner, DeWitt, Grover, & Reed,
1990). Providing unemployment benefits is also
advantageous, as one might expect. However, if
these benefits are lacking, an advance warning
that a layoff is about to occur will blunt the
negative reactions that might otherwise transpire
(Brockner et al., 1994, Studies 2 and 3).
Performance Appraisals: Keeping Score Fairly

In order to assign rewards, identify candidates for
promotion, and develop human capital, most large
organizations conduct performance evaluations.
While these appraisals are useful, concerns remain, and their implementation is often troubled.
For example, scholars have observed a phenomenon called the “vanishing performance appraisal”
(for a review, see Folger & Cropanzano, 1998).
When surveyed, most managers reported having
provided performance reviews, while many of
their subordinates reported never receiving one.
Other research suggests that evaluations are affected by political considerations (Longenecker,
Gioia, & Sims, 1987), cognitive processing limitations of the rater (DeNisi & Williams, 1988),
and the social context in which they are conducted (Levy & Williams, 2004). These concerns
tell us that the performance appraisal process often contains a good deal of ambiguity as well as
room for reasonable people to disagree.
For this reason, it is helpful to approach performance evaluations with an eye to their subjectivity. Historically, much of the advice academics
provided to practitioners encouraged them to
think of the performance review as a sort of test,
whereby the central task is to assign a valid rating
to a more-or-less objective quantity. For example,
raters have been advised to “become expert at
applying principles of test development” (Banks
& Roberson, 1985, p. 129) and that “psychometric issues surrounding performance measurement
[are] more relevant than ever” (DeVries, Morrison, Shullman, & Gerlach, 1981). This venerable,
measurement-oriented understanding of performance appraisal has been termed the “test metaphor” (Folger, Konovsky, & Cropanzano, 1992).
More recent performance appraisal work has

November

taken a broader perspective, emphasizing the social setting (Levy & Williams, 2004) and input
from multiple sources (Smither, London, &
Reilly, 2005). In this vein, Cawley, Keeping, and
Levy (1998) meta-analyzed 27 field studies, each
of which examined employee participation in performance appraisal. They found that when employees had a voice they were more satisfied, saw
the process as more fair, and were more motivated
to do better. This is interesting, but probably not
terribly surprising. The really impressive finding
was that these effects occurred even when participation could not affect the rating. Simply being
able to speak one’s mind (what Cawley and coauthors termed “value-expressive” participation)
caused employees to be more favorable toward the
performance appraisal system. Notice how these
findings are consistent with the fair process effect
mentioned earlier.
Research on organizational justice is providing
a new paradigm for understanding performance
review. Consistent with Folger, Konovsky, and
Cropanzano (1992), we call this the due process
approach to performance appraisal. Adopting a
due process metaphor sensitizes one to the distinct
interpretations, potential conflicts of interest, and
legitimate disagreement about facts. The due process approach to performance review has three
core elements: adequate notice, just hearing, and
judgment based on evidence.
●

Adequate notice, as one might expect, involves
letting people know in advance when they will
be appraised and on what criteria they will be
appraised. However, from a justice point of
view, it goes beyond this. It is also useful to
have workers involved in devising performance
standards and making these widely available. Of
course, it follows that feedback should be provided regularly.
● Just hearing means limiting the feedback review
to “admissible” evidence, such as worker performance rather than personal attacks. It also
means providing workers with a chance to provide their own interpretation of events, including disagreeing with the supervisor where this is
appropriate.
● Judgment based on evidence means that the stan-

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Cropanzano, Bowen, and Gilliland

dards should be accurate, data should be gathered, and decisions should be based on this
formal process. Steps should be taken to provide
rater training, so as to improve accuracy and to
keep the process free of political influence.
Taylor, Tracy, Renard, Harrison, and Carroll
(1995) redesigned the performance appraisal system of a large state agency so that it included
these principles of due process. They discovered
that workers preferred the new system, finding it
fairer and more effective. Managers liked it as
well, believing that it allowed them to be honest
and feeling that it was more effective for solving
work problems. This occurred even though workers in the due process system received lower ratings
than did workers under the older approach.
This is all to the good, but there are risks
involved. Adequate notice, just hearing, and judgment based on evidence are complicated to administer. A key problem is that they may raise
expectations while simultaneously providing employees with a set of tools for making their discontent felt. Consider the case of two companies
studied over six years by Mesch and Dalton
(1992). Each firm was in the same region, and
workers in each were represented by the same
union. In fact, grievances at both organizations
were assigned to the same union local. After 36
months, one of the firms decided to improve its
grievance process by adding a fact-finding intervention. Before the grievance process began, both
the union and management provided a “fact
finder” to determine the merits of the case, prevent concealment of information, and encourage
negotiated settlements. This provided an additional stage of process protection. The result? The
number of grievances filed skyrocketed at the firm
with the new procedural safeguard, but stayed
roughly constant at the other organization. After
about two years, the fact-finding intervention was
abandoned, and the grievance rate returned to
normal. The new intervention seems to have
raised expectations and thereby encouraged workers to complain about real and imagined ill-treatment. In the long run this was counterproductive.
The implications of Mesch and Dalton’s (1992)
study need to be appreciated. If procedures are not

45

designed appropriately, they could create more
problems than they solve.
Concluding Thoughts
here are two sides to the justice coin. On the
negative side, the absence of justice is likely to
provide problems for organizations. There is
strong evidence that injustice can provoke retaliation, lower performance, and harm morale (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al.,
2001; Viswesvaran & Ones, 2002). On the positive side, justice can do more than forestall these
unfortunate outcomes. Justice acts as a sort of
buffer, allowing employees to maintain respect
and trust for an organization even when things do
not go as they would have liked (Brockner &
Wiesenfeld, 1996). It is inevitable in life that
things will not always go our way. However, the
negative effects of an unfortunate event are less
severe if an organization is able to maintain procedural and interactional justice (Goldman, 2003;
Skarlicki & Folger, 1997).
Justice provides an excellent business opportunity, from reaping specific returns such as stronger
employee commitment to gaining an overall
tough-to-copy competitive edge that resides in a
“culture of justice.” In this paper we have examined justice from the perspective of five managerial tasks: hiring, reward systems, conflict management, layoffs, and performance appraisals. These
tasks are diverse, but they all involve a degree of
risk. Each has the potential to designate some as
“winners” and others as “losers.” After all, there
will always be people who fail to get the job,
receive a lower than expected performance appraisal, or are downsized in the face of business
exigencies. As a result, organizations hazard the ill
will of employees simply because they are making
the sorts of decisions necessary to run their businesses. Organizational justice allows managers to
make these tough decisions more smoothly. Just
play certainly does not guarantee all parties what
they want. However, it does hold out the possibility that power will be used in accordance with
normative principles that respect the dignity of all
involved. This is sound business advice. It is also
the right thing to do.

T

46

Academy of Management Perspectives

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