Organizational Justice refers to employee perceptions of fairness (Greenberg & Colquitt 2005). In the past decades there has been an upward interest in the respective role of justice and fairness in the workplace, and its implications for worker’s health and wellbeing. Organizational justice perceptions have been associated with numerous outcomes: such as, job satisfaction, commitment, turnover, and employee health. Also can be classified into at least three broad families: distributive justice (the fairness of the outcomes), procedural justice (the fairness of the process by which outcomes are assigned), and interactional justice (the fairness of the interpersonal transaction). The origins of organizational justice research lay largely in equity theory, developed by Adams in 1965. Under equity theory, the employee is thought to engage in an internal balancing of his or her perceived inputs (e.g., effort, experience, and education) and outputs (e.g., rewards, punishments, and allocations), in relation to a chosen “referent other’s” perceived inputs and outputs. Therefore, distributive justice refers to an individual’s subjective assessment of the fairness of an outcome distribution.
By the year 1975, Thibaut and Walker brought the concept of procedural justice. In general, procedural justice that refers to the perceived fairness of the process used to determine the various outcomes. It is thought that that following an unfavorable outcome, employees will respond more favorably if they believe the procedures that resulted in the unfavorable outcome were fair. Years later in 1980, Leventhal and colleagues extended the research base of procedural justice by presenting six criteria that are theorized to enhance perceived fairness in employees, and help to assist in judging fairness of formal or structural elements within the organization. These procedures were to be applied consistently across people and across time; be free from bias; ensure that accurate information is collected and used in making decisions; have some mechanisms to correct flawed or inaccurate decisions; conform to personal or prevailing standards of ethics or morality; and ensure that that the opinions of various groups affected by the decision have been taken into account.
In the coming years 1986 Bies and Moag extended the dimensions of organizational justice by introducing interactional (relational) justice, which refers to fairness of interpersonal treatment. The same facet of justice has also been described in the literature as relational justice. More recently, interactional justice has been divided into two sub-dimensions: interpersonal justice, which reflects the degree to which people are treated with politeness, dignity, and respect; and informational justice, which focuses on the communications (within the organization) that convey information about why procedures were used in a certain way or why outcomes were distributed in a certain fashion. It is clear that concept of organizational justice refers to perceptual or subjective phenomena, and in this sense studying ‘justice’ refers to examining how people form justice judgments and how these judgments, in turn, affect subsequent responses.
To recap, the three broad families of justice perceptions broadly relate to outcomes, processes, and interpersonal interactions. The theory of organizational justice has developed step-by-step; and the debate about the dimensions of justice perceptions and their interrelationships has a substantive history. Traditionally, the research has focused on examining the unique effects of different types of justice. However, contemporary organizational justice research now focuses primarily on the effects of multiple justice dimensions, and, in turn, the integration of these various approaches/constructs the multiple organizational justice research orientations. The recent wave of organizational justice research, starting at the beginning of 21st century seeks to examine the integration of the facets and theories of organizational justice. The integration of the individual concepts into one has been termed overall justice, which has been suggested also in some earlier works. The justification given to the concept of overall justice is that in real life situations, people are reacting to the overall experience of justice or injustice, not to specific types of justice. Considering this, it has been suggested that research also should be focused on this overall experience. In short, "Justice is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon, as individuals are concerned about fairness for several reasons, judge the fairness of several aspects of decision events, and use fairness perceptions to guide a wide range of key attitudes and behaviors.
Doctorate thesis Investigation by Dr. Carlos Erazo “DIMENSIONS OF DISCIPLINARY MEASURES IN A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE IN HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT FOR SOCIETY FOR HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PUERTO RICO CHAPTER: DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF PATTERNS TO CORRECT UNWANTED BEHAVIORS IN THE ORGANIZATION.”