Organizational Justice - a Behavioural Sciente Concept

ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE: A BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE

CONCEPT WITH CRITICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS

ETHICS AND STAKEHOLDER THEORY

LaRue Tone Hosmer and Christian Kiewitz

Abstract: Organizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers

to the perception of fairness of the past treatment of the employees within

an organization held by the employees of that organization. These subjective perceptions of fairness have been empirically shown to be related

to 1) attitudinal changes in job satisfaction, organizational commitment

and managerial trust beliefs; 2) behavioral changes in task performance

activities and ancillary extra-task efforts to assist group members and

improve group methods; 3) numerical changes in the quantity, quality and

efficiency of divisional outputs; and—^though this is far more tentative—4)

eventual changes in the competitive advantage and financial performance

of the full organization. The authors propose that these constructs can be

applied to all stakeholders, rather than just to the current employees of

the firm, and that objective determinations of fairness by the managers

can be related to subjective perceptions of fairness by the stakeholders that will result in the sequential series of attitudinal, behavioral and

numerical changes that will lead to performance improvements. In short,

the authors propose a normative stakeholder theory of the firm, based

upon ethical principles, that will have testable descriptive hypotheses

derived from the behavioral constructs.

O

rganizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers to the perception

of fairness of the past treatment of the employees within an organization held by

the employees of that organization. It is a subjective personal view of justice, based

upon experience, rather than an objective moral determination of justice based upon

principle. Still, it is critically important for scholars in business ethics and stakeholder

theory. Why? Because literally hundreds of...