Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

PROMOTE PROCEDURAL AND INTERACTIONAL JUSTICE
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Participants were then given an opportunity to retaliate anonymously by taking money
back from the researcher. Retaliation was lower when the underpayment was explained
using high levels of interpersonal justice and high levels of informational justice. These
facets of interactional justice mitigated participants ’ beliefs about the unfairness of the
same undesirable outcomes, leading them to accept those outcomes and diminishing their
motivation to retaliate.
Another study by Greenberg ( 1994 ) demonstrated an identical effect in an organization
that was about to introduce a smoking ban. This policy change (which is likely to be rejected
by smokers) was introduced in a manner that systematically manipulated the amount of
information about the need for the smoking ban (i.e. informational justice) as well as the
level of sensitivity expressed regarding the difficulty the ban was likely to create for smokers
(i.e. interpersonal justice). Employees who smoked expressed greater willingness to go along
with the ban when it was thoroughly explained and when it was presented in a socially sensitive
manner (i.e. when levels of both interpersonal and informational justice were high).
In yet another setting, Lind, Greenberg, Scott, and Welchans ( 2000 ) interviewed
almost 1000 unemployed people about their reactions to being fired or laid off from their
jobs. They found that individuals who believed they were treated in a dignifi ed manner
by company officials in the course of being terminated (high interpersonal justice) and
who believed that the explanations they received about the termination decision were
adequate (high informational justice) were significantly less inclined to bring suit against
their former employers for wrongful termination than those who received more superfi cial
explanations delivered in a less sensitive manner.
Adverse health effects of interactional injustice. Just as procedural injustice appears to take
a toll on health, so too does interactional injustice. Indeed, high levels of stress were found
to be associated with perceptions of interactional injustice ( Judge and Colquitt, 2004 ).
However, just as adverse reactions to procedural injustice are exacerbated when combined
with distributive injustice, as noted earlier, so too are adverse reactions to procedural
injustice exacerbated when combined with interactional injustice.
This is illustrated in a study of some 5300 Finnish hospital workers whose levels of
stress were assessed along with their perceptions of procedural justice and interactional
justice (Elovainio, Kivim ä ki, and Vahtera, 2002 ). Stress measures consisted of self - reports
of physical and psychological health problems as well as the number of days absent from
work due to certified medical reasons (a practice that is customary in Finland for absences
in excess of three consecutive days). The researchers reported that all three measures of
stress reached their highest levels among workers who perceived that they experienced
low amounts of both interactional justice and procedural justice on their jobs. Low levels
of each form of justice contributed somewhat to the signs of stress measured, but their
combined effects were complementary, rather than redundant, in nature. More recently,
additional evidence of complementary effects was reported in another study using a
very large sample of Finnish workers from a variety of different occupations (Kivim ä ki,
Vahetera, Elovainio, Virtanen, and Siegrist, 2007 ).
In sum, it ’s clear that low levels of interactional justice – both the interpersonal and
informational forms – contribute to adverse organizational effects. And when combined
with low levels of procedural justice, low levels of interactional justice also take their toll
on the physical and mental well - being of employees.