The consequences of the perceived organizational justice: a holistic overview

Abstract

Organizational justice gained a bourgeoning interest in academic and corporate areas, it is a virtue of social organizations. In the working environment, individuals react depending on their perceptions. Therefore, perceived organizational justice is a behavioral concept that refers to the subjective description of the fairness of remuneration, decision-making processes and relationships within the organization. These justice perceptions have been empirically related to positive and negative consequences on attitudes, behaviors, and health such as greater identification and commitment, better organizational trust, increased job satisfaction, reinforced job performance, promoted employees’ organizational citizenship behavior, improved health and wellbeing as well as counterproductive behaviors. Despite the vigor of fairness research, the rapid flourishment of this literature has made relevant a variety of new issues. Hence, drawing upon equity theory and social exchange theory, this theoretical paper is designed to investigate the prominent literature in order to develop a holistic overview portraying the individual level of the perceived organizational justice and point out its salient consequences, based on recent theoretical and empirical research.

It is anticipated that this paper will have a significant contribution to the advancement of organizational justice research literature and provide managers and scholars to get a better insight into harmonizing the relationship between employee and employers. Since, organizational justice has the potential to produce powerful benefits for organizations and employees alike.

In the present paper, we discuss the main definitions and dimensions of organizational justice in accordance with the descriptive and subjective approach, in addition, we present the principal outcomes of fairness and unfairness treatments.