Observed organisational (in)justice: A review and integration of the literature

Abstract

For the last several decades, organisational justice has been shown across many studies to be an important construct for understanding organisational effectiveness. Traditionally, research on justice paid great attention to the recipient/victim perspective. In recent years, justice researchers have called for more studies on the other two actors: the justice agent (or perpetrator) and the observer. Particularly, research on the observer perspective in organisational justice has started to grow. Observers witness their colleagues being treated fairly or unfairly (aka indirect experience) instead of directly experiencing the treatment at first hand. These indirect experience of (in)justice can affects observers’ work attitudes and behaviour. Given that the number of observers is likely to be large, observer reactions towards (in)justice can have strong impacts on organisational functioning. Therefore, understanding observer reactions is vital for organisation management. This review seeks to bring clarity to the state of knowledge about observed organisational (in)justice and provide directions for future research.