Organisational and procedural justice: a review of the literature and its implications for policing

Abstract

Organisational justice and procedural justice are complementary concepts that relate to the way individuals make judgments about fairness and outcomes when considering their interactions with others. Organisational justice and procedural justice comprise largely the same concepts, although their foci are different. Inwardly facing organisational justice is particularly concerned with the implications of justice judgments on staff attitudes, staff retention, workplace relations, productivity and performance. Outwardly facing procedural justice is—in the context of this paper—concerned with the interactions between police organisations and the public. This paper reports on the findings of a systematic review of the literature examining organisational and procedural justice in policing. We searched three comprehensive databases for literature on these themes. Fifty-seven empirical items were returned; five relating to organisational justice and police organisations, and 52 exploring procedural justice and police–public interactions. We explore this literature, and consider the implications for policing. We do so to set the scene for the other papers in this special edition. We conclude by noting that the extant literature has much to help police organisations better manage their internal and external relations, but that further effort should be made to turn empirically sound and theoretically interesting research into easily digestible and practically applicable models for police practitioners at all levels of the organisation.