Why Justice Matters: The Role of Meaning in Organizational Justice Research

Abstract

Decades of scholarly research in Organizational Justice has demonstrated that justice matters. People care about justice since it fulfils psychological needs, including needs for control (i.e., the instrumental model; Thibaut & Walker, 1975), belonging and positive self-regard (i.e., the relational model; Lind & Tyler, 1988), and meaning (i.e., the moral virtues model; Folger, 1998, 2001). Although extensive justice research has explored the need for control and belonging, less attention has been directed towards understanding meaning. However, this need is paramount to individuals because it “touches some basic quality of being human” (Cropanzano et al., 2001: 178). Meaning provides people with a sense of purpose; thwarting this need can have strong implications for employees and organizations. This symposium brings together five scholarly papers which argue for the importance of justice as a carrier of meaning, using different theoretical perspectives and methodologies: (1) an experiment and experimental field study demonstrating that justice failure leads third-parties to reaffirm meaning by moralization; (2) an experimental investigation showing how meaning is created by those enacting fairness; (3) a field study examining how a breakdown of meaning is recreated through talk; (4) a field study examining how one’s sense of meaning is bound together with perceptions of organizations’ corporate social responsibility; (5) a qualitative study pointing to the availability of resources in one’s workplace as a source of meaning. Karl Aquino, a renowned justice scholar, will provide an interactive discussion considering how the study of meaning can open up future avenues of justice research. Third Parties’ Reactions to Justice Failure in an Organizational Context: An Empirical Test Presenter: Lei Zhu; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Jason Martens; U. of British Columbia Examining the Effectiveness of Talk as a Response to Violations of Justice Needs Presenter: Rashpal K Dhensa-Kahlon; London School of Economics Smile! You’re on Camera: Promoting Fair Behavior Through States of Self- Awareness Presenter: David B. Whiteside; Wilfrid Laurier U. Presenter: Laurie J. Barclay; Wilfrid Laurier U. The Fairness of Resources: Task-Relevant Distributive Justice as a Source of Competence Presenter: Hayley Claire German; London School of Economics Presenter: David Patient; U. Católica Portuguesa Presenter: Irina Cojuharenco; U. Católica Portuguesa Interpersonal Injustice and Turnover: The Moderating Role of CSR and Collectivism Presenter: Ruodan Shao; City U. of Hong Kong Presenter: E. Layne Paddock; Singapore Management U. Presenter: Thierry Nadisic; EM Lyon