Procedural Justice Research Research Articles

Voice is Sometimes Enough: Voice, Influence, and the Moderating Impact of Descriptive Representation

This study offers a more nuanced look at the findings regarding procedural voice and influence by considering the context created by descriptive representation. Procedural justice researchers have long argued that giving people more of a voice in decision-making proceedings leads to heightened satisfaction with the outputs of that process and enhanced compliance with decisions. More recently, this concept has been applied to the political arena with the finding that voice alone is not enough. A voice that is not perceived to have an influence can be more detrimental than not having a voice at all.

Procedural Justice, Police Legitimacy, and Helping the Police Fight Crime

Drawing on procedural justice theory and research, this study uses survey data from a sample of Jamaican high school students ( N = 289) to evaluate hypotheses derived from the process-based model of policing. Findings reveal that the correlation between procedural justice judgments and police legitimacy is positive and statistically significant. Students who rate police practices more favorably in terms of procedural justice also report a greater willingness to help the police fight crime (e.g., report suspicious activity to the police) in their community. In combination, the findings show that these two key process-based model hypotheses generalize to the Jamaican context. Although the correlation between police legitimacy and behavioral cooperation is in the expected direction, the relationship is not statistically significant. The findings also show that students from impoverished local communities dominated by “area dons” are less willing to help the police fight crime.

Voice is Not Enough

Procedural justice researchers have long argued that giv ing people a voice in decision-making proceedings leads to heightened satisfaction with the outputs of those processes and enhanced compli ance with decisions. More recently, this concept has been applied to the political arena with the suggestion that simply having a voice in the pro ceedings may not be enough. Similarly, the attitudes of external efficacy and political trust have long been linked. Integrating these two lines of research to incorporate important lessons about the dimensionality of external efficacy, I argue that giving people a voice in politics is not a universal remedy for ailing democracy. A voice that is perceived to have no influence can be more detrimental than not perceiving a voice at all. Moving out of the experimental setting by using survey data collected in a 2001 study of attitudes toward municipal government, I examine the impact that perceptions of voice and influence have on feelings of policy satisfaction and political trust. Findings suggest that perceptions of voice and influence do indeed have an impact on feelings of political trust and policy satisfaction. Neither political trust nor policy satisfaction responds positively to perceptions of increased voice alone. Believing that citizen voice, loud or quiet, has an influence is important. Feelings of policy sat isfaction and political trust are increased only when respondents believe citizens had both increased voice and influence.

The police officer's terrorist dilemma: trust resilience following fatal errors

AbstractSuicide attacks have raised the stakes for officers deciding whether or not to shoot a suspect (‘Police Officer's Terrorist Dilemma’). Despite high‐profile errors we know little about how trust in the police is affected by their response to the terrorist threat. Building on a conceptualisation of lay observers as intuitive signal detection theorists, a general population sample (N = 1153) were presented with scenarios manipulated in terms of suspect status (Armed/Unarmed), officer decision (Shoot/Not Shoot) and outcome severity (e.g. suspect armed with Bomb/Knife; police shoot suspect/suspect plus child bystander). Supporting predictions, people showed higher trust in officers who made correct decisions, reflecting good discrimination ability and who decided to shoot, reflecting an ‘appropriate’ response bias given the relative costs and benefits. This latter effect was moderated by (a) outcome severity, suggesting it did not simply reflect a preference for a particular type of action, and (b) preferences for a tough stance towards terrorism indexed by Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). Despite loss of civilian life, failure to prevent minor terror attacks resulted in no loss of trust amongst people low in RWA, whereas among people high in RWA trust was positive when police erroneously shot an unarmed suspect. Relations to alternative definitions of trust and procedural justice research are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Are “We” More Punitive than “Me”? Self-Construal Styles, Justice-Related Attitudes, and Punitive Judgments

Cross-cultural as well as procedural justice research suggests that an interdependent self-construal is connected to more justice-related concerns, more moral outrage following observed unethical behavior, and a preference for effective but constructive sanctions. Independent self-construal, on the other hand, is expected to be connected to weaker moral reactions toward injustice, but also to preferring punitive over constructive forms of sanctions. Two studies were conducted in which dispositional self-construal was measured. In Study 2, self-construal was also manipulated with a priming procedure. Results show that interdependent self-construal is connected to stronger emotional reactions toward injustice, to social and moral concerns, to preferences for constructive forms, but also to retribution-oriented goals of punitive sanctions. Independent self-construal, on the other hand, goes along with fewer moral concerns, lower punitiveness, but more draconic attitudes.

REPORTING ON FAIRNESS IN CIVIC LIFE

Drawing on procedural justice research from social psychology, this study explores the role that journalistic practice plays in telling community members about whether local politicians are behaving fairly. Qualitative interviews with 24 community journalists working in cities in Upstate New York are used to answer the following research questions: (1) how does content regarding authority fairness find its way into news stories, and (2) what facets of justice—whether distributive, voice, or relational—do journalists emphasize. The interviewed journalists said that they often used their evaluation of local politicians’ fairness in deciding whether to pursue a story. In doing so, these journalists highlighted questions of whether politicians were listening to community members and the degree to which they appeared to take the best interest of citizens to heart. There was little agreement among journalists about the degree to which citizens could adequately make fairness judgments based on local news coverage, although the television reporters believed that television's visual component provided key information about the fairness of local politicians.

Framing Justice: Using the Concept of Procedural Justice to Advance Political Communication Research

Efforts aimed at increasing civic-mindedness must consider both what encourages and what discourages political engagement. Procedural justice argues that individuals care about the fairness of decision-making or deliberative procedures beyond whether the outcome of any future decision goes in their preferred direction. In turn, perceptions of procedural fairness influence participant satisfaction, commitment to the organization, perceived legitimacy of authorities, and willingness to volunteer on an organization's behalf. The concept of procedural justice holds significant promise for addressing questions in political communication research, particularly those examining the impacts of public engagement. Thus, we offer a synthesis of procedural justice research to support a model for studying procedural justice as a type of framing to which individuals are exposed during participation in civic life and, in so doing, try to make more explicit the previously implicit communicative aspects of procedural justice.

Reconceptualizing Due Process in Juvenile Justice: Contributions from Law and Social Science

This article challenges the accepted wisdom, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in Gault, that procedures in juvenile delinquency court should mimic the adult criminal process. The legal basis for this challenge is Gault itself, as well as the other Supreme Court cases that triggered the juvenile justice revolution of the past decades, for all of these cases relied on the due process clause, not the provisions of the Constitution that form the foundation for adult criminal procedure. That means that the central goal in juvenile justice is fundamental fairness, which does not have to be congruent with the adversarial tradition of adult criminal court. Instead, as the Court's administrative procedure cases illustrate, fundamental fairness theory aims at constructing the procedural framework that best promotes fairness, accuracy and efficiency in the setting in question. Social science, and in particular procedural justice research, can play an important role in fashioning this framework, because it can empirically examine various procedural mechanisms, in various settings, with these objectives in mind. To date, procedural justice research suggests that the procedures associated with the adult criminal process are not optimal even in that setting, much less in a regime focused on rehabilitating or punishing children. We propose a performance-based management system for implementing these legal and scientific insights in the juvenile justice context.

Do Procedural Justice Perceptions in a Selection Testing Context Predict Applicant Attraction and Intention Toward the Organization?

This study examines the effects of procedural justice perceptions on outcomes in an actual selection context with applicants taking a general mental ability test to gain employment as utility meter readers. Applicant attraction and intention related to the organization were measured at 3 time periods. This allowed us to control for initial levels of outcome variables and the pass‐fail result when assessing procedural justice effects. Procedural justice perceptions modestly predicted organizational attractiveness and intention prior to pass‐fail feedback. However, the procedural justice effects on these outcomes were diminished after controlling for the pass‐fail result. Either changes in R2 or regression coefficients associated with procedural justice perceptions failed to achieve significance for all outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for procedural justice research and for employment managers.

The group engagement model: procedural justice, social identity, and cooperative behavior.

The group engagement model expands the insights of the group-value model of procedural justice and the relational model of authority into an explanation for why procedural justice shapes cooperation in groups, organizations, and societies. It hypothesizes that procedures are important because they shape people's social identity within groups, and social identity in turn influences attitudes, values, and behaviors. The model further hypothesizes that resource judgments exercise their influence indirectly by shaping social identity. This social identity mediation hypothesis explains why people focus on procedural justice, and in particular on procedural elements related to the quality of their interpersonal treatment, because those elements carry the most social identity-relevant information. In this article, we review several key insights of the group engagement model, relate these insights to important trends in psychological research on justice, and discuss implications of the model for the future of procedural justice research.

COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING AND DECISION JUSTICE IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT.

This study attempts to contribute to the literature on procedural justice by examining the relationship between procedural justice and collaborative problem solving in the strategic decision making context of new product development. Although a number of strategic decision making characteristics undoubtedly contribute to organizational performance, recent literature has witnessed increasing attention to the important role of procedural justice in strategic decision making. Drawing on procedural justice research in social psychology literature, this stream of research argues that as firms formulate and implement their strategic decisions, individuals who feel that strategic decision making processes are fair, are likely to make high quality decisions and cooperate to implement the decisions. A paralleling stream in strategic management literature focuses on collaboration in strategic decision making. In strategic decision processes, participants must solve a steady stream of problems to attain their goals. Solving these problems requires the participants to be collaborative in pooling together their ideas, knowledge, and information and then integrating these resources into collective actions. Collaborative problem solving represents the presence of mutual influence of participants, open direct communication and conflict solution, and emphasis of common objectives.

Support for Race‐Based Affirmative Action: Self‐interest and Procedural Justice1

The current study examines attitudes toward affirmative action. Hypotheses related to self‐interest concerning perceptions of the benefits of affirmative action and hypotheses derived from procedural justice research regarding the structure of policy statements both received support. A survey completed by 387 undergraduate and graduate student participants found greater perception of benefits resulting from affirmative action policies, defined in terms of increased opportunity (concrete benefit) and increased satisfaction (abstract benefit), related to greater support for affirmative action. Policies presented with justification received more support than did policies presented without justification. Ethnicity did not directly affect support for affirmative action; however, ethnicity did affect perceptions of the benefits of affirmative action. Perceptions of the benefits of affirmative action mediated ethnicity effects. Suggestions for increasing support for affirmative action are provided.

What constitutes fairness in work settings? A four-component model of procedural justice

Despite a recent surge in research on procedural justice in organizational contexts, little work has systematically investigated how employees define procedural justice. In other words, relatively little has been done to establish a clear awareness of what employees consider when making their procedural justice evaluations. This lack of attention to construct definition is problematic, since it prevents an understanding of what underlies employees' fairness evaluations and leaves several issues regarding the definition and conceptualization of procedural justice unresolved. To address these issues, this article describes the four-component model of procedural justice [Blader, S. L., & Tyler, T. R. (in press). A four component model of procedural justice: Defining the meaning of a “fair” process. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; Tyler, T. R., & Blader, S. L. (2000). Cooperation in groups: procedural justice, social identity and behavioral engagement. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.], which posits four components that are believed to underlie overall procedural justice evaluations. The model differentiates between both justice type (decision making, quality of treatment) and justice source (formal, informal) in developing these components. Research supporting the four-component conceptualization is discussed and the utility of this approach for procedural justice research is reviewed.

Procedural justice, strategic decision making, and the knowledge economy

Collective knowledge building is a key strategic task for firms' success today. But creating and sharing knowledge are intangible activities that can neither be supervised nor forced out of people. They happen only when individuals cooperate voluntarily. A key challenge facing strategic management is obtaining the voluntary cooperation of individuals as firms formulate and implement their strategic decisions. This essay draws on the rich body of procedural justice research to address this critical issue. We argue that when people feel their strategic decision-making processes are fair, they display a high level of voluntary cooperation based on their attitudes of trust and commitment. Conversely, when people feel that the processes are unfair, they refuse to cooperate by hoarding ideas and dragging their feet in conceiving and executing strategic decisions. We further develop this argument into team performance wherein the attitudinal and behavioral effects of procedural justice are corroborated with theory and initial evidence of their bottom-line performance consequences. We then build a theory, which we call intellectual and emotional recognition theory, that can explain why procedural justice invokes the side of human behavior that goes beyond outcome-driven self-interests and that is so critical in the knowledge economy. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Effects of User Participation in Systems Development: A Longitudinal Field Experiment

This study examines the efficacy of user participation in developing an accounting application. The research takes place over a 19-month time frame, involves 516 clerical-level accounting subjects, and includes experimental manipulations in a field setting. The model of user participation and involvement proposed by Hartwick and Barki (1994) provides the foundation for the research framework. Their model is augmented by the inclusion of concepts from procedural justice and self-efficacy research. Participation is manipulated at three increasing levels: (1) no voice, (2) non-instrumental voice, and (3) instrumental voice.Research findings suggest that users' pre-experiment level of involvement with and attitude toward the present system are positively associated with their desire to participate in the development of the new system. Study results also indicate that users' a priori self-efficacy beliefs regarding their perceived ability to effectively contribute to the development process are positively related to desired participation. Pre- to post-experiment gains in psychological and behavioral variables are next assessed. In the instrumental voice condition, user involvement, user attitude, and performance gains are significantly highest. User attitude and involvement gains are significantly higher in the non-instrumental voice condition than in the no voice condition; however, gains in user performance are not significantly different between these treatment conditions. Research findings indicate that user participation can be effective, particularly when users perceive a noticeable degree of instrumental control over the decision outcome.

Procedural decisions in intergroup conflict situations: The influence of hierarchical group membership

A review of research on procedural and distributive justice shows that whereas distributive justice research has examined people's actual choice of outcomes, procedural justice research has paid little attention to the investigation of people's actual choice of procedures. In the present paper, three experiments are presented, all investigating people's actual choice of procedures. In all three experiments, participants were in a middle-management position where their subordinates demanded an opportunity to voice their opinion, while their superiors demanded that the subordinates should not be allowed voice. In Experiments 1 and 2 it was found that participants who were induced to identify with the low hierarchical group (subordinates) allowed more voice than participants who were induced to identify with the high hierarchical group (superiors), but that the effect of hierarchical group membership was absent when maximizing performance (Experiment 1) or participative values (Experiment 2) were explicitly emphasized. In Experiment 3 it was found that the effect of hierarchical group membership on procedural decision making was also evident in persons who progressed from identifying with both hierarchical groups to identifying with one hierarchical group. In the discussion it is argued that cross-fertilization between the fields of procedural and distributive justice will deepen our understanding of social justice in general.

Understanding why the justice of group procedures matters: A test of the psychological dynamics of the group-value model.

Procedural justice research has documented many positive consequences of fair decision-making procedures and treatment by authorities. However, it is unclear why these effects of procedural justice occur. The group-value model proposes that fair procedures matter because they communicate two symbolic messages about group membership:(a) whether individuals are respected members of a group and (b) whether they should feel pride in the group as a whole. These messages are conveyed by 3 relational aspects ofthe actions ofauthorities-actions that indicate neutrality, trustworthiness, and status recognition. Results from 4 different studies provide evidence that:(a) relational aspects of fair procedures communicate group-relevant information, and (b) this information mediates the influence of procedural judgments on group-oriented behaviors and feelings of self-esteem.

The consistency rule and the voice effect: the influence of expectations on procedural fairness judgements and performance

In procedural justice research it has frequently been found that allowing people an opportunity to voice their opinion enhances their judgements of the fairness of a decision-making procedure. The present study investigated how this voice effect is affected by the consistency over time rule, which dictates that, once people expect a certain procedure, deviation from the expected procedure will lead to a reduction in procedural fairness. Two experiments were conducted. In both experiments the independent variables manipulated were whether subjects were explicitly told to expect a voice procedure, were explicitly told to expect a no-voice procedure, or were told nothing about a subsequent procedure, and whether or not subjects subsequently received an opportunity to voice their opinion. The manipulations were induced by means of scenarios in Experiment 1, and by means of the Lind, Kanfer and Early (1990) paradigm in Experiment 2. In both experiments it was found that subjects who expected a voice procedure or who expected nothing judged receiving the voice procedure as more fair than receiving the no-voice procedure, but that subjects who expected a no-voice procedure judged receiving the voice procedure (inconsistency) as less fair than receiving the no-voice procedure (consistency). Furthermore, effects of the manipulated variables on subjects' task performance were found in Experiment 2.

Procedural justice as a contested concept: Sociological remarks on the group value model

The group value model by Lind and Tyler has had a major impact on procedural justice research. After critically examining the model, the author proposes that its underlying idea be reformulated at a more general level. The theory of autopoietic systems provides the background for an attempt to depict procedural justice as a mode for the self-description of social systems, a concept that the author relates to procedural structures that have been empirically shown to exist. Two cases from the field of genetic engineering are cited in this context.

Negotiating Strategies for Tax Disputes: Preferences of Taxpayers and Auditors

Disputes between officials and citizens during tax enforcement differ from most civil disputes between citizens in several ways: They are initiated when the officiat claims the citizen has not followed the law; they are fundumentally about the cowect interpretation of the law; and the official has the formal power to end the dispute within the enforcement arena by making a decision that is legally binding on the citizen. Using data from pre-audit interviews with taxpayers and state tax auditors, we explore how these characteristics of tax disputes, the roles of the parties, citizens' perceptions of the attitudes and orientations of the officials, and other contextual factors drawn from regulatory and procedural justice research affect the strategies officials and citizens prefer for resolving disputes. We close with some evidence on the predictive rekwance of the strategic preferences of the parties in combination with their roles: For new resolutions to emerge, the party with the power must be open to them, and the subordinate party must have the assertiveness to present them. We also explorate how the analysis may be extended to other enforcement and regulatory settings.