Topic: Organizational Justice Publication: The Journal of Applied Psychology (2008)
Article: Event justice perceptions and employees’ reactions: Perceptions of social entity
justice as a moderator.
Author: J. Choi
Reviewed by: Katie O’Brien
In a land of milk and honey, the copier would never break, we’d never have to work weekends, and work would always be fair.
Well, since we aren’t eating ambrosia, we as employees sometimes have to deal with mightily unfair events at work and sometimes we even have to deliver this unfairness. New research in the Journal of Applied Psychology by Jaepil Choi has looked into possible moderators that could soften the blow. He found that, indeed, if your employees feel that they work at a “fair” organization, one or two fairness-related slip-ups won’t make that much of a difference.
In fact, a generalized fairness perception can keep employees from getting angry and acting out negatively, because they see a slip-up or two as an isolated event and not indicative of the organization itself. People seem to view their company as a single entity rather than a series of events, which is good for supervisors because one bad event won’t kill employee morale.
The take home message: if fairness perception is high, this ship won’t sink from just one little iceberg. Anchors away!
Choi, J. (2008). Event justice perceptions and employees’ reactions: Perceptions of social entity justice as a moderator. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(3), 513-528.a