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Justice in the Workplace: From Theory to Practice, vol. 2. . - book review

Administrative Science Quarterly, Dec, 2001 by Carol T. Kulik

Russell Cropanzano, ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001. 320 pp. $69.95, cloth; $37.50, paper.

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Before writing this review, I set the current volume on my desk alongside its older sibling, volume 1, from 1993, Justice in the Workplace: Approaching Fairness in Human Resource Management. Comparing the contents of these two volumes gave me the same sense of the passage of time that one gets leafing through old family photo albums ("How tall she's grown!" "How gray his hair has become!"). While the first volume focused primarily on the formal procedures associated with human resource management (performance appraisals, drug testing, layoffs), the second volume addresses a much wider range of organizational practices and structures (benefits, strategic decision making, flexible forms). And while the contributors to the first volume were exclusively employed in the United States, contributors to the second volume span the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and France. This broader focus is appropriate. The concept of organizational justice is being studied in more organizational contexts, addressing a gr eater range of applied problems than ever before. As organizational contexts evolve, our understanding of organizational justice also evolves, as Ambrose and Schminke remind us in their chapter examining justice in flexible organizational structures.

Volume 2 is organized into three sections: part 1, "Theoretical Advances and New Conceptual Directions," part 2, "The Practical Application of Organizational Justice," and part 3, "Looking to the Future." The book's foreword suggests that the book will be "of interest to researchers, teachers, and managers" (p. x). While I agree with this characterization, I also expect that these audiences will be attracted primarily by different sections of the book. In my roles as an organizational researcher and teacher, I was most drawn to parts 1 and 3. Two chapters from part 1 strike me as especially valuable in the teaching context. Byrne and Cropanzano's chapter takes a historical bent and provides the reader with a unique insight into the organizational justice "family tree," from its earliest roots to its more recent branches. The chapter by van den Bos, Lind, and Wilke focuses on fairness heuristic theory and describes the three hypothesized cognitive phases that develop as a person forms fairness judgments. These chapters would be ideal for inclusion in a doctoral seminar on organizational justice, accompanied by the empirical articles discussed within them.

Both experienced justice researchers and newcomers to the organizational justice field will find a wealth of emerging research issues described in parts 1 and 3. The chapters in these sections discuss the applicability of justice concepts cross-culturally (McFarlin and Sweeney), the factors motivating fair and unfair managerial behaviors in organizations (Folger and Skarlicki; Greenberg and Wiethoff), the long-term health consequences associated with an unfair workplace (Vermunt and Steensma), and the justice effects of popular managerial interventions such as downsizing and the use of temporary workers (Cropanzano and Prehar).

In contrast, I expect that managers will be most interested in the chapters included in part 2. These chapters cover topics as diverse as affirmative action (Bobocel et al.), family-friendly policies (Grandey), selection procedures (Gilliland and Steiner), revenge (Bies and Tripp), and strategic decision making (Korsgaard, Spienza, and Schweiger). These chapters are written as stand-alone products, but reading them in sequence gave me a new appreciation of two bits of justice "wisdom" that would be of particular interest to an applied audience. The first bit of wisdom is the idea that organizational procedures designed to be objectively fair will not be perceived as fair unless (1) the person administering the procedure and the person affected by the procedure share the same referent standard, and (2) the administrator has provided the person affected with sufficient information about how the procedure operates. Seeing the gap between practice and perception arise again and again in the chapters in part 2 hig hlights the fact that the burden for a fair workplace falls heavily on the shoulders of front-line managers. These managers may not be directly involved in the choice or design of organizational procedures but are nonetheless responsible for their day-to-day enactment. The second bit of wisdom of interest to practicing managers is the idea that unfair procedures can initiate positive outcomes as well as negative ones. This idea comes through most clearly in the chapter by Bies and Tripp, in which the authors discuss positive outcomes associated with revenge. Consider, for example, a subordinate who believes that his or her most recent performance appraisal has unfairly characterized him or her as a poor performer. The subordinate's efforts to right this wrong may (1) eventually permit the subordinate to forgive his or her supervisor and restore the working relationship, (2) provide useful feedback to the supervisor about how the performance feedback is received by subordinates, and (3) even result in enhanced motivation and performance if the subordinate chooses to take revenge by "proving the supervisor wrong."

Business Services Industry

Justice in the Workplace: From Theory to Practice, vol. 2. . - book review

Administrative Science Quarterly, Dec, 2001 by Carol T. Kulik

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