Managing Fairness in Organizations

The term organizational justice refers to perceptions of fairness within organizations. Justice as a social phenomenon has received a great deal of research attention from social psychologists. With new research on fairness in organizations, scholars in organizational behavior, industrial/organizational psychology, and managers are provided with practical orientations on how to create fair working environments. Although organizational justice is not a panacea for managers, it can help boost employee morale and cooperation. Perceptions of unfairness have been related to several negative reactions such as employee theft, lack of commitment, lawsuits, and recently aggressive behaviors in the workplace. Perceptions of fair treatment, on the other hand, have been related to attitudinal and behavioral outcomes such as employee commitment, trust, and cooperation that are conducive to organizational performance. The most important asset of any organization is its workforce and the way people are treated shapes attitudes and behaviors such as commitment, trust, performance, turnover, aggression, and all issues of human resources. As we are moving toward a more educated workforce, people want not only better jobs but also to be treated with respect and dignity in the workplace. We are entering an era in which issues of fairness in a diversity of forms will be high on the agenda of corporate management, thus a better understanding of issues of justice in modern organizations is imperative for human resource managers.

CONSTANT D. BEUGRÉ is Assistant Professor of Management at Kent State University. Dr. Beugré has been a Research Associate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Lally School of Management and Technology and a Research Analyst at the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene in Albany, New York. He has also taught at the National University of the Ivory Coast, West Africa.