Overall justice of organization: from decision fairness to positive attitude of employees

Overall justice of organization is defined as perceived fairness of treatment that an employee receives from his/her organization (Ambrose, Schminke, 2009). It is generally agreed that distributive, procedural and interactional justice generate overall fairness judgments (Ambrose et al., 2015). Distributive justice is defined as the perceived fairness of decision outcomes, procedural justice – the perceived fairness of the procedures used to make decisions, perceived fairness of decision making procedures, and interactional justice – perceived fairness of how decisions are enacted by authorities (Colquitt, Greenberg, 2004). Studies are usually aimed at examining the relative importance of distributive, procedural and interactional justice for overall justice of organization (e.g., Holtz, Harold, 2009). In other words, researchers are trying to determine what is more important for employees’ overall justice judgements: fair decisions, fair decision making procedures or fair interpersonal treatment. However, as employees are affected by many different decisions every day, the question arises how distributive, procedural and interactional justice of different human resource management decisions forms overall justice of organization. For example, does unfair pay decision and unfair personal present reduce overall justice in the same amount, and fair performance appraisal and promotion procedures increase it in the same way? Finally, the importance of justice in the organization is usually based on its relationship with important employees’ attitudes towards work, supervisor, and organization. Hence, the question is whether employees react to (un)fairness of a certain decision or (un)fairness of the whole organization? For example, will unfair promotion decisionprompt an employee to leave the organization or will staff turnover depend upon the previous justice experience of the organization as a whole? If employees react to fairness of their organization as a whole then it would be possible to at least partially compensate one less fair decision with another fairer one. Therefore, the study was conducted with the aim to analyse the antecedents of perceived overall justice of organization and its relationship with employees’ attitudes towards work, supervisor, and organization. The study had the following goals: 1) to determine the role of perceived distributive, procedural, and interactional justice across human resource management decisions in forming overall justice of organization; 2) to establish the relationships between overall justice and job satisfaction, trust in a supervisor, organizational commitment, and intention to leave the organization. In the survey took part 474 employees from various organizations in Lithuania. The study revealed the importance that overall justice of organization has in predicting employees’ attitudes. The fairer an organization is perceived to be, the greater job satisfaction, trust in supervisor, commitment to the organization is, and the lower staff turnover is intended. Moreover, the role of distributive, procedural and interactional justice in forming overall justice of organization is different across human resource management decisions. The best predictors of overall justice are distributive, procedural, and interactional justice of developmental opportunities and benefits, while distributive, procedural and interactional justice of performance appraisal and pay are less related to overall justice. Finally, overall justice of organization mediates the relationship between distributive, procedural and interactional justice of different human resource management decisions and employees’ attitudes towards job, supervisor, organization, whereas job satisfaction and trust in supervisor is predicted not only by overall justice of organization but also by distributive, procedural and interactional justice of human resource management decisions as well. In general, the study provides arguments for the importance of fair treatment of employees in the organization, and reveals the mechanism of employees’ reactions to (un)fair treatment