paralleled or balanced by a suYcient degree of trust, legitimacy, and fairness, the
enforced changes will be likely in the long run to result in dissatisfaction, burn-out,
and stress. Hence, a single-minded pursuit of economic rationality to the exclusion
of other factors carries the seeds of its own destruction. Recognition of relational
rationality means that social goals have to be considered, especially those concern-
ing organizational justice and social legitimacy.
- 1 Organizational Justice/Fairness
Failing to meet objectives of legitimacy and fairness will lead to perceived injustice
by those involved (e.g. employees, managers, works council representatives, trade
union oYcers) and aVects employee behavior and social relations within an
organization (Greenberg 1990 ). A meta-analysis of organizational justice by
Colquitt et al. ( 2001 ) shows positive eVects of perceived justice (both procedural
and distributive) on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, employee trust,
and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), underlining the relevance of
fairness and legitimacy in organizations. Meeting the criterion of relational
rationality means that managers need to ‘treat their people well.’
The term ‘justice’ is generally used to connote ‘oughtness’ and is focused on the
way people evaluate the fairness of a decision (Boxall and Purcell 2003 ). Baron and
Kreps ( 1999 ) present two implicit assumptions that represent the starting point for
organizational justice approaches. First, they make the assumption that individual
employees evaluate their personal position relative to others in a process of
social comparison (encompassing upward comparison, downward comparison,
and horizontal comparison). Second, individual employees not only attend to the
absolute rewards they receive, but also to the fairness of the allocation decisions.
There are two basic forms of organizational justice: distributive and procedural.
Distributive justice concerns people’s perception of outcomes or rewards and the
way they are allocated (Baron and Kreps 1999 : 107 ). This form of justice is relevant
for workers’ satisfaction with decisions concerning their jobs and pay. Typical
issues related to distributive justice are: ‘How am I being paid in comparison to
my colleagues?’ and ‘How much eVort do I have to put into my job in comparison
to colleagues with similar responsibilities?’ Procedural justice, on the other hand,
deals with the fairness of the procedures used to determine outcome distributions
or allocations (Colquitt et al. 2001 ). Procedural justice is often related to workers’
perception of the supervisor, their attachment to the organization, and their
willingness to engage in various kinds of ‘organizational citizenship behavior.’
Colquitt et al. ( 2001 ) show that perceptions of distributive justice tend to be
correlated with perceptions of procedural justice. They add two other forms of
organizational justice based on interactions: interpersonal justice and informa-
tional justice. Interpersonal justice is concerned with whether people are treated in
hrm and societal embeddedness 179