Interactional justice, leader–member exchange, and employee performance: Examining the moderating role of justice differentiation

• Author: Po Hao,Li‐Rong Long,Kai Chi Yam,Ryan Fehr,Wei He
• Date: 01 May 2017
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2133

Interactional justice, leader–member exchange,

and employee performance: Examining the

moderating role of justice differentiation

WEI HE

1

, RYAN FEHR

2

, KAI CHI YAM

3

, LI-RONG LONG

1

*AND PO HAO

4

1

Department of Business Administration, School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan,

China

2

Department of Management and Organization, Foster School of Business, University of Washington,Seattle, Washington,

U.S.A.

3

Department of Management & Organisation, School of Business, National University of Singapore, Singapore

4

Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Northwest University, Xi'an,China

Summary Past research suggests that interactional justice plays a pivotal role in facilitating high-quality leader–member

exchange (LMX), with downstream implications for employee performance. However, the broader context in

which these effects unfold has received scarce attention. Drawing from deontic justice and social exchange

theories, we suggest that interactional justice differentiation is an important contextual moderator of the

link between interactional justice and LMX. Specifically, we argue that high interactional justice differen-

tiation attenuates the link between interactional justice and LMX, in turn influencing the effects of interac-

tional justice on employee task and creative performance. Results from two studies employing both

experimental and multisource, multilevel survey designs provide convergent support for the hypothesized

model. We conclude by highlighting several key theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: interactional justice; LMX; justice differentiation; social exchange; deontic justice

Over the past several decades, organizational justice research has flourished (see Colquitt, Greenberg, & Zapata-

Phelan 2005, for a review). Researchers have demonstrated that distributive justice (i.e., the fairness of resource

allocation; Adams 1965), procedural justice (i.e., the fairness of the processes through which resources are allocated;

Leventhal 1980; Thibaut & Walker 1975), and interactional justice (i.e., the fairness of interpersonal treatment one

receives from others in the workplace; Bies & Moag 1986) each can exert influence over a wide range of employee

attitudes, relationships, and behaviors (Cohen-Charash & Spector 2001; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng

2001; Colquitt et al. 2013).

Within this literature, scholars have often noted the key role of leaders in administering just treatment, particularly

with respect to interactional justice (Scott, Garza, Conlon, & Kim 2014). Whereas leaders are often unable to directly

influence an organization's distributive or procedural justice principles, they are typically free to determine the extent

to which they treattheir employees with dignity, respect, and truthfulness,namely, interactional justice (Scott,Colquitt,

& Paddock 2009).Research in turn has shown that interactional justice has a particularly strong relationshipwith LMX

(Rockstuhl, Dulebohn, Ang, & Shore 2012), and that high-quality LMX is a key underlying mechanism linking inter-

actional justice to more distal employee outcomes such as job performance (Cropanzano & Mitchell 2005).

Although interactional justice has many positive effects, leaders must expend time and effort to ensure that a

given employee is treated with dignity, respect, and truthfulness. Sometimes, leaders expend these efforts differen-

tially across employees, treating some with high levels of interactional justice and others with low levels of

*Correspondence to: Li-Rong Long, Department of Business Administration, School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and

Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China. E-mail: lrlong@mail.hust.edu.cn

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 18 November 2014

Revised 29 June 2016, Accepted 10 August 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 537–557 (2017)

Published online 1 September 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2133

Research Article

interactional justice. At the group level, such disparate treatment is referred to as high interactional justice differen-

tiation. Broadly defined, interactional justice differentiation is a process by which leaders engage in differing levels

of interactional justice behavior to followers within a work group.

Integrating deontic justice and social exchange theories (Blau 1964; Cropanzano, Goldman, & Folger 2003;

Folger 2001), we challenge the existing assumption that LMX is solely determined by how a leader treats a partic-

ular follower within the dyad. Instead, we argue that employees take careful note of how their leaders interact with

their coworkers and use this information to guide their own leader–follower interactions (Cropanzano & Mitchell

2005). We specifically argue that interactional justice is most likely to positively influence LMX when interactional

justice differentiation is low. Then, we theorize that the interactive effects of interactional justice and interactional

justice differentiation will have downstream implications for employee task and creative performance, mediated

by LMX. A summary of our model is presented in Figure 1.

In total, our research makes three interrelated contributions. First, we contribute to the LMX literature by chal-

lenging the assumption that just treatment toward a particular follower is a sufficient condition for high-quality

LMX. We specifically demonstrate that followers also care deeply about how their coworkers are treated, and react

negatively when group members are treated differently by the leader, even when they themselves are treated fairly.

Relatedly, we contribute to the justice literature by demonstrating the unique importance of justice differentiation for

employee behavior, highlighting its downstream implications for employees' task and creative performance. Finally,

we contribute to the justice and LMX literatures by demonstrating the utility of deontic justice and social exchange

theories in explaining how and why followers are likely to respond negatively when leaders engage in high levels of

interactional justice differentiation among group members.

Theory and Hypotheses

Our theoretical model begins with a consideration of the relationship between interactional justice and LMX.

According to Bies and Moag (1986), interactional justice refers to individuals' concerns about “the quality of inter-

personal treatment they receive during the enactment of organizational procedures”(p. 44). When an employee is

treated with interactional justice, he or she is treated with dignity and respect and provided with explanations of

decisions in a timely, open, and truthful manner (Bies 2001). It is worth noting that unlike distributive or proce-

dural justice, interactional justice is not limited to the exchange contexts of resource allocation and decision

making. Rather, it covers the entire spectrum of social interactions between leaders and their employees on a

daily basis (Mikula, Petri, & Tanzer 1990). Therefore, Bies (2005) conceptualized interactional justice as an

encounter-based perception of leader fairness and regarded it as a central component of the process of leadership

itself. Based on this conceptualization, scholars have argued that interactional justice plays an important role in

Figure 1. Hypothesized multilevel model. LMX, leader–member exchange

538 W. HE ET AL.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 537–557 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/job