What signals does procedural justice climate convey? The roles of group status, and organizational benevolence and integrity

• Published date: 01 May 2014
• Date: 01 May 2014
• Author: Kwok Leung,Xiaowan Lin
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.1899

What signals does procedural justice climate

convey? The roles of group status, and

organizational benevolence and integrity

XIAOWAN LIN

1

*AND KWOK LEUNG

2

1

Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Macau, China

2

Department of Management, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Summary We propose and test a theoretical framework to explore why and how procedural justice climate influences

individual behaviors after controlling for the influence of individual justice perception. Two types of symbolic

information conveyed by procedural justice climate are considered. We argue that procedural justice climate

reflects the status of or respect for a justice recipient, a work unit within an organization in our context, which

then influences the identification of its members with the work unit. Procedural justice climate also reflects the

moral attributes of a justice actor, herein an organization, which then influences organizational identification

and perceived job security. Consistent with these arguments, results showed that perceived respect for the

work unit mediated the relationship between procedural justice climate and identification with the work unit,

and both perceived organizational benevolence and integrity mediated the relationship of procedural justice

climate with organizational identification and job security. The two types of social identification and

perceived job security were related to several outcome variables differently. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley

& Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: procedural justice climate; respect for the work unit; benevolence and integrity; social

identification; job security

Since the seminal works of Mossholder, Bennett, and Martin (1998) and Naumann and Bennett (2000), the idea that

justice constitutes a contextual variable has become widely accepted. Justice climate refers to “a distinct group-level

cognition about how a work group as a whole is treated”(Naumann & Bennett, 2000, p. 882). Following this

definition, the relevant unit of analysis is a work group, and we argue that justice climate tends to vary across work

groups within an organization for a variety of reasons. It is natural that some work units may occupy more important

strategic positions than others, and members of such work units may be given more opportunities to express their

opinions, resulting in a stronger justice climate. Differential human resource management practices may be applied

to different work units on the basis of their functions and responsibilities. For example, the criteria for performance

appraisal may vary significantly across departments such as marketing, R&D, and production. Even when company-

wide policies and procedures are implemented consistently across different work units, members from different

groups may attach different meanings to similar organization events (e.g., Rentsch, 1990), resulting in different

levels of justice climate across workgroups.

Considerable research has shown that justice climate not only explains significant variance in outcomes at the

group/team and organization levels (Colquitt, Noe, & Jackson, 2002; Naumann & Bennett, 2002) but also

contributes to the prediction of individual-level outcomes, such as job satisfaction (e.g., Mossholder et al., 1998),

helping behavior or organizational citizenship behavior (OCB; e.g., Naumann & Bennett, 2000), and organizational

commitment (e.g., Liao & Rupp, 2005; Wu & Hu, 2009). Although it is well documented that justice climate can

explain additional variance in individual outcomes over and above individual justice perception, we know relatively

little about the mechanisms underlying such effects. This gap is significant because the attempt to answer the

*Correspondence to: Xiaowan Lin, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Macau, China. E-mail: lucylin@umac.mo

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 24 August 2012

Revised 28 June 2013, Accepted 14 August 2013

Research Article

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 464–488 (2014)

Published online 16 September 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1899

questions of why and how justice perceptions influence individual attitudes and behaviors is a central focus of justice

theorizing. The literature on organizational climate does not provide much helpful insight in this regard because it is

primarily concerned with the effects of organizational climate, rather than with the underlying mechanisms

(Carr, Schmidt, Ford, & DeShon, 2003). Although justice theories provide many well-known explanations for the

dynamics underlying procedural justice effects at the individual level, they are not applicable because they are

not formulated to account for the collective nature of justice climate and the underlying dynamics. The present

research addresses this gap by developing and testing a theoretical model that accounts for the effects of procedural

justice climate (PJ climate) on individual attitudes and behaviors after controlling for the influence of individual

justice perception.

Previous research on justice climate focuses mostly on PJ climate, because individual perceptions of procedural

justice are based upon relatively formal policies, procedures, and practices that apply to all members of a group

and are likely to converge across individuals. Information on procedural justice at the collective level is also easy

to interpret (Roberson & Colquitt, 2005). Following this line of research, we focus on PJ climate in the present

research. Given that organizations often develop policies and establish general guidelines for decision-making

procedures, procedural justice perception (PJ perception) is typically oriented toward an organization as a whole

(e.g., Bies & Moag, 1986; Cropanzano, Prehar, & Chen, 2002; Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, & Taylor, 2000;

Olkkonen & Lipponen, 2006). We therefore focus on PJ climate emanating from an organization, that is, the source

of justice treatment is the organization as represented by senior management.

Taking into account the major justice theories at the individual level, we develop a theoretical model that

emphasizes the symbolic information conveyed by PJ climate. Consistent with the long-held view in social

psychology that people’s reactions to the environment are based more on their perceptions of the environment than

on the environment itself (e.g., Markus & Zajonc, 1985), we posit that PJ climate, an environmental factor, conveys

important signals that shape individual perceptions of the justice source entity (i.e., the organization in our context)

and the recipient entity (i.e., a work unit). These perceptions in turn influence their attitudes and behaviors. First,

adapting the individual-level logic of the group-value (Lind & Tyler, 1988) and relational models (Tyler & Lind,

1992) to our context, we argue that PJ climate symbolizes the nature of the relationship between a work unit

(the recipient) and the organization (the source of justice). Viewed from this perspective, PJ climate can signal

whether a work unit is respected by the organization, or the social status of the work unit within the organization.

We further posit that group members are more likely to identify with a justice recipient entity, that is, their work unit,

if it receives higher respect from the organization. Note that perceived status of a recipient work unit should be

associated with PJ climate, but not with individual justice perception because the respect applies to all members

and does not vary across individuals within the work unit.

Second, themoral virtue model of justice (Cropanzano& Rupp, 2002), fairness theory(Folger & Cropanzano, 2001),

and fairness heuristictheory (Van den Bos, Lind, & Wilke, 2001) all suggest that justice-related judgmentsand behav-

iors are driven by moral concerns. Adapting this line of theorizing to our context, we argue that people are concerned

about the morality of social actors and that moral inferences are made based on the justice behaviors of these actors.

Thus, PJ climate can signal to employees the moral attributes of the source entity or justice actor (the organization),

in terms of its integrity and benevolence. We further argue that employees are more likely to identify with an

organization high on benevolence and integrity and feel secure in the organization.

In a nutshell, we theorize that PJ climate is related to two types of group identification, identification with the

organization and with a work unit, as well as perceived job security through individual perceptions of the status

of the work unit and the moral attributes of the organization. Note that the concept of identification in our research

focuses on two essential components: emotional and evaluative. The evaluative component refers to people’s

evaluation of the group they belong to, and the emotional component focuses on the affective commitment or

attachment to the group (Ellemers, Kortekaas, & Ouwerkerk, 1999; Jackson, 2002). We do not consider the cogni-

tive component, which refers to the cognitive awareness of one’s membership and the cognitive representation of the

overlap between the self and the group, often labeled as “self-categorization”(Ellemers et al., 1999; Jackson, 2002),

because self-categorization is unlikely to be directly affected by the perceived status and characteristics of a social

PROCEDURAL JUSTICE CLIMATE 465

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 464–488 (2014)

DOI: 10.1002/job