Justice Climate Past, Present, and Future: Models of Structure and Emergence

• Published in: Multi-Level Issues in Organizations and Time Vol. 6; pp. 357 - 396
• Main Authors: Rupp, Deborah E, Bashshur, Michael, Liao, Hui
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Emerald Group Publishing Limited 01.01.2007
• ISBN: 0762314346; 9780762314348
• ISSN: 1475-9144
• DOI: 10.1016/S1475-9144(07)06017-1

This chapter reviews research on multi-level organizational justice. The first half of the chapter provides the historical context for this issue, discusses organizational-level antecedents to individual-level justice perceptions (i.e., culture and organizational structure), and then focuses on the study of justice climate. A summary model depicts the justice climate findings to date and gives recommendations for future research. The second half of the chapter discusses the process of justice climate emergence. Pulling from classical bottom-up and top-down climate emergence models as well as contemporary justice theory, it outlines a theoretical model whereby individual differences and environmental characteristics interact to influence justice judgments. Through a process of information sharing, shared and unique experiences, and interactions among group members, a justice climate emerges. The chapter concludes by presenting ideas about how such a process might be empirically modeled.