Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2 (2009), 196–198.Copyright c© 2009 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 1754-9426/09

COMMENTARIES

How Prevalent Are the Different Typesof Organizational Justice Research?

JEREMY BAUER, KRISTIN SABOE, EUNAE CHO, LIUQIN YANG, AND

RUSSELL E. JOHNSONUniversity of South Florida

H. TUGBA EROL AND ASLI GONCUMiddle East Technical University

JAMES A. TANSt. Cloud University

In his article, Greenberg (2009) classifiedjustice research into four types. Basicresearch uncovers the nature and structureof justice; implication research examinesrelationships of justice with organization-relevant phenomena; intervention researchassesses the efficacy of initiatives designedto cultivate justice; and case study researchdescribes anecdotal applications of justiceinitiatives. As he noted, the justice literatureis predominantly comprised of basic andimplication research, while little work hasput into practice of the knowledge thathas been gained from this research. As aresult, very few examples of interventionand case study research exist. The goalof this commentary is to add numbers

Correspondence concerning this article should beaddressed to Russell E. Johnson.E-mail: rjohnson@cas.usf.edu

Address: Department of Psychology, University ofSouth Florida, Tampa, FL 33620

Jeremy Bauer, Kristin Saboe, Eunae Cho, LiuqinYang, and Russell E. Johnson, Department of Psychol-ogy, University of South Florida; H. Tugba Erol andAsli Goncu, Department of Psychology, Middle EastTechnical University; James A. Tan, Department ofManagement, St. Cloud University.

H. Tugba Erol and Asli Goncu were graduateexchange students at the Department of Psychology atthe University of South Florida when this commentarywas written.

to Greenberg’s taxonomy of the justiceliterature in order to determine the currentstate of intervention research as well astrends in this research. To do so, we usedthe aforementioned taxonomy to classifyjustice papers that were published duringthe past 15 years. Our methods and resultsare described below.

We conducted a literature search usingPsycINFO and ABI/INFORM to locate pub-lished articles in academic and trade jour-nals. The keywords ‘‘justice’’ and ‘‘fair-ness’’ were combined with ‘‘organization’’in order to limit the search to organi-zational behavior research. In total, welocated 545 articles that were codedaccording to Greenberg’s hierarchy. Eacharticle was coded by at least two ofthe authors, and any discrepancies wereresolved through discussion with the lastauthor. Articles that focused primarilyon the dimensionality of justice (e.g.,Hauenstein, McGonigle, & Flinder, 2001)or relationships of justice with individualdifferences (e.g., Barsky & Kaplan, 2007)and non organization-specific criteria (e.g.,De Cremer, Cornelis, & Van Hiel, 2008)were coded as basic research. Articlesthat examined relationships between justiceand organizational criteria (e.g., Johnson,

196

Justice research 197

Table 1. Type and Number of Justice Articles Published Between 1994 and 2008

Number of articles published in 3-year intervals

Justice research 1994–1996 1997–1999 2000–2002 2003–2005 2006–2008 Total

Basic 7 10 7 18 17 59Implication 27 43 78 112 151 411Intervention 2 3 4 2 5 16Case Study 6 10 8 14 21 59

Selenta, & Lord, 2006) were coded asimplication research. Articles that reportedempirical findings regarding the imple-mentation of justice-based initiatives (e.g.,Skarlicki & Latham, 1997) were coded asintervention research. Finally, articles thatprovided non-empirical accounts of justice-based initiatives (e.g., Rodrigo & Arenas,2008) or ‘‘best practices’’ guidelines forpromoting fairness in work settings (e.g.,Cropanzano, Bowen, & Gilliland, 2007)were coded as case study research.

The results of this literature search arepresented in Table 1. In line with thethesis that few people appear to do any-thing about justice, intervention researchwas clearly the category with the fewestpublished articles, averaging about one

published article per year between 1994and 2008. In comparison, basic and casestudy research averaged about four arti-cles per year, whereas implication researchdwarfed all three with an average of 27articles per year. Also telling are the trendsin the data. Illustrated in Figure 1 is thenumber of justice articles published in3-year intervals. Overall, there is a gen-eral rise in the number of justice articlespublished during each subsequent inter-val, reflecting increases in the popularityof organizational justice research and inthe number of available outlets for pub-lishing this research. However, interventionresearch does not conform to this upwardtrend—the number of intervention studiesremained consistently low throughout the

1994−1996 1997−1999 2006−20082003−20052000−2002

Basic researchCase study research

Intervention research

25

150

125

100

75

50

Implication research

Num

ber

of a

rtic

les

publ

ishe

d

Figure 1. Number of justice articles published in 3-year intervals.

198 J. Bauer et al.

15-year period. This lack of growth is par-ticularly evident when only the previousdecade is considered (1999–2008). Thenumber of articles published in the sec-ond half (2004–2008) compared with thefirst half (1999–2003) doubled in numberfor basic (from 16 to 33), implication (from124 to 234), and case study (from 15 to 33)research, whereas it did not significantlychange for intervention research (from 5to 6).

The numbers clearly support Green-berg’s stance on the unfortunate state ofpractice-oriented justice research. In fact,the numbers paint a more pessimistic pic-ture given the stagnation of interventionresearch over time despite growth for theother types of justice research. Setting thiscritical issue aside for a moment, some pos-itive signs are discernable. First, findingsfrom the bourgeoning implication researchclearly demonstrate that fairness at work isimportant and that perceptions of fairnesspredict a variety of critical outcomes, suchas job performance and withdrawal (e.g.,Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001). Althoughthere have been relatively few attempts toput this knowledge into practice, there isreason to be confident that practices thatfoster fairness will be favorably receivedand responded to by employees. Second,the rise in case study research is hearteningbecause many of the articles that we locatedwere ones that presented recommendationsand guidelines for implementing justiceinitiatives at work. Although these paperslack empirical insight, they may serve ascatalysts for getting researchers thinkingabout practice-oriented issues and imple-menting and evaluating justice initiatives.Third, our results might actually be under-reporting intervention and practice-orientedresearch given that we limited our literaturesearch to published articles in academicjournals. For example, five chapters inGreenberg and Colquitt’s (2005) Handbook

of Organizational Justice are devoted to jus-tice applications, discussing how justice canbe leveraged to enhance selection, train-ing, and employee health and well-being,among other topics. Thus, there may bea greater proportion of published practice-oriented research when authored books andedited volumes are considered. However,case studies and reviews are no substi-tute for published research that documentsempirical evaluations of justice interven-tions. As suggested by Table 1 and Figure 1,there is an obvious need for such research.

ReferencesBarsky, A., & Kaplan, S. A. (2007). If you feel

bad, it’s unfair: A quantitative synthesis of affectand organizational justice perceptions. Journal ofApplied Psychology, 92, 286–295.

Cohen-Charash, Y., & Spector, P. E. (2001). Therole of justice in organizations: A meta-analysis.Organizational Behavior and Human DecisionProcesses, 86, 278–321.

Cropanzano, R., Bowen, D. E., & Gilliland, S. W.(2007). The management of organizational justice.Academy of Management Perspectives, 21, 34–48.

De Cremer, D., Cornelis, I., & Van Hiel, A. (2008).To whom does voice in groups matter? Effects ofvoice on affect and procedural fairness judgmentsas a function of social dominance orientation. TheJournal of Social Psychology, 148, 61–76.

Greenberg, J. (2009). Everybody talks about organiza-tional justice but nobody does anything about it.Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspec-tives on Science and Practice, 2, 181–195.

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Rodrigo, P., & Arenas, D. (2008). Do employees careabout CSR programs? A typology of employeesaccording to their attitudes. Journal of BusinessEthics, 83, 265–283.

Skarlicki, D. P., & Latham, G. P. (1997). Leadershiptraining in organizational justice to increase citizen-ship behavior within a labor union: A replication.Personnel Psychology, 50, 617–633.