Thinking Critically about Justice Judgments

In his commentary on Cropanzano et al. (2001), the author notes that their literature review is thorough and well done. He centers his commentary around four main points. First, he argues that justice research as reviewed by Cropanzano et al. is not as focused on answering broad questions about organizational psychology as much as it should be. Second, he asserts that the particular justice theories described by Cropanzano et al. may not be well suited for integration, and he takes issue with the use of an information processing continuum as a vehicle for integration. Third, he suggests that the common types of organizational justice reviewed by Cropanzano et al. (i.e., distributive, procedural, interactional) may not differ very much among themselves. Finally, he proposes that to truly examine the question of why justice matters to employees, researchers need to step back and examine justice in light of how organizations operate and how employees and supervisors function, think, and interact.