Exchanging One Uncertainty for Another: Justice Variability Negates the Benefits of Justice

Although the importance of organizational justice is without question, our theoretical and empirical knowledge of the justice phenomenon is focused almost exclusively on mean levels of fair treatment, ignoring whether those mean levels are achieved in a consistent or inconsistent manner. This exclusive focus on average levels of justice is not surprising given the implicit assumption in the justice literature that day-to-day variations in justice are glossed over or reinterpreted by individuals. Building upon recent research demonstrating that variability in justice can be as important as average levels of fair treatment, we leverage tenets of uncertainty management theory to provide a conceptual bridge that integrates justice variability into the group engagement model. Our theoretical model proposes justice variability (arising from fluctuations in one's fair treatment over time) negates the very benefits that average levels of interpersonal justice provide. Results of 2, week-long experience sampling studies (one of 111 employees and one of 352 employees nested in 104 groups), used to construct assessments of day-to-day justice variability, largely supported our predictions regarding interactive effects between average levels of justice and justice variability on judgments of pride in the group and, ultimately, cooperative behavior, providing important takeaways for theory, research, and practice.