Human Resource Development

Fairness in the workplace is tied in with equitable and unbiased treatment which is very important to maintain a healthy work environment. Many discrimination suits and grievances arise from employee’s perception of unfair treatment. The study of procedural and interactional justice has come to forefront in academia because of their correlation with favorable work attitudes and higher job performance. The article Using Social Exchange Theory to Distinguish Procedural from Interactional Justice differentiates the importance and role of procedural and interactional justice in the workplace. The authors’ state procedural justice is normally associated with the relationship between the employee and the organization while interactional justice is the relationship between the employee and immediate supervisor. The predictions of the authors were field tested on 107 employees and supervisors. The purpose of the study is to determine if procedural justice will be associated with attitudes toward organizational decision makers and if interactional justice will be associated with an employee’s immediate supervisor. The researchers believe the outcome of the study will confirm their hypothesis on what each justice is associated with. First, we need to understand the foundation of social exchange theory. According to Miles (2012) “the theory assumes that self-interested parties transact or exchange with self-interested others in order to accomplish outcomes that neither could achieve on his or her own.” People collaborate with other people to get the job done that they could not otherwise do on their own and the interaction of the relationship is fundamental to success. Working in exchange for money or excelling for a reward are basic examples of social exchange theory. There are more intrinsic motivators such as respect, status, knowledge and friendship. Based on prior research social approval and respect are the most important outcomes for each of the individuals involved in the transaction. Procedural justice refers to the fairness of the process by which a decision is made at the organizational level. Procedures are created by the organization therefore it measures the employee-organization relationship. Procedural justice measures the organization’s fair hiring practices or employee opportunities to make recommendations or file a grievance. Interactional justice refers to the quality of the interpersonal relationship at the individual level normally between the employee and their immediate supervisor. Procedural justice refers to the formal process of an organization and interactional justice refers to the social aspects of the relationships. The survey was administered to 107 supervisor-subordinate employees at a university in the Rocky Mountain region. The survey was administered on different shifts to supervisors and employees to maintain confidentiality. The results may be skewed because 70% are males and 83% were non-Hispanic Whites which excludes minorities and females. Distributive justice was used as a control variable and the study measured trust in upper management, job satisfaction, feedback satisfaction and other forms of satisfaction. The results did reveal what was hypothesized which is that procedural justice is associated with trust in upper management and interactional justice is associated with the relationship and treatment received from their immediate supervisor. What was significant about the results that did not coincide with the hypothesis is that interactional justice was related to job satisfaction more so than procedural justice. The researchers initially inferred that procedural justice would have a higher correlation to job satisfaction. What this means for an employee is they may be working for a great company but have a poor manager which will change their perception of the company. The study was inconclusive with the correlation between interactional fairness and performance because the researchers could not assess the validity of performance ratings. However, there is prior conclusive research showing the correlation between fair performance reviews and higher performance and when not done properly can be counterproductive. The application of the results of this research can be applied by organizations through the creation of fair and equitable employee processes. The study concludes organizations should train managers on how to perform fair performance appraisal and create objective and fair appraisal systems at the procedural level. Although the study concluded the effects of procedural and interactional justice vary at different levels they are still interdependent because interactional justice is a subset of procedural justice. Supervisors who treat employees with the right interactional justice create a high quality leader-member exchange. What this means to us is a company is nothing or will fail if it has unsatisfied employees because of poor managers no matter how great the company is or how great its processes are. In this respect it is very important for organizations to promote managers willing to learn and have good interactional justice to promote employee satisfaction and greater performance.
Cropanzano, R., Prehar, C. A., & Chen, P. Y. (2002). Using Social Exchange Theory to Distinguish Procedural from Interactional Justice. Group and Organizational Management, 324-351.
Miles, J. A. (2012). Management and Organization Theory. In Social Exchange Theory (pp. 273-279). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.