On the Importance of Being Fair -Antecedents and Consequences of Organizational Justice-Empirical Evidence from Japan

From employee selection processes, through performance appraisal and bonus payments, to leadership perceptions: fairness considerations are ubiquitous in various workplace situations and have an impact on organizational behavior and decision-making processes. More specifically, organizational justice perceptions have emerged as important predictors of employee outcomes. Individuals who feel treated unfairly show lower job performance, more counterproductive work behaviors, lower job satisfaction, higher turnover intentions and less commitment to the organization. Although these relationships have been found to hold across different cultures, their magnitude and the contribution of various facets of justice perceptions differ across countries. Thus, in the light of the ongoing globalization and the rising diversification of the labour force, scholars have called for more research on justice antecedents and effects beyond the up till now frequently investigated North America.

This study takes up this call by empirically assessing the notion of organizational justice in Japan, which has been understudied in the past. The author will present the results of a quantitative study conducted during her stay at DIJ in summer 2015 and discuss some managerial implications and directions for further research.

Vyara Radulova is a doctoral candidate in Business Administration at the Institute for Market-based Management (IMM) at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU), Munich, Germany. She graduated from the University of Tuebingen in 2008 and also holds a Master of Business Research from LMU. Before joining IMM, she has worked for several years in the consulting sector and in the financial services industry. Her main research focus is organizational justice from an interdisciplinary, intercultural and intergenerational perspective.