Abstract
This chapter proposes a reflection on justice within organizations. After the description of the “conceptions of organization,” the author proposes an original reading of the theoretical contributions on justice, which uses the aforementioned knowledge alternatives as a frame of reference. The confrontation between these different visions of organizational justice is a fundamental premise in order to face research and managerial implications and to deal with the new challenges that a subject as ancient as justice continues to bring to the fore of today’s organizational phenomena.
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Notes
- 1.
With all due precaution, considering that of most of the pre-Socratic philosophy we have only indirect evidence, it is possible to suppose a link between the modern objectivist view and the thought of the Ionic School started by Thales, and subsequently, with Pythagorean ethics (according to which justice is a matter inherent to objective and immutable mathematical proportions), as well as between subjectivism and the Sophistic, as they considered the ethical sphere to depend upon contingent circumstances in need of a case-by-case evaluation. The idea that fundamental components of reality are not entities persisting in time but rather processes in constant becoming was present too in ancient philosophical thought, as a processual interpretation of reality that can be traced back to Heraclitus’ declaration that everything flows.
- 2.
In this chapter, we choose to adopt Maggi’s tripartite conception of organization rather than other classifications commonly used in organizational studies, exactly because it is rooted in the essential “debate over method” (methodenstreit) developed at the end of the nineteenth century and is considered the highest level of epistemological reflection on social sciences. Other notable classifications are those by Burrell and Morgan (1979) and Hatch (1997). Johnson (2008) applies the modern, symbolist-interpretivist, and postmodern perspectives proposed by Hatch (1997) to classify theoretical orientations on social justice. We adopt “idea” as a synonym of “conception” adhering and paying homage to the famous The Idea of Justice by Sen (2009). “Vision,” “way of seeing,” “perspective,” and “orientation” (all referencing to the “mode of seeing”) may be considered further synonyms.
- 3.
The culturalist studies by Geertz (1973), as well as the analysis of power by Crozier and Friedberg (1977), or Weick’s enactement (1977) and the organization’s sense-making (1995) are some of the most important studies on the actor’s perspective. At the same time, currents of thought such as Organizational Postmodernism (Cooper and Burrell 1988) and Critical Management Studies (Alvesson and Willmott 1992) can be considered oriented toward the same perspective.
- 4.
- 5.
“There is an almost equal division of the work and the responsibility between the management and the workmen. The management take over all work for which they are better fitted than the workmen, while in the past almost all of the work and the greater part of the responsibility were thrown upon the men” (Taylor 1911, p. 37).
- 6.
Distinguishing the ethical predisposition, Cropanzano and Stein (2009, p. 208) stated that “formalism and utilitarianism bear an interesting parallel to procedural and distributive justice, respectively.” Formalism is means-oriented and seems similar to procedural justice; utilitarianism emphasizes outcomes and appears closer to distributive justice.
- 7.
These assumptions gave birth to aligning the employers’ expectations with those of the workers, as shown by Roethlisberger (1941).
- 8.
Within the organizational justice literature, Organizational Justice Theory became a term of common use, most often indicating the specific approach that views justice as an overarching concept that encompasses distributive, procedural, and interactional dimensions. A significant contribution came from Greenberg’s works (1987, 1990).
- 9.
The different theoretical models that account for the motivation that could “sensitize” people to the fairness of their working environment are complementary to the development of the OJT empirical studies. A synthesis of these perspectives is found in Cropanzano, Byrne et al. (2001) and Cropanzano, Rupp et al. (2001).
- 10.
Since the origin of OJT, its founders have distanced themselves from the prescriptive approach to justice typical of philosophy and defined their approach as descriptive, operating without an apriori definition of justice and focusing on the perception of justice (Greenberg and Bies 1992). In the OJT, justice is approached as an empirical and perceived notion: “Something is ‘fair’ or ‘just’ not because it should be so but because some person or persons believe it to be” (Cropanzano et al. 2005, p. 63). We criticize this position below.
- 11.
The distinction between the distributive, procedural, and interactional dimensions of justice is surely one of the founding elements of the OJT perspective. Alternatively, the notion of overall justice has been recently proposed (Ambrose et al. 2015).
- 12.
- 13.
As happens when its validity is contested, as in Barclay and Whiteside (2011).
- 14.
“As researchers, our efforts have been primarily dedicated to the precise measurement of ‘perceptions’ and ‘judgements’ as if we are ‘intuitive philosopher’ attempting to define objective concepts of justice” (Bies 1987, p. 90) and the focus shifts on subjective reactions to a given stimulus, i.e., on how people react to a given outcome, procedures, or interpersonal interaction (Cropanzano et al. 2005).
- 15.
To underline again the concept, we can say that answering a “standard” questionnaire, perceptions—built through a single lived experience—are reified and translated in the record of a supposedly objective reality.
- 16.
Even if Simon (1976) cannot be considered a theorist of the open systems school, his ideas have been seminal in the reflection on procedural rationality and legitimacy.
- 17.
Gadamer (1977, p. 131) wrote that “the phenomenological method leads the philosopher to see phenomena such as the idea of justice or punishment […] as endowed with their own meaning.”
- 18.
According to Finkel (1995, p. 2), “there are two types of law (…) ‘the law on the book (…) that legislators enact (…) and another law, although ‘law’ may be too lofty or lowly a term to describe it: I call it the ‘commonsense justice’ and reflect what ordinary people think is just and fair.”
- 19.
Mead (1934, p. 379) stated that “the universality of our judgments […] is a universality that arises from the fact that we take the attitude of the entire community, of all rational beings. […] Sociality gives the universality of ethical judgments and lies back of the popular statement that the voice of all is the universal voice.”
- 20.
“The positivist alternative of reducing people to research ‘objects’ and their feelings to numerical descriptions and statistical generalizations, was inconsonant with the aims of the research, and may have alienated participants, discouraged trust, and resulted in superficial and/or inaccurate data” (Bisman and Highfield 2012, p. 7).
- 21.
In our opinion, these formulations are compatible with the actor perspective and the conception of organization as a system emerging from subjective behaviors, and their fundamental reference is Lakoff and Johnson (1980).
- 22.
Based on the consolidated articulation of distributive, procedural, and interactional dimensions (and operated prevalently through instruments of quantitative investigation as the one proposed by Niehoff and Moorman, 1993), as stated before.
- 23.
An example of this tension is in Wooten and White (1999, p. 16): “Justice theory also relates to constructivism (…) in that application of justice concepts to an organizational intervention creates the architecture for a socially constructed organizational reality (i.e. openness, trust, commitment),” or in Alvesson and Deetz (2000, p. 35): “Conflicts among different interests may be reclaimed, openly discussed, and resolved with fairness and justice. The research aims at producing dissensus and providing forums for, and model of, discussion to aid in the building of more open consensus. (…) People can and should act on these conditions through improved understanding as well as access to communication forums.”
- 24.
Sandberg et al. (2015) recognize the trend of a “process turn” in management and organization studies.
- 25.
For example, in psychology, motivational theories are distinguished based on the process of content theories. The link between these theories and the study of organizational justice has been proposed by Cropanzano, Rupp et al. (2001).
- 26.
As explained by Maggi, “the action process does not coincide with the individual, with his conduct, behavior or activity” (2011, p. 73).
- 27.
Weber notoriously distinguished instrumental- and value-rationality; the last refers to aims and goals that come from the actor’s subjective source of values, such as an ethical system. Nonetheless, the relation between the two forms of rationality is embodied in the selection of means, and this distinction has been often subject to criticisms.
- 28.
Sen’s approach has been used in several studies that include the merely organizational level. It is not possible to discuss here the extensive literature, and we have to refer back to the interesting Julhe (2016) as well as Subramanian et al. (2013). For all these studies, the objective is to stimulate the application of Sen’s framework within the organizational field in a manner that is often different from the processual interpretation proposed here.
- 29.
Sen’s work has often been interpreted as a political theory, belonging to the field of social justice and socio-economic development, notwithstanding that the author himself has stated on various occasions that his work is neither a systematic theory of justice nor confined to a macro-level analysis. While referring predominantly to his work it must not be forgotten that Sen’s reflection upon freedom, development, and justice followed a long and complex path.
- 30.
In his use of the notion of intentional and limited rationality, Sen makes explicit reference to Simon (see Sen 2009, p. 108).
- 31.
It is interesting to remark that a lot of discussion was concerned with the hypothesis of the processual view of reality proposed by Aristotle and its influence on Sen and Nussbaum (2011).
- 32.
We discussed a more in-depth analysis of Sen’s conception of justice from a processual perspective in Neri (2018).
- 33.
The point is to identify the empirical solutions more adequately (and also in a more efficient and controllable way) to analyze the process. The research can be based upon methods of either quantitative or qualitative nature, as long as it is coherently oriented according to the principles outlined above.
- 34.
The graphic representations of CA often use “arrows” that, by linking elements (resources, conversion factors, capabilities, choices, and functionings), point out the tendency toward a monodirectional, simplistic orientation that is deterministic in nature.
- 35.
The explicit reference is Habermas (1994), who says inspiration, confrontation, dialogue, and comparison make it possible to generate justice alongside an expression of justice. They can, at the same time, enable discussion, influence the contents of the norms as well as the structure of institutions, and constitute a principle that is neither procedural nor substantial. In organizational terms, this approach is concretized substantially in legitimizing “never-ending” negotiating dynamics within companies.
- 36.
The term “empowering justice” has been proposed in a way different from what we are using here, particularly in association with “restorative justice” in the field of gender studies (see Riley 2017).
- 37.
Not to be intended as “of secondary importance” or as a temporal consequence.
- 38.
We are referring to the potential limits of the processual interpretation of justice we have outlined referring to Sen’s CA and not to “intrinsic” limits of the CA itself, extensively discussed in the scientific literature.
- 39.
An action is always socially oriented, both when carried out by a single individual or by a group. For a further discussion, see Maggi (2011).
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Neri, M. (2022). Ideas of Organization and Ideas of Justice. In: Faldetta, G., Mollona, E., Pellegrini, M.M. (eds) Philosophy and Business Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97106-9_8
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