Social Justice Research

, Volume 6, Issue 1, pp 5–18 | Cite as

Fairness and organizational citizenship behavior: What are the connections?

  • Dennis W. Organ
  • Robert H. Moorman
Article

Abstract

A view of organizations as social contracts recognizes self-interests of individuals but does not explain the occurrence of unselfish contributions such as are denoted by “organizational citizenship behavior” (OCB). We propose that the concept of fairness, as applied to systems of relational contracts, provides a high-leverage construct for understanding the fusion of self-interest and self-denial. A review of the empirical literature suggests that fairness, rather than job satisfaction, accounts for OCB; and that the evidence points toward procedural and interactional fairness as both empirically and conceptually critical in the fairness-OCB relationship. However, we explain why distributive fairness still should not be deemphasized.

Key words

legitimacy social control fairness distributive justice procedural justice social accounts 
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Copyright information

© Plenum Publishing Corporation 1993

Authors and Affiliations

  • Dennis W. Organ
    • 1
  • Robert H. Moorman
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of Management, School of BusinessIndiana UniversityBloomington
  2. 2.Department of Management, College of Business and EconomicsWest Virginia UniversityMorgantown

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