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Integrating Organizational Justice and Affect: New Insights, Challenges, and Opportunities

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Abstract

Building on the foundation offered by Cropanzano et al. in their recent book titled Social Justice and the Experience of Emotion (Cropanzano et al. in Social justice and the experience of emotions, Routledge, New York, 2011), we argue that further integrating the literatures on organizational justice and affect has the potential to create important insights that can further our understanding of both literatures. In order to capitalize on these opportunities, however, we argue that justice scholars must increase the clarity of our constructs, address critical gaps in the literature, and question underlying assumptions in the field as well as within the paradigms that have traditionally been adopted to explore justice issues. We propose a number of research avenues that can not only facilitate our understanding of organizational justice by addressing challenges and gaps in the literature, but can also help further integrate the organizational justice and affect literatures. We conclude by discussing methodologies and approaches that can help organizational justice researchers to explore these new research opportunities.

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Acknowledgments

The research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded to the first and second authors.

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  1. School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3C5, Canada

    Annika Hillebrandt & Laurie J. Barclay

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  1. Annika Hillebrandt
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Hillebrandt, A., Barclay, L.J. Integrating Organizational Justice and Affect: New Insights, Challenges, and Opportunities. Soc Just Res 26, 513–531 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-013-0193-z

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