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To highlight the advances and limitations in the study of organizational justice as reflected by the articles in this issue, the field is characterized as being in its intellectual adolescence. Following this analogy, some signs of scientific maturity are noted. Among these are (a) increased attention to the connections between organizational justice and various organizational processes, (b) expanded efforts toward conceptual refinement, and (c) greater reliance on research conducted in natural settings. At the same time, the adolescent state of the field is also marked by its intellectual awkwardness and immaturity. Indications of this include (a) the absence of guiding theory, (b) an underdeveloped research agenda, and (c) an overreliance on the use of ad hoc measurements. Based on these limitations, suggestions are made for ways of nurturing the field's development. The article concludes with an optimistic vision of tomorrow's field of organizational justice.

This article reviews the existing research and theory on procedural justice and considers how it may be applied to the study of organizational behavior. It begins by distinguishing between the concepts of distributive justice and procedural justice and noting the historical contexts within which they emerged. Existing conceptual contributions and the research inspired by them are reviewed. The few existing studies applying procedural justice notions to organizational contexts are summarized, and the contributions of the articles to the present issue of this journal are reviewed relative to these efforts. The article closes by discussing the dual benefits of studying procedural justice in organizations: the enhanced understanding of the concept of justice and the behavior of people in organizations.

One-hundred-seventeen college students performed a task on which they received a negative, neutral, or positive performance evaluation. The evaluations were made by the experimenter who (i) kept a diary documenting subjects' performance, (ii) observed their performance but did not keep a diary, or (iii) made the evaluation on no apparent basis (control). It was found that both the evaluation procedure and the evaluation outcome itself were perceived as being fairer when diaries were used as the basis for making evaluations relative to either subjects in the observation procedure group or the control group. The practical implications of these findings for performance appraisals are considered along with the implications for conceptual work on procedural justice.