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With an eye toward promoting applications of organizational justice, I respond to commentaries on my focal article (Greenberg, 2009a). Specifically, I challenge questionable claims regarding (a) characterization of applied research, (b) why we don't conduct more applied justice research, (c) moral versus instrumental rationales for promoting justice, (d) the validity of intervention studies, and (e) interpretations of Lewin's classic observation about the practical value of theory. I also identify and comment upon two suggestions for promoting applied justice research: (a) promoting cooperation between researchers and practitioners and (b) conducting comprehensive, integrative interventions.

Most organizational justice studies focus primarily on theoretical issues and identify implications for practice only in passing. I advocate moving to the next step by testing such implications in theory-based studies that implement and assess the impact of interventions designed to promote organizational justice. Research that promotes organizational justice promises to benefit both organizations and their employees, and may be considered morally appropriate. Although usually not considered in this connection, theory-based application studies also promise to shed light on the theories from which they are derived. Despite these benefits, there are several reasons why such investigations are conducted only rarely. First, because managers tend to be unaware of justice-related problems, they are unlikely to accede to researchers’ requests to address them in research. Second, many researchers erroneously believe that studies assessing ways of improving conditions in organizations lack scientific objectivity. Third, scholarly values favor research that addresses theoretical issues and that eschew practical applications. Finally, the challenges of conducting intervention studies are inclined to be formidable, and these may deter researchers from undertaking such efforts.

This special issue showcases papers by four sets of authors who share opinions about specific things that should be done for the field of organizational psychology to prosper. To begin, Lefkowitz argues that practitioners should embrace a more humanistic set of values. Second, Cascio suggests that the field's success requires integrating the contributions of scientists and practitioners. Third, Edwards identifies 10 key methodological limitations that must be overcome in organizational psychology research. Finally, Gelfand and her associates opine that to prosper, the field's theories and research must embrace a more global perspective. Concluding, Porter comments on what these papers suggest about the present status of the field and offers opinions on where the field appears to be—and should be—going. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We systematically analyze the role of social comparison processes in organizations. Specifically, we describe how social comparison processes have been used to explain six key areas of organizational inquiry: (1) organizational justice, (2) performance appraisal, (3) virtual work environments, (4) affective behavior in the workplace, (5) stress, and (6) leadership. Additionally, we describe how unique contextual factors in organizations offer new insight into two widely studied sub-processes of social comparison, acquiring social information and thinking about that information. Our analyses underscore the merit of integrating organizational phenomena and social comparison processes in future research and theory.

The Ohio State University Job layoffs have long been a matter of great concern to organizational scholars and practitioners. Most of the theoretical, empirical, and applied work on layoffs has focused on the antecedents of layoffs or the consequences of layoffs for those people who have been laid off. This chapter describes some of the author's theory and research on the effects of layoffs on those who remain. It presents a conceptualization derived from the theory and research on justice in interpersonal relationships, especially as they apply to organizational settings. The chapter explores some forms of justice in the layoff process, such as distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice. The chapter includes four studies: the first three were performed under controlled laboratory conditions, in which student subjects observed another subject being "laid off" from a paid task and the fourth study was conducted in a naturalistic setting in which actual layoffs occurred in branches of a retail company.

Idiosyncratic employment arrangements (i-deals) stand to benefit the individual employee as well as his or her employer. However, unless certain conditions apply, coworkers may respond negatively to these arrangements. We distinguish functional i-deals from their dysfunctional counterparts and highlight evidence of i-deals in previous organizational research. We develop propositions specifying both how ideals are formed and how they impact workers and coworkers. Finally, we outline the implications i-deals have for research and for managing contemporary employment relationships.

Both laboratory and field experiments have limitations that likely account for the recent decline in their usage among organizational researchers. In this article, we introduce situated experiments as an experimental approach that optimizes the strengths of both laboratory and field experiments in organizational research while mitigating the weaknesses of each. We highlight four recently published studies using situated experiments. Drawing on these examples, we illustrate how the proper use of situated experiments can minimize threats to internal validity and ensure the ethical treatment of research participants.

Fairness perceptions and sales performance measures were collected from salespersons working originally under a salary-only pay system and subsequently under a salary-plus-commission pay system (i.e., a pay-for-performance plan). Perceptions of organizational fairness were enhanced by the use of a formal pay-for-performance system, although perceptions of individual managers' fairness were reduced by such a plan. Consistent with correspondent inference theory, the formal pay-for-performance pay plan discouraged respondents from crediting their supervisors with the fairness of their actions. The plan also brought significant performance decrements among those who believed they were not being paid for their performance (despite the fact that they were supposed to be). The limitations of mandated fair organizational practices are discussed.

Individual predispositions toward time urgency were assessed among 118 emergency room nurses and 145 small-town librarians. Following from research on person–job fit, according to which people perform better when the demands of the situation match their individual characteristics than when these are mismatched, it was hypothesized that nurses (who typically face high time-urgent demands) would perform better when they scored high in time urgency, and that librarians (who typically face low time-urgent demands) would perform better when they scored low in time urgency. The results, based on a standardized measure of task performance, were precisely as expected. The practical ramifications of these findings are discussed along with the implications for research on person–job fit.

Customer service representatives ( N =270) were underpaid for completing an hour-long questionnaire after working hours. They were told that the payment came either from the company itself or from a group of individual managers. Participants were given an opportunity to steal by being allowed to take their payment from a bowl of pennies under conditions in which they believed that the actual amount they took could not be detected. Employees who had attained Kohlberg's conventional level of moral development refrained from stealing money when they worked in an office that had an ethics program in place. However, those at the preconventional level of development and who worked at an office without an ethics program stole from their employers. By contrast, participants who believed that the money came from individual managers refrained from stealing under any conditions. These results are explained in terms of the person-by-situation interactionist approach to ethical behavior. Their practical implications are discussed as well.

Two studies using different methods examined the effects of people's status in a social encounter, the favorability of the outcome of the encounter, and the procedural fairness of the other party d...

A central premise of the procedural justice literature—based on studies conducted mainly in the United States—is that people react unfavorably when they have little voice in a decision-making process. The studies reported here evaluated whether the magnitude of voice effects varies across cultures. As predicted, Studies 1–3 showed that the tendency for people to respond less favorably (i.e., with lower organizational commitment) to lower levels of voice was greater in low power distance cultures (United States and Germany) than in high power distance cultures (People's Republic of China, Mexico, and Hong Kong). And in a single cultural setting, Study 4 found a similar interactive effect of voice and people's power distance beliefs on employees' work attitudes and job performance. Theoretical implications for the justice and cross-cultural literatures are discussed, as are practical implications and suggestions for future research.

Because justice is inherently norm‐based, understanding people's perceptions of fairness in organizations requires considering the prevailing cultural standards in which those organizations operate. Social scien‐tists study cross‐cultural differences in justice primarily to comprehend the connection between culture and fairness, providing insight into the different meanings of justice around the world, and to assess the generalizability of culture‐bound organizational justice phenomena. The present studies focus on assessing generalizability, but fall short of doing so optimally because they suffer from several conceptual and methodo‐logical problems that are endemic in this literature. Cross‐cultural research suggests that although concerns about justice may be universal, operationalization of justice standards is highly particularistic. Finally, I address Gallon's Problem as it pertains to justice—that is, how observed connections between culture and justice perceptions may be inflated spuriously because of inevitable cultural diffusion. In closing, I note that the present research appears to be aimed more squarely at theory‐development rather than theory‐testing, which is appropriate, given the current state of the literature.

I argue that organizational researchers and theorists should address seven important issues inspired by Cropanzano et al.'s (2001) “what, why, and how” questions about organizational justice. Specifically, our collective justice agenda should examine the following questions: (1) What is the conceptual status of interactional justice? (2) How are reactions to injustice related to the source of injustice? (3) Are the motives underlying justice behavior really distinct? (4) What is the role of control in creating justice? (5) How are referent others selected? (6) How are “would, could, and should” judgments interrelated? and (7) Is justice a cause or consequence of social motives?

Structured interviews with 996 recently fired or laid-off workers provided data for analyses of the situational and psychological antecedents of both thinking about filing a wrongful-termination claim and actually filing such a claim. Potential antecedents were drawn from relational theories of organizational justice, economic theories about claiming, and sociolegal studies of claiming in other contexts. Wrongful-termination claims were most strongly correlated with the way workers felt they had been treated at the time of termination and with their expected winnings from such a claim. Structural equation model analyses of panel data from follow-up interviews with 163 respondents four months later showed that the psychological variables were, in fact, causal antecedents rather than consequences of claiming thoughts and actions. These findings support relational models of organizational justice and lead to practical suggestions for managing the termination process so as to avoid wrongful-termination suits.

Contents: Preface. Part I: Introduction. J.A. Colquitt, J. Greenberg, C.P. Zapata-Phelan, What Is Organizational Justice? A Historical Overview of the Field. Part II: Construct Validity Issues. M.L. Ambrose, A. Arnaud, Are Procedural Justice and Distributive Justice Conceptually Distinct? R.J. Bies, Are Procedural Justice and Interactional Justice Conceptually Distinct? J.A. Colquitt, J.C. Shaw, How Should Organizational Justice Be Measured? Part III: The Justice Judgment Process. D.L. Shapiro, J.M. Brett, What Is the Role of Control in Organizational Justice? J.Z. Gillespie, J. Greenberg, Are the Goals of Organizational Justice Self-Interested? R. Folger, R. Cropanzano, B. Goldman, What Is the Relationship Between Justice and Morality? R.J. Lewicki, C. Wiethoff, E.C. Tomlinson, What Is the Role of Trust in Organizational Justice? Part IV: Justice Effects. K. Van den Bos, What Is Responsible for the Fair Process Effect? D.E. Conlon, C.J. Meyer, J.M. Nowakowski, How Does Organizational Justice Affect Performance, Withdrawal, and Counterproductive Behavior? S.L. Blader, T.R. Tyler, How Can Theories of Organizational Justice Explain the Effects of Fairness? R.H. Moorman, Z.S. Byrne, How Does Organizational Justice Affect Organizational Citizenship Behavior? Part V: Justice Applications. R. Vermunt, H. Steensma, How Can Justice Be Used to Manage Stress in Organizations? S.W. Gilliland, J.M.S. Hale, How Can Justice Be Used to Improve Employee Selection Practices? E.F. Stone-Romero, D.L. Stone, How Do Organizational Justice Concepts Relate to Discrimination and Prejudice? D.R. Bobocel, A. Zdaniuk, How Can Explanations Be Used to Foster Organizational Justice? D.P. Skarlicki, G.P. Latham, How Can Training Be Used to Foster Organizational Justice? Part VI: Generalizability Issues. J. Brockner, B. Wiesenfeld, How, When, and Why Does Outcome Favorability Interact With Procedural Fairness? K. Leung, How Generalizable Are Justice Effects Across Cultures? Part VII: Integration. J.A. Colquitt, J. Greenberg, B.A. Scott, Organizational Justice: Where Do We Stand?

Contents: E.A. Fleishman, J.N. Cleveland, Series Foreword. Preface. Part I:Individual Processes. S.G. Barsade, A.P. Brief, S.E. Spataro, The Affective Revolution in Organizational Behavior: The Emergence of a Paradigm. J.C. Quick, C.L. Cooper, D.L. Nelson, J.D. Quick, J.H. Gavin, Stress, Health, and Well-Being at Work. D. Eden, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in Organizations. Part II:Interpersonal Processes. B.R. Ragins, J.A. Gonzalez, Understanding Diversity in Organizations: Getting a Grip on a Slippery Construct. J.A. Colquitt, J. Greenberg, Organizational Justice: A Fair Assessment of the State of Literature. G.R. Ferris, F.R. Blass, C. Douglas, R.W. Kolodinsky, D.C. Treadway, Personal Reputation in Organizations. R.J. Bennett, S.L. Robinson, The Past, Present, and Future of Workplace Deviance Research. K.T. Dirks, J.M. Parks, Conflicting Stories: The State of the Science of Conflict. Part III:Cross-Level Themes. J.R. Edwards, Construct Validation in Organizational Behavior Research. H. Aguinis, C.A. Henle, The Search for Universals in Cross-Cultural Organizational Behavior. Part IV:Commentary. E.A. Locke, Good Definitions: The Epistemological Foundation of Scientific Progress.

Three experiments were conducted to examine subjects’ impressions of the performance of employees believed to be new to their jobs. Experiment 1 was a laboratory experiment in which 88 undergraduate students evaluated the performance of an instructor giving a lecture. Experiment 2 was a naturalistic field experiment in which 118 shoppers at a discount store evaluated the performance of the employees who bagged their orders. Finally, Experiment 3 was a field experiment in which 69 people responding to a telephone survey evaluated the performance of the interviewer. In all three experiments, participants who were not adversely affected by the workers’ job performance evaluated the workers more highly when they were believed to be new than when they had no knowledge of workers’ experience. In this case, the positive impressions sought by identifying one's newness were observed. These effects were also found among subjects rating workers who performed their jobs well despite their new status, providing evidence of an augmentation effect. However, subjects who were adversely affected by the workers’ actions evaluated workers lower when they were believed to be new than when they had no knowledge of workers’ experience. As such, the desired impression management effects backfired. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.