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Purpose – We offer a view of interpersonal justice climate in which the benefits of fair treatment might be stronger within some groups versus others, depending on characteristics of the supervisor, the group, and the organization in which the group is embedded. We further identify a potential silver lining that may be associated with low interpersonal justice climate. Overall, our intent of this chapter is to offer a more nuanced view of the topic to enhance our understanding of interpersonal justice within groups.

Design/methodology/approach – We review literature on status to support our propositions.

Findings – We examine how a supervisor's idiosyncrasy credits, a group's status, and an organization's emphasis on hierarchy will moderate the relationship between unfair interpersonal treatment from a supervisor and the group's perceived interpersonal justice climate. Also, we suggest that low levels of interpersonal justice climate may actually lead to greater affiliation among group members and ultimately enhance perceptions of group cohesion.

Originality/value – Previous literature on justice climate has largely focused on procedural justice, whereas generally ignoring interpersonal exchanges between a group and its supervisor. This chapter contributes to research on justice at the group level by examining the potential moderating effects of status on the generation of interpersonal justice climate. Further, and in contrast to previous research, we offer a potential positive outcome that may result from low interpersonal justice climate.

The relationship between stakeholders and organizations has been gaining more focus in strategic organizational management. The scenario of increased accountability required by society and by the competitive business environment itself demands ethical, fair, and sustainable practices from companies. In this sense, effective and fair stakeholder management becomes relevant. Thus, stakeholder theory proves to be a valid theoretical perspective for this challenge. In its conceptualization, stakeholder theory has pointed out different issues for strategic management practices, and how to treat the stakeholder fairly has been one of the concerns of the proponents of the theory (Bosse, Phillips, & Harrison, 2009). In this regard, principles of organizational justice have been incorporated into stakeholder management models. The authors argue that organizational justice, including its basic dimensions of distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice, can positively impact the bottom line of organizations through synergy in value creation and by encouraging reciprocal behavior between the firm and stakeholders.

There has been considerable research into different approaches to workplace dispute resolution in the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and to a lesser extent other English-speaking countries. This chapter considers what guidance this research can provide into the practical implications of these different approaches.

One frame of reference for evaluating different approaches to workplace dispute resolution is provided by Budd’s three objectives of the employment relationship: equity, voice and efficiency.

While dispute resolution procedures can contribute to all three objectives, there can be negative consequences for employees who make use of formal workplace dispute resolution procedures. It is desirable that workplace disputes be resolved quickly and informally.

Such an approach places considerable weight on the skills of line managers. Unfortunately, there is evidence of a preference among line managers to replace pragmatic approaches to conflict resolution with a rigid adherence to process and procedure. This is partly due to a lack of skills, but is often compounded by inadequate support from senior management.

While it is important for organisations to have formal workplace dispute resolution procedures, the focus should be on line managers. The role of human resources staff and senior management should primarily be to monitor the dispute resolution system, ensure that it is operating effectively and deal with any emerging issues. They should ensure appropriate training is in place and provide appropriate support to line managers. Only when line managers have failed to resolve disputes should they become directly involved.

In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this chapter, we review criticisms of traditional PM practices that have been mentioned by journalists and practitioners and we consider the solutions that they have presented for addressing these concerns. We then consider these problems and solutions within the context of extant scholarly research and identify (a) what organizations should do going forward to improve PM practices (i.e., focus on feedback processes, ensure accountability throughout the PM system, and align the PM system with organizational strategy) and (b) what scholars should focus research attention on (i.e., technology, strategic alignment, and peer-to-peer accountability) in order to reduce the science-practice gap in this domain.

Prior research finds that auditors can be distinctively committed to multiple workplace targets (e.g., their audit firm, supervisors, profession, and clients). This study investigates an underexamined target of auditor commitment – engagement teams. Given that these teams are responsible for performing key audit tasks for clients and external stakeholders, we argue that auditors' commitment to their team can affect auditor behavior. Using a sample of 121 auditors, our results indicate that quality social exchange relationships between individual auditors and their engagement teams, activated by perceptions of team fairness, and reciprocated with team commitment, are associated with beneficial group-oriented behavior. Specifically, we posit and find that perceived team fairness predicts perceived team support, perceived team support predicts team commitment, and team commitment predicts citizenship behavior directed toward the engagement team (e.g., helping the team by taking on extra responsibilities during an audit). We also find that the social exchange proxies of perceived team support and team commitment sequentially mediate the positive effect of perceived team fairness on team citizenship behavior, and that team commitment is a stronger predictor of team citizenship behavior than auditors' commitment to their firm.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of psychological climate perceptions on the employee’s intent to comply with the organization’s whistle-blower policies. This study also endeavors to add evidence to the debate concerning the effectiveness of implementing anti-retaliation measures to improve whistle-blowing behavior. Survey results show that psychological climate perceptions of fairness and commitment to the organization influence the employee’s attitude toward whistle-blower policies, perception of how important others within the organization view the act of whistle-blowing and the employee’s intent to blow the whistle. The results of this study also suggest that anti-retaliation measures used by government policy makers and organizations to improve whistle-blowing behavior may not be an effective strategy. This manuscript discusses the implications of the findings on whistle-blowing behavior and the debate concerning anti-retaliation measures.

In their chapter, Rupp, Bashshur, and Liao (this volume) have made an impressive contribution to the literature on multi-level justice. These authors have provided both a precise conceptual definition of justice climate and a measurement strategy (referent shift) that will greatly smooth the progress of future empirical inquiry. The goal of this commentary is to expand these important ideas by moving in two directions. First, we discuss what it means to be an individual when justice is experienced as a member of a team. Toward this end, we describe research on social identity theory and social categorization theory, emphasizing how these paradigms could further increase our knowledge. Second, we discuss two new manifestations of multi-level justice that have hitherto been neglected: intraunit justice (group perceptions regarding how team members generally treat one another) and interunit justice (perceptions regarding the way one group treats another). All of these multi-level justice concepts are organized into a new taxonomy.

This chapter proposes a research agenda for the study of large law firm culture and explains how the research would contribute to both legal ethics and organizational theory. It focuses on two sets of questions that are uniquely suited to investigation in large law firms. First: what is the significance of organizational culture, relative to that of professional networks and subgroups? To what extent does organizational membership shape lawyers’ understandings about “how things are done”? Second: how is organizational culture sustained? What are the mechanisms of cultural integration in volatile, multioffice firms? The chapter draws on a pilot study of law firm culture in one 500-lawyer firm.

This chapter discusses why employees keep their knowledge to themselves. Despite managers’ best efforts, many employees tend to hoard knowledge or are reluctant to share their expertise with coworkers or managers. Although many firms have introduced specialized initiatives to encourage a broader dissemination of ideas and knowledge among organizational members, these initiatives often fail. This chapter provides reasons as to why this is so. Instead of focusing on why individuals might share their knowledge, however, we explain why individuals keep their knowledge to themselves. Multiple perspectives are offered, including social exchange, norms of secrecy, and territorial behaviors.