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This paper aims to examine the role of social norms of justice and relationalism in salesperson–sales manager relationships, and their role in developing salesforce commitment and turnover.

This study uses structural equation modeling to analyze survey data from 402 business-to-business salespeople.

As discrete foundational norms, distributive, procedural and interactional (interpersonal, informational) justice develop higher-order norms of relationalism, which then reflect on increased commitment and reduced turnover intention of the salesforce. Among the justice norms, interpersonal justice has the strongest impact on relationalism.

The paper shows how each justice norm has a distinct impact in shaping relational norms, and that interpersonal justice has the highest impact. In addition, with enhanced relationalism salespeople become more committed and have lower turnover intentions. Future research could use a longitudinal study, present manager’s side in the model and measure and compare the impact of supervisor- versus organization-focused justice.

To enhance relationalism, and thus in turn increase commitment and decrease turnover intention of salesforce, sales managers should pay attention to the salespeople’s perceptions of justice norms (distributive, procedural, informational and interpersonal justice), especially interpersonal justice, as it has the highest impact on relationalism. The specific ways to enhance justice perceptions are discussed.

This paper is the first to show how each justice norm is unique in its importance to shape the relationship between sales manager and salespeople in a way that increases the quality of relational norms, governing the relational process into a highly committed one. It also shows that among the four justice norms, interactional justice has the highest impact on relationalism. In addition, this is the first study to show that relationalism decreases turnover intention of salespeople.

Organizational justice research traditionally focuses on individuals’ reactions to how they are treated by others. However, little attention has been given to why individuals choose to behave fairly or unfairly in the first place. Our chapter draws on the literature in ethical decision making (Rest, 1986) to identify five distinct factors that influence an individual's decision to treat others fairly. Using this model as a foundation, and drawing on extant research in justice, we explore five different types of roadblocks to fair behavior. We explore the implications of these roadblocks for organizations concerned with creating and maintaining a fair workplace. Finally, we discuss future research suggested by the five factors and some dilemmas, issues, and caveats relevant to the proposed model.

Justice, although well developed in the organisational field, has not been given adequate attention in the area of construction project dispute negotiations. Based on previous studies, the purpose of this paper is to more elaborately discuss whether each dimension of justice (distributive, procedural and interactional) is important for negotiators to cooperate in construction project dispute negotiation and whether their impact was moderated by the completeness of construction contract.

A survey of 164 prime negotiators from different construction projects was conducted. A stepwise multiple regression was employed to test the impact of each dimension of justice, and then a moderated multiple regression model was used to test the moderating effect of contract completeness.

The results indicated that, while distributive justice is related to cooperative behaviours, the impact of procedural justice and interactional justice also have great impact, and even more significantly related to cooperative behaviours. Moreover, while contractual obligatoriness positively moderates the relationship between procedural justice and cooperative behaviours, the term specificity negatively moderates the relationship between procedural and interactional justice and cooperative behaviours.

First, the authors aimed to test the effect of justice on cooperative behaviours in construction dispute negotiations originally, but did not determine whether their relationship is mediated by any other factors. Second, contractual governance was chosen as the moderator; other factors may also influence behaviours in project dispute negotiations.

First, project dispute negotiators should not focus their attention solely on the distribution of the negotiation issues. For a cooperative approach, negotiators should also give strong consideration to whether their offers reflect procedural justice and whether their opponents are being treated fairly. Second, while contractual design may affect the frame surrounding the negotiations to help negotiators achieve an integrated outcome, they should give more attention to certain forms of justice.

In contrast to previous studies, the authors defined all three forms of justice in project dispute negotiations, and by adding all three forms of justice into the model, the authors attempted to investigate whether distributive, procedural and interactional justice were all related to cooperative behaviours in project dispute negotiations and to ascertain the extent to which each form of justice is important. Furthermore, the authors explored variations in the importance of each form of justice in negotiations under different contractual conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to share how the concept of organizational justice could help to explore employee satisfaction with the mystery shopping appraisal system.

The research was conducted at a fast-food restaurant chain located in Russia. Data were collected through an online-questionnaire distributed among all 516 chef-cashiers of the 86 restaurants of the chain located in Saint Petersburg. The questionnaire consisted of 17 closed-ended and one open-ended questions.

Violations of norms of procedural, distributive, and informational justice were identified. The majority of the chief-cashiers thought that the norms of interpersonal justice were met.

The paper also discusses how training and development professionals could use the concept of organizational justice to improve employee satisfaction with a mystery shopping appraisal process. The results collected through the questionnaire can be used in at least two ways: to implement structural changes in the process and to determine and address training needs of three groups of employees.

Perceptions of organizational justice predict employee satisfaction with different aspects of a performance appraisal system. This paper is first to explore how the concept of organizational justice could be useful in evaluating employee satisfaction with such performance appraisal method as mystery shopping.

Purpose – Drawing from social psychology and economics, I propose several mechanisms that may affect ownership stakes among entrepreneurs, including norms of distributive justice, negotiation constraints, and network constraints. The processes are explored empirically for a representative dataset of entrepreneurial teams.

Methodology/Approach – Between 1998 and 2000, entrepreneurial teams were sampled from the U.S. population for the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics. I analyze the distribution of ownership stakes at both the individual and group levels.

Findings – The results suggest that principles of macrojustice, affecting the distribution of resources in teams as a whole, deviate considerably from principles of microjustice, affecting the resources received by individual entrepreneurs. While aggregate inequality increases in teams that have a diverse set of members, the effect is not reducible to discrimination on the basis of individual status characteristics. Instead, the relational demography of teams – characterized in terms of the degree of closeness in network ties and homogeneity in demographic attributes – serves as a uniquely social predictor of between-group variation in economic inequality.

Originality/Value of the paper – Empirical research on inequality has paid little attention to the process of group exchange in organizational start-ups, where entrepreneurs pool resources and skills in return for uncertain or indirect payoffs. This paper offers both theoretical frameworks and empirical analyses to shed light on economic inequality among entrepreneurs.

This empirical study based on a survey in Malaysian organizations was conducted to investigate perceived justice in distribution of organizational resources. It was designed to study the issues such as recruitment, promotion, performance appraisal and distribution of other perks and benefits to the workforce. Assuming value differences in the major ethnic groups in the country, namely Malays, Chinese, Indians, and others, the study however, expected differences in allocation decisions made only in Malay and Chinese majority organizations. The findings indicated that, in general, merit was the most important norm of distribution of organizational resources. This was followed by need of the recipient and equality in terms of merit and need. Contrary to expectations, Malay‐dominated organizations had lower preference for relationship, political connection, power and status, race and gender, factors compared to the Chinese. However, perception of minority ethnic groups differed from the majority on several factors including fairness of the allocation decisions. The implications of the findings are discussed in the light of management practices and organizational culture in Malaysian organization.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate which exchange structure, direct or generalized exchange, better promotes community solidarity in online communities (OCs). Furthermore, it examines the moderating effects of activity intensity on the relationship between exchange structure and community solidarity in order to resolve the conflicts in extant literature.

The research model is developed based on the social exchange theory (SET). It also accommodates social structures as determinants of exchange structure, such as organizational identity orientation (OIO) and distributive justice norms. Data in this study were collected from 376 OCs through an e-mail survey.

Generalized exchange has stronger effects on community solidarity than direct exchange. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in the impact on community solidarity between generalized exchange and direct exchange at high-activity intensity levels, whereas no significant differences were found at low-activity intensity conditions. OIO significantly influences exchange structure. Additionally, equality norm significantly influences generalized exchange, whereas need norm significantly influences direct exchange.

In information systems research, there have not been any attempts to identify the determinants of exchange structure in OCs. Furthermore, only a couple of studies have empirically investigated the relationship between exchange structure and OC solidarity, and yet they found conflicting results. This research makes contributions to an enhancement of theoretical precision of the SET in two ways: by empirically examining the determinants of exchange structure, and by introducing a third variable, activity intensity, as a moderator of the relationship between exchange structure and OC solidarity.

In response to demands and opportunities of the labor market, contemporary employers and employees voluntarily are entering into highly customized agreements regarding nonstandard employment terms. We refer to such idiosyncratic deals as “i-deals,” acknowledging that these arrangements are intended to benefit all parties. Examples of i-deals include an employee with highly coveted skills who is compensated more generously than other employees doing comparable work, and an employee who is granted atypically flexible working hours to accommodate certain personal life demands. The nonstandard nature of i-deals is likely to prompt questions about the fairness of the arrangement among three principal stakeholders – employees who receive the i-deal, managers with whom the i-deal is negotiated, and the co-workers of these employees and managers. We analyze issues of fairness that arise in the relationships among all three pairings of these stakeholders through the lenses of four established forms of organizational justice – distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. Our discussion sheds light on previously unexplored nuances of i-deals and identifies several neglected theoretical issues of organizational justice. In addition to highlighting these conceptual advances, we also discuss methods by which the fairness of i-deals can be promoted.

Purpose – We outline a novel perspective on the role the allocation medium plays in how groups allocate resources fairly. Building upon recent research that demonstrates the unique norms invoked by the resource of money, we propose that what individuals’ judge to be a fair allocation principle among group members systematically varies as a function of whether the resource being distributed is money versus other resources that are allocated within organizations. In light of the existing research, we argue that an egalitarian allocation principle will be understood to be less fair when the norms of the market are invoked by the distribution of a resource that is a medium of exchange (e.g., money) rather than an in-kind good (e.g. food). We conclude by discussing the implications of identifying the unique properties of money for a wide set of literatures.

Approach – In this theoretical paper we review prior research examining contextual variables influencing allocation preferences and attempt to identify the different characteristics of money as a resource that might influence conceptions of fairness.

Value – This chapter offers a theoretical review of the relevant literature and will be of interest to scholars of social justice.