It is time for justice: How time changes what we know about justice judgments and justice effects

Abstract

Organizational justice is an important determinant of workplace attitudes, decisions, and behaviors. However,understanding workplace fairness requires not only examining what happens but also when it happens, interms of justice events, perceptions, and reactions. We organize and discuss findings from 194 justice articleswith temporal aspects, selected from over a thousand empirical justice articles. By examining temporalaspects, our findings enrich and sometimes challenge the answers to three key questions in the organizationaljustice literature relating to (i) when individuals pay attention to fairness, including specific facets, (ii) howfairness judgments form and evolve, and (iii) how reactions to perceived (in)justice unfold. Our review iden-tifies promising avenues for empirical work and emphasizes the importance of developing temporal theoriesof justice.