Question

What is organizational justice? How does it related to performance appraisal?

Answer 1

Organizational justice is the perception of employees about fairness in their workplace or within their organization. It is the concept which focuses on how the employees judge the behavior of the organization and how this behavior is related to employees' attitudes and behaviors regarding the organization. Organizational justice is of three types - distributive, procedural, and interactional.

Distributive justice - It refers to the fairness of the outcomes of a particular decision. Employees believe that outcomes are equitable.

Procedural justice - It refers to the fairness of decision making or process that leads to the outcomes. Employees perceive procedural justice when they feel they can voice their opinion regarding a process or decision. It is concerned with the set of policies that are used to make allocation decisions.

Interactional justice - It deals with the fairness of decision- making treatment and communication. It is the fairness of interpersonal treatment that one receives at the hands of an authority figure during the implementation of organizational process and distribution of outcomes.

The relation between organizational justice and performance appraisal -

Performance appraisal is one of the critical human resource practices administered in managing organizations with the aim of identifying, rewarding and disciplining employees according to the performance. The appraisals are administred to identify errors, to make decisive judgments towards employees and to foster growth in the organization. It is necessary for an organization to provide employees with organizational justice in order to reap the positive outcomes of well-performing employees. Organizational justice tends to inspire feelings of loyalty to one's team or group and legitimize the authority of leaders. It also tends to have fair, honest and transparent treatment from the organization. It promotes an atmosphere of trust and confidence. Thus with the presence of the organizational justice, there will be increased job performance and job satisfaction. Therefore according to organizational justice, the efficacy of the appraisal system depends upon the perception of fairness related to it.