Sustaining Fair Organization

Abstract

Most organizational justice research investigates employees’ perceptions of fairness with respect to particular policies, procedures, and/or interactions. This article proposes an alternative approach to justice concerns and describes an interpretive research project where attention focused on the verbal practices of five human resource (HR) managers during interactions involving the making, applying, or interpreting of organizational policies. In so doing, it introduces the concept of fair organization to organizational justice theory and describes two interactive verbal practices, hedging intent and demonstrating purpose, employed by HR managers as a means of sustaining fair organization for themselves and for others. The article concludes with a discussion of the opportunities that an interpretive approach to issues of organizational justice provides for management scholarship.