I’m sure you have something specific in mind with this question. Just like that, devoid of context, the answers can be anything and will merely reflect the preoccupations of the responder.

Justice could mean anything from an ideal to the practice (good or bad) of a system in a particular historical or present situation. Attitude of course is a psychological concept, but also many other things. As a psychological concept it only acquires meaning if one has any idea ‘about what’.

The relationship between the two would be close, for instance if the attitude was about justice. Then the one (justice) would be the object of the other (attitude). The other way around is less defined: attitudes can be just and unjust and everything in between; I guess they can even be both, in case the different components of the attitude aren’t consistent, which is quite possible.

So, I guess, it would be helpful if you elaborated a bit, giving us any idea what you have in mind with this question.

Hi Elham,

If you are interested in the relationship between justice and attitudes in an organizational context, there’s an extensive literature on perceived organizational and interpersonal (un)fairness and its effects on different attitudinal variables such as satisfaction, commitment, intentions to leave, resistance to change… Typically, these attitudes are considered as outcomes of perceived (in)justice; the effects being based on different theoretical rationales (social exchange, affective events theory, fairness heuristics theory, uncertainty reduction theory…) and consistently supported by empirical evidence. You may want to take a look to these papers to have a rapid, quite “fair” overview of the literature on OJ:

• Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. 2001. Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal Of Applied Psychology, 86:425-445

• Cropanzano, R., Byrne, Z. S., Bobocel, D. R., & Rupp, D. R. 2001. Moral virtues, fairness heuristics, social entities, and other denizens of organizational justice. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 58: 164-209.

• Colquitt, J. A., & Zipay, K. P. 2015. Justice, fairness, and employee reactions. Annual Review Of Organizational Psych & Organizational Behavior, 2:1-25.

Hello Elham:

In my effort to be complete, I apologize for also being a bit redundant with the previous answers. But let me give your question in a try.

In general, justice perceptions are positively related to attitudes, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. To help you focus your hypotheses, I suggest that you first read these general meta-analyses, one of which was recommended above.

Cohen-Charash, Y., & Spector, P. E. (2001). The role of justice in organizations: A meta-analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 86, 278–321.

Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 425-445.

Skitka, L. J., Winquist, J., & Hutchinson, S. (2003). Are outcome fairness and outcome favorability distinguishable psychological constructs? A meta-analytic review. Social Justice Research, 16, 309-341.

For specific information on attitudes, I would also encourage you to explore the research on the target similarity model (also called multifoci justice). According to this work, the source of the justice is somewhat matched to the resulting attitudes. For example, organizational justice is likely to be a better predictor of organizational commitment than it is of supervisor commitment. Conversely, supervisor justice is likely to be a better predictor of supervisor commitment than it is of organizational commitment. Here are some articles that you might enjoy:

Lavelle, J. J., Brockner, J., Konovsky, M. A., Price, K., Henley, A., Taneja, A., & Vinekar, V. (2009). Commitment, Procedural Fairness, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Multifoci Analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30, 337-357.

Lavelle, J. J., Rupp, D. E., & Brockner, J. (2007). Taking a multifoci approach to the study of justice, social exchange, and citizenship behavior: The target similarity model. Journal of Management, 3, 841-866.

Lavelle, J., Rupp, D., & Manegold, J. G., & Thornton, M. (2015). Multifoci Justice and Target Similarity. In M. Ambrose & R. Cropanzano (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Justice in Work Organizations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Rupp, D. E., Shao, R., Jones, K., & Liao, H. (2014). The utility of a multifoci approach to the study of organizational justice: A meta-analytic investigation into the consideration of normative rules, moral accountability, bandwidth-fidelity, and social exchange. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 123, 159-185.

Finally, there is also some research suggested that processes and outcomes interact to predict attitudes. According to this work, individuals are tolerant of unfavorable outcomes if the process by which they are assigned is just. Here are some papers on this interaction:

Brockner, J. (2002). Making sense of procedural fairness: How high procedural fairness can reduce or heighten the influence of outcome favorability. Academy of Management Review, 27, 58-76.

Brockner, J., & Wiesenfeld, B. M. (1996). An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 189-208.

This is an exciting area of study, and I hope that you enjoy learning more.

-- Russell