ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 investigates the reasons why scholars have not dealt with the concept of wage distribution fairness earlier. It does so by exploring previous literature of empirical justice research and identifies two generations of justice researchers on which the current book can build on. The chapter briefly overviews the key contributions of both generations. The first generation, scholars with a social psychological background and focusing on equity research, concentrated on instances of wage distribution exchange and were interested in the microstructures of the wage distribution. The second generation, scholars with a sociological background and specializing in order-related and outcome-related justice, already concentrated on wage distribution as a societal-level phenomenon and they analytically differentiated between attitudes toward rules and attitudes toward outcomes. However, they did not connect attitudes toward the two dimensions of wage distribution into a common framework. The chapter furthermore introduces the terminology of the whole book. It introduces the term justice attitudes and emphasizes that wage distribution fairness is a type of justice attitude. It also defines the concepts of perception, preference, and justice evaluation.
