ABSTRACT
Research on organizational justice, that is, an individual's perception of fairness in an organization, has not generally focused on the normative nature of justice or fairness in organizations (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001; Colquitt, 2001; Colquitt, Greenberg, and Zapata-Phelan, 2005). The main focus has been on what individuals perceive as being fair in organizations and what the consequences of such perceptions might be. Early justice studies were interested in consequences arising from organizational functioning, such as effectiveness, work attitudes, and work performance (Heponiemi et aI., 2007; McFarlin and Sweeney, 1992; Moorman, 1991; Phillips, Douthitt, and Hyland, 2001; Skarlicki and Folger, 1997). Only during the past decade has research on organizational justice and work-related psychosocial health risks been combined such that organizational justice is seen as a psychosocial determinant of health. Indeed, few studies on the association between organizational justice and health were published before 2000 (Schmitt and Dorfel, 1999; Tepper, 2001). The first large-scale epidemiological studies on this issue appeared in 2001 (Elovainio, Kivimaki, and Helkama, 2001; Elovainio, Kivimaki, and Vahtera, 2002). Since then the focus has widened to cover a range of different well-being and health outcomes, with the first study that looked at the fair treatment of employees in conjunction with objectively assessed heart disease being published in 2005 (Kivimaki et aI., 2005).
