ABSTRACT

This is a book about organizational justice. In the pages that follow we examine the current theoretical state of the field (chaps. 2 and 3), an assortment ofpractical applications of these theories (chaps. 4-7), and then we take an aspiring look into the future (chaps. 8-10). In this chapter the goals are simple and modest. We examine the past; beginning in the late 1970s and gaining considerable velocity in the 1980s, justice research roared through the social sciences. Not only were new theoretical positions proposed, debated, and reconstructed (for a sampling see Bies, 1987; Bies & Moag, 1986; Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Cropanzano & Folger, 1991; Folger, 1986; Greenberg, 1987a; Lind, 1995; Van den Bos, Lind, & Wilke, chap. 3, this volume), but few organizational practices escaped scrutiny from the lens of organizational justice. Such technical practices as performance evaluation (Folger, Konovsky, & Cropanzano, 1992), staffing (Gilliland, 1993; Gilliland & Steiner, chap. 8, this volume), strategic planning (Korsgaard, Sapienza, & Schweiger, chap. 10, this volume), pay systems (Alexander & Sinclair, 1995; Miceli, 1993), and downsizing (Folger & Skarlicki, chap. 5, this volume; Konovsky & Brockner, 1993) were reinvestigated under the magnifying glass of the justice paradigm. The result was an outpouring of new scholarship that continues today, highlighted by the appearance of several books (e.g., Cropanzano, 1993; Cropanzano & Kacmar, 1995; Folger & Cropanzano, 1998; Greenberg, 1996; Greenberg & Cropanzano, in press; Lind & Tyler, 1988; Sheppard, Lewicki, & Minton, 1993) and numerous review articles (e.g., Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Cropanzano & Folger, 1991; Cropanzano & Greenberg, 1997; Folger & Greenberg, 1985; Greenberg, 1990a, 1990b).