Organisational Justice Scale

What it measures

Measures employee perceptions of organisational fairness across four distinct dimensions. Procedural Justice captures fairness of decision-making processes — consistency, absence of bias, accuracy, correctability, and ethicality. Distributive Justice captures fairness of outcomes — whether rewards reflect effort and contribution. Interpersonal Justice captures quality of treatment — whether employees are treated with dignity, respect, and courtesy. Informational Justice captures adequacy of explanations provided for decisions. One of the most cited papers in JAP history, establishing the four-factor justice model as the standard. Organisational justice predicts employee satisfaction, commitment, turnover, organisational citizenship behaviour, and customer service quality.

Response format

Likert (1–5, to a small extent to to a large extent)

Representative items

• Have you been able to express your views and feelings during those procedures? (Procedural)
• Have those procedures been free of bias? (Procedural)
• Does your outcome reflect the effort you have put into your work? (Distributive)
• Has he/she treated you with respect? (Interpersonal)
• Has he/she been candid in communications with you? (Informational)

Usage notes & scoring

Four subscale scores. Procedural and Distributive Justice have the broadest effects on employee outcomes. Informational Justice moderates the negative effects of unfavourable outcomes — adequate explanations reduce the sting of distributive injustice. Validated in over 40 countries.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Colquitt, J.A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386–400.

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