Organizational Injustice as an Occupational Health Risk

Abstract

Content to conceive of inequity distress as a hypothetical construct instead of an intervening variable, a half century of research inspired by equity theory has paid little attention to measuring inequity distress. At the turn of the twenty‐first century, however, European epidemiologists, interested in determinants of ill health, found that injustice is a source of adverse emotional reactions that put people at risk for mental and physical morbidity (e.g., depression and coronary heart disease). This research is reviewed here, along with studies identifying pathways accounting for these connections. Specifically, perceived injustices lead to negative emotional reactions and to unhealthy behaviors (e.g., being sedentary, smoking, and drinking excessively), both of which trigger various negative bodily reactions (e.g., elevated serum lipids). These, in turn, subsequently put people at risk of illness. Research has found that such effects are mitigated by organizational interventions that promote perceptions of justice. Three limitations warranting consideration in future research are discussed: (a) the need to address methodological concerns (e.g., reducing common method variance, improving efforts to determine causality), (b) the need to assess the cultural generalizability of research findings, and (c) the need to supplement the existing attention to disease with a new focus on health and well‐being.

Acknowledgment

The author acknowledges the helpful comments of Art Brief, Marko Elovainio, Deshani Ganegoda, Jim Quick, and Jim Walsh on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. Following customary usage in the organizational behavior and social psychology literatures, the terms “justice” and “fairness” are used interchangeably in this article, as are “injustice” and “unfairness” (Greenberg & Colquitt, 2005). Also in keeping with these literatures, all references to various forms of justice or injustice are regarded as perceptual in nature. This stands in contrast to sociologically oriented conceptualizations of justice couched in terms of structural qualities (e.g., Tornblom, 1977) and philosophical approaches that reference moral ideals (e.g., Rawls, 1971).

2. On the distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening variables, readers are referred to the classic article by MacCorquodale and Meehl (1948).

3. Although Adams depicts overpayment as a negative state, experimental evidence suggests that people actually may be pleased about it privately (Rivera & Tedeschi, 1976).

4. Despite its lack of specificity, this scale has been validated in several studies in which more negative responses were found to be linked to occurrences of specific medical problems requiring a doctor’s treatment and, at the extreme, to mortality (e.g., Idler & Angel, 1990; Miilunpalo, Vuori, Oja, Pasanen, & Urponen, 1997). As Elovainio et al. (2003) indicated, “More than 20 published studies have consistently shown that global self‐rated health is an independent predictor of mortality, despite the inclusion of numerous specific health status indicators and other relevant covariates known to predict mortality” (p. 289).

5. As used here, the term “rather” is used in the British colloquial manner to mean “somewhat.”

6. During stressful experiences, sympathetic nervous system activity heightens, allowing the heart rate to meet the challenge of boosting blood flow (Lane, Addcock, & Burnett, 1992).

7. Curiously, although there is considerable research on the physiological benefits of exercising (e.g., United States Department of Health and Human Services, 1996), studies of the effects of sedentary lifestyles are only now appearing. Importantly, from what is known thus far, these two lines of research are not parallel: the benefits of exercise are not necessarily the obverse of the costs of sedentary behavior.

8. According to the American Cancer Society (2010), “Smoking damages nearly every organ in the human body, is linked to at least 15 different cancers, and accounts for some 30% of all cancer deaths.”