employer treatment of employees during a community crisis: the role of procedural and distributive...

EMPLOYER TREATMENT OF EMPLOYEESDURING A COMMUNITY CRISIS: THE ROLE

OF PROCEDURAL AND DISTRIBUTIVEJUSTICE

Steve HarveyWilliams School of Business and Economics, Bishop’s University

Victor Y. Haines IIISchool of Industrial Relations, University of Montreal

ABSTRACT: This study applies organizational justice principles to human re-source decisions made during a crisis situation. Three-hundred and sixty-sixworking individuals of ice storm affected households responded to a telephonesurvey that included measures of interactional, procedural and distributive jus-tice, organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Confirmatory FactorAnalysis suggested collapsing the interactional and procedural justice measuresinto one measure of procedural treatment. Overall, there was considerable sup-port for the relevance of procedural justice and its interaction with distributivejustice in predicting the work attitudes of employee following a disaster. Multipleregression analyses revealed that perceptions of procedural justice most stronglypredicted job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Consistent withexisting theory, an interaction between distributive and procedural was found topredict job satisfaction. The predicted interaction was not detected for organi-zational commitment.

KEY WORDS: organizational justice; natural disasters; work attitudes.

Organizational justice reactions have been shown to be positivelyrelated to employee trust in supervisors (Konovsky & Pugh, 1994) and inmanagement (Alexander & Ruderman, 1987), perceived organizationalsupport (Moorman, Blakely, & Niehoff, 1998), job satisfaction (Alexander

Address correspondence to Steve Harvey, Williams School of Business and Economics,Bishops University, Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]

We would like to acknowledge the capable research assistance of Paula Warnholtz and thefinancial assistance from the Senate Research Committee at Bishop’s University.

Journal of Business and Psychology, Vol. 20, No. 1, Fall 2005 (�2005)DOI: 10.1007/s10869-005-6983-z

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& Ruderman, 1987; Folger & Konovsky, 1989; Tansky, 1993), leader-member exchange (Konovsky & Pugh, 1994; Manogram, Stauffer, &Conlon, 1994), commitment to decisions (Kim & Mauborgne, 1996), andcitizenship behaviors (Farh, Earley, & Lin, 1997; Farh, Podsakoff, &Organ, 1990; Konovsky & Pugh, 1994; Moorman, 1991; Moorman et al.,1998; Moorman, Niehoff, & Organ, 1993; Niehoff & Moorman, 1993;Organ & Moorman, 1993; Skarlicki & Latham, 1996), thus supportingthe importance of fairness perceptions for the development of effectivework attitudes and behaviors. Such perceptions of fairness seem criticalduring a social or natural disaster when employees and management arefaced with extreme conditions that threaten their livelihood and that ofthe community. During these difficult times, management must makebusiness decisions that affect employees who are also attempting to copewith the crisis. The premise of this study is that these extraordinarydecisions have an impact on employee work attitudes and that thisinfluence can be understood by means of theory on organizational justice.

The specific role that organizations play in helping employees copewith crises created by social or natural disasters has received limitedresearch attention (Pearson & Clair, 1998; Sanchez, Korbin, & Viscarra,1995). The study of organizational behavior has been focused on the bestpractices of everyday challenges with less attention to relatively rareoccurrences of employee assistance practices during extraneous disas-ters. However, with recent world shocks, organizations are realizing thatthey may have to react to events with ramifications beyond theirimmediate control. Theory on how to approach such occurrences isclearly in need of development and empirical examination.

There is some work to suggest that psychological justice principles(e.g., Thibaut & Walker, 1975) may provide a useful framework forunderstanding how people react to organizational decisions affectingthem during a time of community crisis. A study by Sanchez et al. (1995)examining the impact of corporate support towards employees in theaftermath of a hurricane disaster sheds some light on what we mightexpect. They found evidence that tangible corporate support meetingemployees’ primary needs can have an important impact on work-relatedattitudes and tension. Not all anticipated relationships were supported,however. One reason cited for this is that their measures of support werenot sensitive to the likely importance of emotional support and thequality of support. This observation suggests that the procedural andinteractional aspects of the organization’s involvement in the crisismanagement are also important. Indeed, it reinforces the idea that it isnot just what a management does during a disaster that counts; howmanagement goes about deciding and communicating its support arecritical factors in determining positive reactions to the decisions in timesof disaster. We explore this set of specific predictions in this study within

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY54

the framework of relevant justice concepts – distributive (the what) andprocedural (the how) justice. We also consider the potential role ofinteractional justice as an extension to procedural justice.

As with the Sanchez et al. (1995) study, we examined the role ofcorporate support in a disaster circumstance, but specifically through thetheoretical lens of psychological justice principals (Thibaut & Walker,1975). The disaster studied is in the aftermath of an enormous ice stormthat rendered millions of Canadians without electric power (and thusprimary heat) for at least 2 weeks in the middle of a harsh Canadianwinter. The whole southern part of the Canadian province of Quebec wasparalyzed for weeks due to power lines that were damaged beyond simplerepair. Whole power transportation and transformation networks had tobe rebuilt leaving entire residential and employment communitieswithout power for weeks.

The relevance of justice theory to this type of problem is that itplaces a theoretical framework on practical concerns initially identifiedin the Sanchez et al. (1995) disaster study. Justice concepts fit thedisaster situation because they seek to explain tangible support throughdistributive justice as well as emotional support and quality of supportthrough procedural and interactional justice. To the degree that theseconcepts can be shown to fit the circumstances of an actual disasterincreases confidence in its particular application to similar events.Transportability of justice concepts to a disaster setting are less at issuethan understanding the potential peculiarities of their application. Thestudy of organizational justice has not always turned up fixed patterns ofrelationships between variables across settings. For example, the find-ings of lab and field studies have not always been in agreement (Chohen-Charash & Spector, 2001), nor have patterns of interactions among thejustice concepts (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). Accordingly, examinationof these concepts within a newer field setting is useful both to organi-zational justice theory and the specific area of application.

In the following, we consider how organizational justice can apply tothe disaster situation. The predictions are related to the work attitudesjob satisfaction and organizational commitment, both of which have re-ceived extensive attention in organizational studies of justice (e.g.,Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001).

In the organizational justice literature, distributive justice has a‘‘content’’ focus and is defined as employee perceptions of the fairness ofthe outcomes received (Adams, 1965; Greenberg, 1990). This source oforganizational justice describes the allocation of resources and opportu-nities, such as pay. Accordingly, the issue is about fair receipt of somevalued outcome under the control of the organization (though thecircumstance that created the situation may not). In a time of socialor natural disaster this could included, among other things, the

STEVE HARVEY AND VICTOR Y. HAINES III 55

organization’s policy or ad hoc decision with respect to pay duringshutdown or time-off from work to handle family, home and shelterconcerns. Failure to receive what is considered fair may then contributeto the employee’s development of a negative attitude towards the orga-nization. In theory this can be explained through the notion of apsychological contract (Rousseau, 1995). Specific psychological repre-sentations or implicit expectations of what constitutes fair employer–employee exchanges are held by the employee and ultimately can affectwork attitudes and behavior negatively if there is breach of this tacitcontract (ie., expectations). In the case of disaster relief, employees mightexpect the organization to fulfill a perceived moral obligation towardsthem (e.g., give time-off; advance pay), a fair exchange for their loyalty tothe organization. Should they not receive the assistance expected, itwould be predicted that job satisfaction and commitment to the employercould be compromised, particularly given that the event is salient enoughto have a lasting impact on their memory and related feelings. Empiri-cally, there is strong evidence to support such a proposition. The linkbetween distributive justice and job satisfaction is supported by anextensive literature and two meta-analyses (e.g., Cohen-Charash &Spector, 2001; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). Forexample, one of these analyses reports a corrected population correlationof 0.56 between the two variables with a corrected population standarddeviation of 0.09 (Colquitt et al., 2001). Therefore, we expect in this studythat those employees who report receiving equitable support from theorganization during the ice storm would be more satisfied with their jobs.

A similar effect is expected with respect to distributive justice andcommitment. The same meta-analysis reports a corrected correlation of0.51 (and standard deviation of 0.13) between these variables (Colquittet al., 2001). By commitment we are referring to the affective form,characterized by an emotional and identification based attachment to theorganization (Meyer & Allen, 1997). In his study, Sanchez et al. (1995)found that commitment was strongest among those employees who re-ceived a tangible support from the employer during the disaster. In otherwords, consistent with the distributive justice model, what employeesreceived during the recovery effort from the employer was probablyimportant in shaping their later commitment to the organization. Inexplaining the development of commitment, Meyer and Allen (1997) ar-gue that such actions by the organization are interpreted as supportiveby employees, which is thought to be an important determinate fordeveloping higher affective commitment towards an organization. Weexpect in this study that those employees who reported receiving equi-table support from the organization during the ice storm will showgreater affective commitment towards the organization.


Procedural justice has a ‘‘process’’ focus and is defined as the appli-cation of fair rules in decisions regarding one’s outcomes (Folger &Greenberg, 1985; Leventhal & Fry, 1980; Thibaut & Walker, 1975).Accordingly, the procedural justice principle adds the element that fair-ness is also experienced through the ‘‘way’’ in which outcomes are deter-mined and distributed. To the extent that methods used in assigning theoutcome or otherwise arriving at a decision are seen as fair leads to in-creased sense of justice and favorable work-related attitudes (Folger &Cronpanzno, 1998). Procedures may make less equitable distributionsmore palatable or even be themselves more satisfactory by way of thecommunicated thoughtfulness towards the recipient. In relation to thedevelopment of organizational commitment, the process utilized bythe decision maker also is a sign of organizational supportiveness, perhapseven more than the distributive elements. As Meyer and Allen (1997)explain, ‘‘Employees affective commitment is more strongly influenced byhow fairly decisions are made than by whether they always get what theywant’’ (p. 48). Hence, we can expect in this disaster study, salient as theevent is, that judgments of increased procedural fairness will positivelyrelate to later reports of commitment to the organization. Again, the evi-dence from meta-analysis results are strongly supportive of a relationshipbetween procedural justice and commitment with a corrected correlationof 0.57 and standard deviation of 0.18 (Colquitt et al., 2001).

The connection between procedural justice and job satisfaction alsois expected to be strong for the reasons previously reviewed. The rela-tionship is among the strongest of those reported with a corrected cor-relation of 0.62 and standard deviation of 0.18 (Colquitt et al., 2001).Individuals have expectations of what they want from the employer in atime of disaster as well as what is considered fair in reaching that out-come. The procedural element is likely to be particularly important inthis case due to increased discretion that is brought on by a disastersituation wherein formal policies and procedures may not exist. Whereformal rules and regulations are not extant as might be the case indealing with unforeseen events such as a disaster, the procedural ele-ment of the decision is likely to taken on greater focus. Accordingly, theprocess by which the decision is made has great probability to influenceemployee job satisfaction in this study.

Interactional justice has in recent years emerged as a third compo-nent in research on organizational justice. It is conceptualized generallyas more focused than procedural justice on the quality of the interper-sonal treatment one receives (Bies & Moag, 1986; Folger & Cropanzano,1998). It’s relevance to a disaster case is in whether the employees feltthat they were treated in an interpersonally sensitive and ethical man-ner when decisions were discussed and communicated. There is somedebate as to whether interactional justice is separate from procedural


justice or simply one component of the construct (Blader & Tyler, 2003;Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). This debate, however, does not weaken thefact that features of both concepts can be important in the disaster caseand should therefore be measured. Because of the closeness of theseconstructs we expect any effects related to interactional justice to par-allel the relationships predicted for procedural justice. The main ques-tion in this study was whether interactional justice would form aseparate predictive construct, and if so, how it then relates to theinteractive influences discussed in the next section.

The literature is now clear that distributive justice and proceduraljustice are expected to interact in their influence (Brockner & Wiesen-feld, 1996). Many studies have found an interaction (Brockner et al.,1994; Cropanzo & Folger, 1989; Greenberg, 1986; Landy, Barnes-Farell,& Cleveland, 1980; Martin & Nagao, 1989; McFarlin & Sweeney, 1992;Ployhart & Ryan, 1998; Sheppard & Lewicki, 1987; Skarlicki & Folger,1997; Tyler, Rasinski, & McGraw, 1985) and there is some suggestionthat it occurs because of underlying trust that is created between theparties (Brockner & Siegel, 1996). Others have reported three wayinteractions implicating distributive, procedural and interactional justice(e.g., Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). While it is clear that interactions areroutine, less clear is the pattern that they will take. Chen, Brockner, andGreenberg (2002) have, among others, pointed out that various patternsof interactions have emerged in justice research to date. Two commonforms of interactions show that high procedural justice can (a) enhancethe effects of favorable outcomes on employees’ reactions or (b) serve todiminish positive reactions to favorable outcomes (e.g., Chen et al.,2002). Given the newness of this study’s context, whereas an interactionis expected between procedural and distributive justice, and perhapsinteractional justice, in predicting job satisfaction and organizationalcommitment, the specific nature or pattern of these interactions are notpredicted. The resulting pattern(s) will be explored graphically as rec-ommended by Aiken and West (1991).

The hypotheses can be cast across two regression models involving thetwo work attitudes job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Ineach model there are three potential main effects (distributive, proceduraland interactional justice) and the interactions between these predictors.

METHOD

Sample

The sample of 366 working individuals was randomly drawn fromthe French speaking population of Brossard, Quebec, a suburban


community south of Montreal. This community was targeted for tworeasons. First, the area was affected by the downing of hydro-electricpower for a period of up to 2 weeks; hence people’s work and residentiallives were equally likely to be affected by the crisis for an extended periodof time. Second, as a suburb of Montreal we increased the likelihood thatindividuals surveyed came from a wide variety of occupational groups.Respondents included 169 men and 197 women. They had on average11.8 years of experience in their current job.

Measures

The measures of organizational justice were generated for this studyby developing composite items from the literature deemed appropriate fora telephone survey. Items were first listed and then chosen based on howwell they fit the current disaster circumstances. The retained items werethen translated from English to French by the authors and further refinedthrough a pilot test. Responses were provided on a four point scaleranging from (roughly translated) totally agree to totally disagree. Allitems are reproduced in English in Appendix I. The final survey included2 items measuring distributive justice (a = 0.93) and 5 items measuringprocedural justice (a = 0.91). As described below, a confirmatory factoranalysis supported a two dimensional structure over a three dimensionalmodel. The two-factor model has the interactional justice items subsumedwithin the measure of procedural justice. Because of their interrelated-ness, the collapse of these two concepts into one measure of proceduraljustice is not uncommon (Blader & Tyler, 2003). Henceforth the measureof procedural justice includes items reflecting both procedural andinteractional justice and is referred to as procedural justice.

Using a confirmatory factor analysis approach, we first assessed thefit of the data to a single factor baseline model, then a two factor model(distributive & procedural) and finally a three factor model (distributive,procedural & interactional). These models were then evaluated for rel-ative fit using a X2

difference test (Bollen, 1989). Standard indices suggestan acceptable fit of the data to the baseline single-factor model. The dataalso fit the two-factor model well and provided a significant improvementover the one-factor model with a significant X2

difference between these twomodels. The data fit the three-factor model well, but this model failed toshow a significant improvement over the two-factor model. On the basisof these analyses, we determined that the data best fit a two-factor modelwith the two distributive items loading as predicted on one factor and theinteractional and procedural justice items on the second factor.

The measure of commitment was a seven item French translation ofthe Mowday et al. (1979) organizational commitment measure (see Saga,Guerin, & Wils, 1998). It is mainly a measure of affective commitment.The resulting a coefficient in this study was 0.87. Satisfaction was


measured by one item created for the purpose of this study. It askedrespondents to indicate how satisfied they are with their work in general.It has been shown that a global index of overall job satisfaction is a validmeasure of general job satisfaction (Scarpello & Campbell, 1983). Allitems for commitment and satisfaction were measured with the sameresponse scale used for the justice items.

Procedure

The data were collected through a professional firm experienced withtelephone interviews. The interviews were conducted 4 months after theend of the ice storm crisis through a period of 1 week. At random, theycontacted potential respondents from a list of residents within the targetedarea and asked them if they would participate in a study being conductedby the two authors. The purpose of the study was explained and those thatwere working adults and who agreed to participate completed the inter-view. The interview took an average 10 min with nearly 80% of thosecontacted agreeing to participate. The questionnaire began with the itemsinquiring about the employer’s treatment of employees during the icestorm, followed by the questions on organizational commitment, job sat-isfaction and some demographic items. This ordering was chosen to ensurethat participants felt comfortable with the announced purpose of thequestionnaire and thus stay with us throughout the completion of thequestionnaire. Whereas this might encourage later responses on thedependent measures and inflate bivariate relationships between thevariables, the reverse effect of the dependent variables priming the justicemeasures is equally possible and this would in either case work against themain hypotheses of finding and examining interaction terms. Interactionsare very sensitive to high correlations between predictors and are lesslikely to emerge under such conditions (Aguinis, 1995; Cortina, 2002). Forthis purpose, the main effects can be compared to those in the literature forsome insight on this issue.

The authors also took measures to ensure that all participation wasvoluntary and that information was kept confidential. A pilot study wasfirst conducted with a sample of 20 respondents in order to verifythe item wording and protocol. As a result, a few minor instructionadjustments were made for the main study.

RESULTS

Descriptive statistics and the inter-correlations for all of the studyvariables are presented in Table 1. As anticipated, all study variablesshow significant positive inter-correlations in the appropriate direction.


The a coefficients presented in the diagonal for each measure indicaterelatively high estimates of internal consistency. Following recommen-dations by Aiken and West (1991) all predictor variables for the analysesto follow were centered as means of reducing effects associated withhighly correlated predictors.

Two hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test theproposed hypotheses. The regression sample size was somewhat reducedfor the two analysis (n = 285 & n = 301 versus n = 366) due to missingdata and the use of the more conservative listwise deletion procedure.Comfort of respondent was paramount to us and several may have feltunable or unwilling during the telephone interview to judge their em-ployer over the phone to a stranger on certain procedural justice ques-tions, though they did complete other questions.

The results of the regression analyses are presented in Table 2. Ineach case, the main effects (procedural and distributive justice) wereentered at the first step. The predicted interaction was entered in the

Table 1Descriptive Statistics and Inter-Correlation of the Study Variables

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4

1. Distributive 3.4 0.91 0.932. Procedural 3.4 0.77 0.80 0.913. Satisfaction 3.6 0.61 0.34 0.40 –4. Commitment 3.5 0.57 0.48 0.58 0.63 0.87

Note: All correlations are significant at the p < 0.05, 2-tailed level. Numbers in thediagonal are a coefficients. All items are based on a four point scale. Distributive Justice 2items; Procedural Justice 5 items; Satisfaction 1 item; Commitment 7 items.

Table 2Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analyses

Variables Job Statisfaction Commitment

Step 1Distributive 0.10 0.04Procedural 0.31* 0.55*R2 0.16* 0.35*

Step 2 (Full Model)Distributive 0.20* 0.09Procedural 0.38* 0.35*D�P 0.20* 0.09R2 0.18* 0.35*R2

change 0.02* 0.003

*Significance of standardized b weights at the p < 0.05 or better or significant R2

change.


second step. As anticipated, procedural justice accounted for significantvariance in job satisfaction (b = 0.31) at the first step. Distributive justicewas significant in predicting job satisfaction only at the second step(b = 0.20). Entering the interaction term of distributive and proceduraljustice at the second step also showed a significant increment in R2 forthe prediction of job satisfaction (DR2 = 0.02).

The second analysis results indicate that only procedural justice ac-counted for significant variance in organizational commitment (b = 0.55).Neither distributive justice nor the interaction term entered on the sec-ond step lead to predicted variance in organizational commitment(p > 0.2). Hence, the hypotheses relative to organizational commitmentreceived only partial support by way of the main effect of proceduraljustice.

The interaction effect of distributive and procedural justice on jobsatisfaction is represented in Figure 1. The interaction is plotted as de-scribed by Aiken and West (1991) to model the simple slope effect ofdistributive justice on job satisfaction corresponding here to both high(+1SD) and low ()1SD) levels of procedural justice. The pattern is sug-gestive of an effect occurring at higher levels of procedural justice

high procedural justice


low procedural justicelow procedural justice

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

1

Low DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE High

Job

Sat

isfa

ctio

n


low procedural justice

2

Figure 1Interaction of Distributive and Procedural Injustice Relative to Job

Satisfaction


wherein the simple slope is most pronounced. Job satisfaction is highestwhen both distributive and procedural justices are reported to be high.

DISCUSSION

It was predicted based on theory that the justice concepts wouldgeneralize to a natural disaster situation in helping to predict the longerterm implications that organizational decisions might have on employeeattitudes. General support was found for some but not all of these pre-dictions in this study. Specifically, it was clearly supported that per-ceptions of procedural fairness of the human resource decisions madeduring a natural disaster predict the later work attitudes of job satis-faction and organizational commitment. The magnitude of the rela-tionships in this study judged against a meta-analysis of theseconstructs (Colquitt et al., 2001) suggests that organizational commit-ment was predicted at comparable levels by both distributive and pro-cedural justice. Job satisfaction was by this same comparison predictedat lower magnitude, but within the bounds of what could be expected.However, the predicted interactive influence of procedural and distrib-utive justice on the work attitudes was only supported for jobsatisfaction.

Under ordinary conditions we might reasonably expect an effect thatconnects a specific event/decision and the satisfaction associated with thespecific event/decision. One might predict, for example, that a decision tonot pay employees during the downtime of the crisis would be receivedwith some stated dissatisfaction by the employees. That an interactionemerged as significant under conditions of relating a specific event (icestorm) to a broader work attitude (job satisfaction) is noteworthy. At thefundamental level, this supports the possibility that crisis situations canhave a broader impact on work attitudes.

This study extends previous findings on the matter of job satis-faction and organizational justice (e.g., Cohen-Charash & Spector,2001) to the context of crisis situations. Previous research on theorganizational response to helping employees in the aftermath of anatural disaster pointed to the likelihood that emotional support andthe quality of support are key elements to the perceived effectivenessof any assistance (Sanchez et al., 1995). Support for this is found inthis study when we consider the role played by procedural justice. Thismoderating effect of procedural justice is consistent with suggestionsby others (Sanchez et al., 1995) that emotional support during a crisismay be important. The highest satisfaction was associated with situ-ations high in both distributive and procedural justice. One could ar-gue that interactional justice is in fact the component of procedural


justice that is most responsible for this type of effect because of theinterpersonal nature of emotional support. Given the overlappingcharacter of these constructs in our study we cannot clearly tease outthis effect for examination but the results are encouraging of such aproposition.

The implications for research on crisis management in organizationsis that organizational justice theory can probably serve as a frameworkfor making decisions relative to employees in times of disaster. Thisresearch supports the suggestion that event specific decisions can beshown to relate to important, global work attitudes about one’s employerwithin a framework of organizational justice. Moreover, it supports thenotion that it is not just what the employer does that counts but probablyalso how the decision is made and communicated. This study has givensome insight into how the justice concepts relate to certain work atti-tudes, but as previous research in the area of organizational justiceseems to suggest (e.g., Folger & Cropanzano, 1998), we cannot assumethat organizational justice concepts will apply uniformly across problemareas. What is also clear is that more research is required to explain howspecifically the variables of interest relate to work attitudes. For exam-ple, procedural justice seemingly took on a critical role in the findings ofthis study. What we need to examine is whether this observation is un-ique to this study, disasters in general or to the types of interventionstaken by the employer. Alternatively we need to consider that retro-spective accounts may be a problem that leads participants to blurringdistinctions between these constructs in their responding.

That the moderating variable hypothesis was not supported in theorganizational commitment model deserves some consideration. At facevalue this would suggest that procedural justice does not moderate therelationship between distributive justice and organizational commit-ment. However, several rival explanations seem quite plausible and posea more conservative interpretation in this one study. It should be notedin tandem with these considerations though that procedural justice didaccount for significant variance as a main effect variable, close to doublethat found for job satisfaction. This is an important statistical reasonwhy finding an interaction effect for commitment would be more difficultthan finding one for job satisfaction in this study – the variance ac-counted for by the main effects towards commitment was comparativelysizeable. This type of problem is not uncommon in organizationalbehavior and management studies and places them at a disadvantage forfinding significant relationships that might actually exist (Aguinis,1995). We believe this might be a problem in this study that future re-search may want to correct. A related consideration regards problemsassociated with finding moderating effects when the predictor variablesinvolved are highly correlated (Cortina, 2002). This too may have acted to


reduce the likelihood of finding the interaction. We addressed the issue inthis study by following the recommendation of Aiken and West (1991)and centered all predictor variables prior to entry into the regressionanalyses.

Although the high correlation between constructs may be construedas a methodological hindrance, one must also consider potential sub-stantive reasons for this strong association. The high correlation (0.80) isnot atypical when we compare it to the corrected correlation of 0.67 witha standard deviation of 0.23 reported in a meta-analysis by Colquittet al. (2001). Moreover, the high correlation between the three forms ofjustice may reflect that, in a crisis situation, any organizational supportis appreciated and highly considered by the recipient. Fairness in pro-cedures, treatment and outcome may mesh into an overall perceptionthat an employer’s actions demonstrated caring and compassion andreinforce a sense of dignity for the employee. As Folger (1993) noted withan example of compensation, ‘‘all aspects of the agent’s conduct, whetheror not they have direct bearing on employee compensation or the meansfor determining compensation, can carry implicit messages about whe-ther the agent views the employee as someone worthy of that minimallevel of respect to which all humans should be entitled’’ (pp. 174–175). Asnoted earlier, an apparent dominance of procedural justice predictingthe work attitudes in this study may be a reflection of this convergence.Indeed, this overlapping variance likely explains why distributive justiceemerges as significant in a second and not first step of the regressionanalysis. Entering the interaction term likely created a suppressioneffect.

In addition to statistical and measurement questions, futureresearch can extend these findings in several ways. One interesting ve-nue would be to categorize and then examine actual forms of humanresource interventions within the justice framework. For instance, arethere differences between justice perceptions associated with monetary(e.g., benefits, pay, and expenses) versus non-monetary benefits (e.g., useof vacation time, time-off replacement)? This study did not discriminatethe practices and therefore could have overlooked critical variance andeffects due to the type of human resource intervention examined. Indeed,there should be an attempt to gather data from various sources (e.g.,organizations formal decisions) so as to minimize problems such ascommon method variance which cannot be ruled out as having someinfluence in this type of study. Though finding an interaction does abatesome concern with common method variance being the sole source ofinfluence. Moreover, a longitudinal study examining the issues as theyunfold and reactions that are associated with each could help betterunderstand how a particular crisis and its handling by managementmight eventually contribute to changes in work attitudes. This would be


particularly useful within firms wherein baseline measures of employeeattitudes might already exist and thus serve to compare pre and post-crisis. Finally, researchers should continue to examine for the possibilityof separate procedural and interactional justice effects in future researchon disaster management. The measures may prove to be more sensitivewhen combined with the previous issue of examining separateinterventions is heeded.

APPENDIX A

Organizational Justice Items for Ice Storm Study

During the Ice storm

1. My employer offered me all of the help and support I deserved. (D)2. The help and support offered by my employer was fair. (D)3. My employer was honest and ethical in discussions with me. (I)4. My employer gave me an opportunity to express my opinion. (P)5. My employer made an effort to act fairly. (P)6. I had an opportunity to talk with my employer about appropriate

support. (P)7. My employer acted in an appropriate manner. (I)

Note: Items directly translated back from French. D – Distributive jus-tice item; I – interactive justice item; P – procedural justice item.

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