Fairness at the Organizational Level: Examining the Effect of Organizational Justice Climate on Collective Turnover Rates and Organizational Performance

In the continuing quest to understand public employees' reactions to fair (or unfair) treatment in the workplace, perceived organizational justice has been conceptualized primarily as an individual-level phenomenon. Although individuals create collective perceptions of the fair treatment of their work unit as a whole, little attention has been paid to consequences of justice climate at the organizational level. Using panel data from the U.S. federal government, this study seeks to fill this gap by examining the effect of four dimensions of organizational justice climate-distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal-on collective turnover rates and organizational performance. The findings show the negative association of distributive and interpersonal justice climates with turnover rates and the positive association of distributive, procedural, and interpersonal justice climates with organizational performance. Moreover, further analysis confirms that each dimension of justice climate has relative influence on both outcomes. Implications and contributions of these results for public administration theory and practice are discussed.