And justice for all: How organizational justice climate deters sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is hurtful for victims, observers, and the organizations that employ them. Although previous studies have identified numerous gender-specific antecedents such as sex similarity and climate for sexual harassment, the present study considers the role of a more general contextual construct-organizational justice climate. Beyond examining justice climate as a predictor of sexual harassment, we also assess its potential moderation of well-established relationships between antecedents (i.e., climate for sexual harassment and sex similarity) and sexual harassment at both the individual and unit levels. In two large military samples (Ns = 26,018 and 8,197), we found that psychological and collective justice climates (a) related negatively to sexual harassment and (b) moderated the effects of sex similarity and sexual harassment climate on sexual harassment. These findings indicate that harassment is less prevalent and established antecedents are less impactful when greater value is perceived to be placed on fairness. Moreover, the attenuating effects of justice climate appear interchangeable with those of harassment climate or sex similarity, suggesting that managing justice climate effectively generally helps to deter sexual harassment.