Attributive criteria for wage premiums: an experimental study on distributive justice

INTRODUCTIONResearchers and practitioners of human resource management have long been interested in organizational justice (Colquitt, Greenberg, & Zapata-Phelan, 2005; Cropanzano, Bowen, & Gilliland, 2007). Indeed, the sense of justice / injustice influences a number of professional conducts (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001; Cropanzano & Greenberg, 1997; El Akremi, Nasr, & Camerman, 2006). It has to do with job satisfaction (Di Fabio & Bartolini, 2009; McFarlin & Sweeney, 1992), the intention to resign (Aryee, Budhwar, & Chen, 2002; Greenberg, 1988, 1995), organizational commitment (Di Fabio & Bartolini, 2009 ; Folger & Konovsky, 1989), work performance (Chang & Dubinsky, 2005; Fields, Pang, & Chiu, 2000; Konovsky & Cropanzano, 1991; Miles & Klein, 1998; Shaw, Gupta, & Delery, 2002), organizational citizenship behaviours (Moorman & Byrne, 2005), resistance to change (Shapiro & Kirkmann, 1999), etc.Organizational justice is defined by Byrne and Cropanzano (2008, p.4) as "the field of psychology that focuses on the perception of justice at the workplace". Initially used by Greenberg (1987), the concept of organizational justice is usually considered to refer to three sub-dimensions (Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001; Konovsky, 2000) : distributive justice (which refers to resource distribution: see Cropanzano & Greenberg, 1997; Folger, 1987; Leventhal, 1976), procedural justice (which deals with decision-making regarding the allocation of various resources: see Leventhal, 1980; Lind & Tyler, 1988; Thibaut & Walter, 1975), and interactional justice (see Bies, 2001; Bies & Moag, 1986; Greenberg, 1993), the last being generally considered to consist of two components: an interpersonal component (that is to say, respect and courtesy towards employees: Folger & Cropanzano, 1998), and an informational component (which relates to the justification of practices and decisions: Bobocel & Zdaniuk, 2005; Colquitt & Shaw, 2005). Numerous studies also show that those three dimensions are not independent. An interaction between distributive justice and procedural justice has been demonstrated (Brockner, Konovsky, Cooper-Schneider, Folger, Martin, & Bies, 1994; Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996, 2008; Hegtvedt, Johnson, Ganem, Waldron, & Brody, 2009; Lucas, Zhdanova, & Alexander, 2011; Tata, 2000). Skarlicki and Folger (1997), Lupfer, Weeks, Doan, and Houston (2000) have also shown on this three factors model, the existence of a triple interactive effect between distributive, procedural and interactional justice. However, we mention that certain studies (such as Colquit, 2001) conclude on the existence of four factors, by considering the interpersonal component and the informational component as two dimensions in their own right and not as two components of interactional justice.The concept of distributive justice (DJ) is used to describe two types of situations: those in which one interacts with others and when we compare each person's benefits and investments (such as negotiations between a buyer and a seller) and those where two individuals receive a benefit from a third party (for example two employees receiving wages from an employer). Identifying with the second case, Gales and Barzantny (2000) underline that research on JD includes two directions of analysis. The first is from the point of view of the receiver of the resources distributed in order to examine their perception of justice and the behavioural consequences (especially in terms of performance) of that perception (Cowherd & Levine, 1992; Hulin, 1991; Pfeffer & Langston, 1993; Sweeny, McFarlin, & Inderieden, 1990). The second focuses on the person deciding the allocation and the distribution rule (Cropanzano & Greenberg, 1997; Deutsch, 1975; Kabanoff, 1991; Leventhal, 1976; Skitka & Tetlock, 1992). The theorists of distributive justice (Deutsch, 1975, 1985; Leventhal, 1976; Sampson, 1986) distinguish between three distribution methods: equality, also called parity (everyone is remunerated identically, regardless of their contribution), and two nonequalitarian methods, with equity (which recognizes merit, and specifically each person's contribution: in an equitable situation, the remunerations are proportionate to the respective contributions) on the one hand, and need (each individual is remunerated according to their need) on the other hand. …