Justice or Just between Us? Empirical Evidence of the Trade-off between Procedural and Interactional Justice in Workplace Dispute Resolution

Abstract

In this article, the authors examine the relationship between an employer's implementation of a typical dispute resolution system (DRS) and organizational justice, perceived compliance with the law, and organizational commitment. They draw on unique data from a single, geographically expansive, U.S. firm with more than 100,000 employees in more than 1,000 locations. Holding all timeconstant, location-level variables in place, they find that the introduction of a DRS is associated with elevated perceptions of interactional justice but diminished perceptions of procedural justice. They also find no discernible effect on organizational commitment, but a significant boost to perceived legal compliance by the company. The authors draw on these findings to offer a "differentialeffects" model for conceptualizing the relationship among organizational justice, perceived legal compliance, and the implementation of dispute resolution mechanisms.I n this article, we examine the effects of implementation of a typical workplace dispute resolution system (DRS) on employees covered by the DRS, the vast majority of whom are never claimants or participants in a claim submitted through the DRS. This inquiry is made possible by access to a unique set of survey data from a large national company that, at its peak, employed more than 100,000 workers in more than 1,000 locations. The employer implemented the DRS, described in more detail below, in the middle of the eight-year span of the study, enabling a rare glimpse into *Author names are in alphabetical order.

Organizational Conflict Resolution and Strategic Choice: Evidence from a Survey of Fortune 1000 Firms

“…This fourth factor, in sum, reflects our survey respondents’ anticipated procedural, distributive, and interactional satisfaction benefits of using ADR rather than litigation to resolve workplace disputes. The notion that satisfaction is an important and independent dimension of ADR has been studied in the context of employee attitudes about the introduction of CMSs (Eigen and Litwin 2014) but has otherwise rarely been viewed as a distinctive strategic dimension of a firm’s use of ADR.…”

Integrating Conflict: A Proposed Framework for the Interdisciplinary Study of Workplace Conflict and Its Management

“…In doing so, this research can begin to bridge insights from this parallel body of legal scholarship. A recent effort is Eigen and Litwin's (2014) article examining organizational justice perceptions in a dispute resolution system in a large retail organization. As with the integration of organizational behavior insights regarding conflict, industrial relations scholars are uniquely positioned to establish a disciplinary bridge with which to link legal conflict management scholarship.…”

Employee Voice, Intention to Quit, and Conflict Resolution: Evidence from Australia

“…Offering employees dispute processes that allow for voice can also redress negative behaviors in response to perceived unfairness at work. Eigen and Litwin (2014: 173) noted that “improved perceived legitimate opportunities for voice and greater perceived access to procedurally fair and neutral processes for resolving disputes should increase employees’ organizational commitment and decrease turnover, consistent with the ‘exit-voice-loyalty’ trade-off.”…”