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Fair Leadership
A proactive approach of organizational justice: From subordinate’s
perceptions to leader’s orientation
Being fair represents one of the most essential leadership behaviors in the workplace (Tyler &
Blader, 2003). But to date, little is know about the relationships between organizational justice
and leadership (van Knippenberg, De Cremer & van Knippenberg, 2007). Research on
organizational justice has mainly focused its attention on fairness perceptions on work
relationships and their impact within organizations (Cohen-Charash et al., 2001; Colquitt et al.,
2001). This focus on justice perceptions and individuals’ subsequent reactions has been termed
reactive
justice by Greenberg (1987). Adopting a reactive approach, and in continuity with previous
research on measuring perceptions of organizational justice, we first sought to evaluate the
generalizability of Colquitt’s (2001) measure of justice perceptions in French settings. The results
of the three studies we conducted showed that the theoretically supported four-factor approach
is applicable in France. In addition to reactive justice, Greenberg (1987) proposed the
proactive
approach to justice that focuses on people’s motivation to act in a fair manner. Adopting this
approach, we then addressed justice concerns from the leader’s perspective, by proposing a
model of Fair Leadership. We developed a measure of Fair leadership and conducted two
preliminary studies testing the dimensionality and validity of the measure. Results suggested that
leaders approach to fairness and subordinates’ perceptions of fairness are somewhat different and
may reveal a different level of analysis with regards to fairness.