How perceptions of fairness can change: a dynamic model of organizational justice created by David A. Jones and Daniel P. Skarlicki

Research on organizational justice has focused almost exclusively on fairness at one point in time. This perspective severely limits our understanding because fairness perceptions can continually evolve as individuals encounter new information. We present a dynamic model of organizational justice in which we integrate current justice theories with research on sense-making and social cognition to describe the processes through which perceptions of fairness change. The model describes a cyclical process whereby individuals' cognitive processing and judgments about the fairness of an event are guided by their perceptions about the entity involved. In turn, event judgments alter the knowledge structure that underlies entity perceptions, which has implications for perception change. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.