The role of peer justice climate: What do we know and where can we go from here?

Perceptions of organizational justice often emerge as a shared reality among employees. Research has taken two approaches. The first and most studied approach, justice climate, refers to how a group of employees collectively evaluate the treatment they receive from an authority figure. The second and more novel approach, peer justice climate, refers to the collective perception that employees who work together within the same work unit and who do not have formal authority over each other judge the extent to which they treat one another fairly. This later justice phenomenon has the potential to be an important predictor for organizational research as coworkers represent one of the most salient characteristics of employees’ social environment. In this chapter we first review the concept of peer justice climate and its counterpart justice climate. We then review the empirical findings on this unique construct, highlighting the role of coworkers at work. Subsequently, we examine these findings through the lens of three justice models: the instrumental, the relational and the moral virtues model. We finish by suggesting two areas of research that could help further understanding of this unit- level phenomenon: the congruence of different unit-level justice climates and the role of climate uniformity.