Organizational Injustice as an Occupational Health Risk

Abstract

Content to conceive of inequity distress as a hypothetical construct instead of an intervening variable, a half century of research inspired by equity theory has paid little attention to measuring inequity distress. At the turn of the twenty‐first century, however, European epidemiologists, interested in determinants of ill health, found that injustice is a source of adverse emotional reactions that put people at risk for mental and physical morbidity (e.g., depression and coronary heart disease). This research is reviewed here, along with studies identifying pathways accounting for these connections. Specifically, perceived injustices lead to negative emotional reactions and to unhealthy behaviors (e.g., being sedentary, smoking, and drinking excessively), both of which trigger various negative bodily reactions (e.g., elevated serum lipids). These, in turn, subsequently put people at risk of illness. Research has found that such effects are mitigated by organizational interventions that promote perceptions of justice. Three limitations warranting consideration in future research are discussed: (a) the need to address methodological concerns (e.g., reducing common method variance, improving efforts to determine causality), (b) the need to assess the cultural generalizability of research findings, and (c) the need to supplement the existing attention to disease with a new focus on health and well‐being.