Out of the many concepts, theories and frameworks I have learnt in this course I would like to talk about the Organizational Justice Theory and relate it to my real and work-life situations. I am also going to state things events and happenings during those experiences makes more sense to me now after I have understood this theory.
Firstly, let me begin with the introduction of the Organizational Justice Theory. As stated by Professor Beers in his lecture, Organizational Theory is not one but a collection of theories that have been formed by the contribution of many scholars.
For employees to be satisfied with their job they need to feel the company has treated them fairly. In other words, there must be justice in the work that people do and the reward they get. This is what the Organizational Theory is about. The four types of justice discussed in the organizational Justice theory are
Distributive Justice is the perceived fairness in the distribution of outcome in an organization such as pay and promotion. In simple words, it would be right to say in an organization where there is distributive justice you get what you deserve based on your actions. As professor, Beers says ‘the right people get the right reward and the right people get the right sanctions.’
Two of my friends had joined a local magazine company at the same time and had the same post as freelance writers. Though both of them were supposed to get the same payment as agreed, the boss often paid one of my friend bonus extra bucks because the articles that he wrote were often better in quality than the other. Since only one of my friend was getting extra money for his extra skills the other friend was upset. The idea I had regarding the magazine company and its reward distribution was totally wrong before I had joined this course. However, that has significantly changed after I learnt the Organizational Justice Theory.
I can now say that the magazine company which my friends worked at maintained a distributive justice system of outcome distribution. Before attending these lectures, I was not aware of such a thing and had held grievances against the company’s boss for being unfair to one of my friend. Now I understand that it was a good example of rewarding good work based on the quality.
Even though both my friends had joined the company at the same time and worked for an equal amount of hours one of them got extra reward for better performance. This is just and fair way of distribution of outcome as in this form of distribution an employee gets paid for not only the quantity of work but also for the quality of work which in this case is writing articles. Despite the fact that some people may think this practice to be biased and unjust I found that distributive justice is in fact a good way to motivate and reward employees in an organization. As it is clear to me now that distributing the reward based on work is a form of organizational justice I can understand why the other employees were not upset about one my friends getting very high pay compared to them, even though those writers had joined much before my skilled friend.
This sort of organizational justice creates an environment of fairness and job satisfaction and also pushes the workers to deliver their best for the company and also for personal reward. Distributive organizational justice was present in the magazine company that my friends had worked for.
To conclude I can say that there is more job satisfaction when people can perceive a higher level of justice in the organization they belong. Job satisfaction comes when these four dimensions of justice are in good balance. On the other hand, if the employees of an organization feel that their work does not bring those fair rewards or their extra effort or skills are under-looked there will a sense of job dissatisfaction. In such an environment employees will only work as much as they deem fair enough for their pay.
Being unaware of distributive justice system my friend was dissatisfied with the job and also had reduced efficiency at work. While only one of my friends did enjoy the results that existed in the company due to a system of distributive justice none of them seemed to have realized the theory that was being followed by the boss. Even the friend who was getting extra pay thought he was being given extra bonus because he had great interpersonal and verbal communicative skills. I can assure them now after attending the course that the extra pay had nothing to do with the way one could talk, rather it was purely based on writing skills which was the main element of the job that my friends were doing.
This has been such an important lesson for me which I can definitely apply in my practical job life to understand the levels of justice that persist in an organization. After doing this course and learning about distributive justice I can understand how many companies vary the payment or reward based on the work despite same amount of work and working hours. I understand how this is actually a form of organizational justice that can bring about more job satisfaction. I definitely can share these important aspects of organizational justice with my friends who work at the magazine company. I can clarify the misunderstandings I had about how rewards were distributed in the company. Most importantly in the near future, if I am a part of an organization or do happen to own one where I can make the decisions regarding the distribution of output, I am definitely going to keep the Organizational Justice Theory in mind and apply the elements of distributive and other forms of organizational justice.
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