Researches on particularly deontic justice indicatethat people match their ethical decisions and behaviours with the triggeringevent – e.g., unfair orders or mistreatments of the higher order people in theorganizations. Accordingto the Schminke et al. (1997) employees’ perceptions of organizational justice areseen as a central factor that affects an ethical culture (Kaptein 2008;Trevin˜o and Weaver 2001).Regarding to the Johnson (2007) and Trevino and Weaver (2001),employees’ moral intents and engaging in the ethical behaviours in theorganizations is strongly related to perceptions of the fairness. Researchers have emphasized tosome of the antecedents of the organizational justice such as participation(i.
e., ability to decision making; Greenberg & Folger, 1983), communication (i.e., having opportunity to connectwith employees and managers; Kernan &Hanges, 2002) and justice climate (i.
e., team level and shared perceptions of justice between individuals;Li & Cropanzano, 2009; Roberson & Colquitt, 2005).Studies have addressed to someoutcomes of perception of justice/injustice within the organizations such astrust (justice, especially procedural justice is one of the determinants of thetrust within the organization; DeConick, 2010),performance (changing the job performance could be a reaction to the injusticeperceived in the organization; Cohen-Charash& Spector, 2001), commitment to the organization (commitment to theorganization is strongly associated with justice; DeConick, 2010), organizational citizenship behaviours(individuals engage more in citizenship behaviours when they experience morefair treatments; DeConick, 2010;Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Karriker & Williams, 2009), Counterproductivework behaviours (increased organizational injustice causes employees reluctanceto obey the organization rules; Cohen-Charash& Spector, 2001), Absenteeism andwithdrawal (absenteeism and even more extreme type, withdrawal, could be happenin result of experiencing unfairness in the organization; Johns, 2001), health and emotional exhaustion (withincreasing justice in the organization, the level of health increase but incontrast burnout decline; Liljegren & Ekberg, 2009) and turnover intention (could be an outcomeof experiencing unfair treatments in the organizations; DeConinck &Stilwell, 2004; Nadiri & Tanova, 2010).Additional study show that perceptions of unfairness decrease people’s intentionto engage in prosocial behaviours, but intensify their negative emotions and inclinationto retaliation, avoidance from workplace, and anti-social behaviours (Cohen-Charash& Spector, 2001). Emotions Although, affect, mood and emotion are usedinterchangeably, literature has demonstrated their differences. For instance, affect,is a generic term that surrounds both emotions and moods (i.e.
, defined as a widerange of feelings). Moods are less intense feelings that often do not havecontextual stimulus (i.e.
, cause is often general and uncertain; Weiss , 1996). However, compared tomoods, emotions are short term affective reactions toward a specific stimulus (i.e.,affected by particular occasion and Very brief in length; Frijda , 1994; Watson, et al, 1988; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Emotion, a critical component of the social contexts,extends from mild to the intense, simple to the complex, and private to thepublic (Hillebrandt and Barclay, 2017; Van Kleef, 2009).
Literature refers to twocategories of emotions include positive and negative ones. Positive emotions,mostly happiness, are more related to collaborative situations and are muchmore correlated with psychological health outcomes. However, negative emotions,mostly anger, are related to psychological unhealthy outcomes.Although, most of the negative emotions could berepresented in the organizations, they have different ethical outcomes. Forinstance, guilt, a “self-focused” emotion, is more likely to result inreconciliation attempts by the employee (Krehbiel & Cropanzano, 2000; Motro et al. 2016; Tangney, 1995). Peoplewho feel guilty prefer to condemn themselves than others and are motivated todo more ethical behaviours to compensate their faults in the past. Therefore,guilt is not usually related to retaliation (Barclay et al.
, 2005). In contrast, anger,could motivate individuals to unethical or harmful behaviours toward others ororganization (Barclay, Skarlicki, & Pugh, 2005; Motro etal. 2016). Angercauses individuals to condemn other people, for example colleagues or employersin the organizations (Aquino, Tripp, & Bies, 2001), and it motivatespeople to do more punishments and interpersonal revenge (Tripp & Bies, 1997),organizational incivility (Pearson, Andersson, & Wegner, 2001) and have less trust and tolerancefor others’ behaviours (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005; Goldberg, Lerner, &Tetlock, 1999). Indeed, these exhaustive list of adverse against others in theworkplace comesfrom individuals’ tendency to have harshly quick judgment about others(Keltner, Ellsworth, & Edwards, 1993; Lerner, Goldberg, & Tetlock,1998; Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). Importantly,with increasing defensive optimism and moral self-esteem (Dunning, 2007; Hemenover& Zhang, 2004; Polman, 2011), anger influences less engaging in costlymoral behaviour (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). These results demonstratethat anger is an “outward-focused” negative emotion as well as hostility (Barclay,Skarlicki, & Pugh, 2005; Lee & Allen, 2002). Recently, researchers havedistinguished the differences between trait and state anger (e.
g., Gibson andCallister, 2010; Wilkowski& Robinson, 2008).According to their point of view, state anger includes episodic experiences ofanger that range from slight irritation to intense range (Glomb, 2002). In opposite side,trait anger is longer-term and more intense and frequent occurrences of stateanger (Spielberger, 1999). Therefore, by focusing more on state dimension,anger is an emotion that triggers the acts against others because of theperception of getting less than what he/she deserves (Clayton,1992; Gibsonand Callister, 2010).Anger is an emotion which have high activation and unpleasanthedonic nature, and is considered to be low in positive affect and high innegative affect (Grandey, 2008). Merriam-WebsterOnline Dictionary (2008) defines anger as “a strong feeling of displeasure andusually of antagonism”. Gibsonand Callister (2010) and Gibson, Schweitzer, Callister and Gray (2009)addressed to four different features of anger include: (a) a discrete emotion withparticular physical reactions; (b) triggers in the social contexts in responseto the others actions; (c) triggers specially when an unfairness experiencedand acts as a transaction between the individual and his or her situation; and(d) usually experienced with work-related events because of some reasons which Gibson& Callister (2010) has shortened them in three categories; perceptions of unfairness,goal interference, and interpersonal conflict.
Adams (1965), Fitness (2000) and Pillutla (1996) mentioned that feelings of anger and resentment elicited byinjustice in the workplaces could provoke harmful reactions (Skarlicki , 1997). Additional studies indicate that perceived injustice extractsanger and deviant behaviour in the workplace (e.g., Bies, 1987; Bies & Shapiro,1988; Harlos & Pinder, 2000; Gibson & Callister, 2010).
Schweitzer& Gibson (2008) believe that perception of injustice, one of the mostcommon reasons of workplace anger, often leads to the unethical behaviours suchas retaliation. Other researches also have referred to various negativeoutcomes of anger from physically health issues, blood pressure and heartdisease (e.g., Begley, 1994), to psychosocial maladaptive reactions such astendency to interpersonal revenge (e.g., Bies & Tripp, 1998), destructiveorganizational climates (e.g.
, Aquino, Douglas, & Martinko, 2004),decreased job satisfaction (e.g., Glomb, 2002), and even violence (Fox, 1999).According to the researches, anger the same as otheremotions could have contribution in differentpositions (e.g., as an antecedent, a mediator or an outcome) in the unfairness models (Barksy, Kaplan, & Beal, 2011).
Barskyand Kaplan (2007) in a meta-analysis showed that state and trait emotions couldbe antecedents for all dimensions of injustice. They demonstrated that negativeemotions have negative impact on the perception of injustice. In contrastpositive emotions are positively related to the justice perceptions. Consistently,in the other study, Lang, Bliese, Lang, and Adler (2011) illustrated that intensionof negative emotion in depression is former to feeling unfairness inorganizations. Emotions could be also an outcome of experiencing injustice inthe organization. Importantly, they could be the mediators between perceivedinjustice and behavioural reactions in the organizations such ascounterproductive behaviours.
Forexample, Evelyn Chan, M., Arvey, R. (2011) found that anger is a mediatorbetween unfairness and unethical behaviour. Regarding to their findings, angrypeople have more intention to behave unethically because of their increasedimpulsivity, while guilty individuals behaved more ethically due to their highlevels of deliberate thinking(Motro, Ordóñez, Pittarello, & Welsh, 2016; Panasiti andPonsi, 2017).Additional researches illustrated that fairinteractions were more related to positive emotions (e.g.
, joy and happiness)and less related to the negative emotions (e.g., anxiety and anger) (e.g., Chebat& Slusarczyk, 2005; DeCremer & Stouten, 2005; Murphy & Tyler, 2008; and Rupp , 2006). These results replicated by Judge, Scott, and Ilies (2006) andBarclay et al.
(2005) who found the relation between interactional justice andboth positive and negative emotions. Gibsonand Callister (2010) and Glomb (2002) pointed out that expression of the angerand its intensity is related to the status of the person (i.e. organizationalposition and control over resources), meaning that it is more likely foremployees to be aggressor against equal or lower status individuals in theorganization, but it is less likely to express their anger against the higherstatus people such as their managers (Fitness, 2000). Therefore, because of theexistent risks of expression of the anger, people may use the suppression as astrategy for regulation of their emotions and it may result in increased stress,and impaired performance due to the consumption of cognitive resources requiredby suppression (Gross, 2002).
According to Cropanzano, Massaro & Becker (2017)affective and cognitive process moderate the fairness judgments.
