Justice change matters: Approach and avoidance mechanisms underlying the regulation of justice over time.

Xu, Xiao-Min ORCID: 0000-0002-8845-0967, Du, Danyang, Johnson, Russell E ORCID: 0000-0002-1123-9207 and Lu, Chang-Qin ORCID: 0000-0001-8712-656X (2022) Justice change matters: Approach and avoidance mechanisms underlying the regulation of justice over time. The Journal of applied psychology, 107 (7). pp. 1070-1093.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000973

Abstract

The experience of justice is a dynamic phenomenon that changes over time, yet few studies have directly examined justice change. In this article, we integrate theories of self-regulation and group engagement to derive predictions about the consequences of justice change. We posit that justice change is an important factor because, as suggested by self-regulation theory, people are particularly sensitive to change. Also consistent with self-regulation, we posit that experiencing justice change will influence behavior via separate approach and avoidance systems. Across three multiwave and multisource field studies, we found that justice change predicts employees' engagement in work via perceived insider status along an approach path, whereas it predicts employees' withdrawal from work via exhaustion along an avoidance path, after controlling for the effects of static justice level. Moreover, these approach and avoidance effects are bounded by employees' perception of their employment situation, consistent with a regulatory fit pattern. As expected, employees' perceptions of employment opportunity, which correspond to gains, strengthen the effects along the approach path. Meanwhile, their perceptions of threat of job continuity, which correspond to losses, strengthen the effects along the avoidance path. Importantly, our set of studies highlight the unique influence of justice change incremental to static justice level. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Humans, Social Justice, Employment, Work Engagement
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Management
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	15 Nov 2021 08:13
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2024 03:08
DOI:	10.1037/apl0000973
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3143156