Procedural and Interactive Justice

Abstract

The Procedural and Interactive Justice Scale (PIJS), originally developed and validated by Robert H. Moorman (1991), is an established psychometric instrument designed to assess employee perceptions of fairness within work organizations. Rooted in organizational justice theory, the instrument captures two distinct yet related structural and interpersonal dimensions of fairness: Formal Procedures (often termed structural procedural justice) and Interactive Justice (frequently termed interactional justice). The formal procedures subscale comprises 7 items operationalizing Gerald S. Leventhal’s (1980) foundational procedural fairness rules, evaluating whether organizational decision-making mechanisms collect accurate information, allow voice and appeal, maintain consistency, avoid bias, and represent all affected parties. The interactive justice subscale comprises 6 items operationalizing the quality of interpersonal treatment and informational communication delivered by authorities and supervisors during the enactment of formal procedures, aligning with the conceptual framework proposed by Bies and Moag (1986).

Both subscales employ a 7-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree). Across decades of empirical inquiry in industrial and organizational psychology, organizational behavior, and human resource management, the instrument has consistently demonstrated exceptional internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha values typically span .93 to .94 for the individual subscales and .95 to .96 for the combined composite). Confirmatory factor analyses across diverse occupational samples support the construct independence of formal procedural justice and interactive justice from distributive justice, while demonstrating powerful predictive validity regarding organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), employee job satisfaction, organizational commitment, supervisory trust, and counterproductive or retaliatory work behaviors.

Keywords

procedural justice, interactive justice, interactional justice, organizational justice, Moorman 1991, organizational citizenship behavior, fair procedures, supervisory treatment, psychometrics, organizational psychology

Authors

The scale was developed by Robert H. Moorman, Ph.D., an eminent scholar in organizational behavior and human resource management. Moorman conducted the foundational validation research while affiliated with the Department of Management at the College of Business Administration, West Virginia University (Morgantown, West Virginia, United States). Throughout his academic career—including subsequent appointments at Creighton University and Elon University—Dr. Moorman’s research program has focused extensively on the social exchange mechanisms connecting workplace fairness perceptions, leader-member exchange (LMX), employee trust, and extra-role behaviors such as organizational citizenship behaviors.

Subsequent psychometric validation, cross-validation, and substantive extension of the scale have been conducted by prominent organizational researchers, notably Daniel P. Skarlicki (University of British Columbia), Robert Folger (University of Central Florida), Gary P. Latham (University of Toronto), and Dina M. Mansour-Cole (University of Cincinnati). Inquiries regarding the original scale items and theoretical development are anchored in Dr. Moorman’s seminal 1991 publication in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Procedural and Interactive Justice Scale is to provide organizational researchers, human resource professionals, and organizational development consultants with a psychometrically rigorous, theoretically grounded measurement tool capable of diagnosing subjective fairness perceptions in organizational systems. Specifically, the scale was constructed to differentiate the effects of process fairness and interpersonal treatment from traditional outcome-based fairness perceptions (distributive justice), and to determine how these distinct justice dimensions foster or inhibit voluntary employee behaviors.

Theoretical and Diagnostic Rationale

Prior to Moorman’s (1991) investigation, workplace justice literature was heavily dominated by Adams’ (1965) equity theory, which concentrated primarily on distributive justice—the perceived fairness of outcome distributions such as pay, promotions, and recognition relative to inputs. Although research by Thibaut and Walker (1975) in legal settings and Leventhal (1980) in organizational allocative contexts established that the procedures leading to outcomes are often more predictive of institutional legitimacy than the outcomes themselves, operational measures capturing these procedural elements alongside interpersonal execution were scarce and fragmented.

Moorman addressed this critical gap by synthesizing procedural criteria with Bies and Moag’s (1986) conceptualization of interactional fairness. The scale serves to determine:

• Whether institutional policies and formal administrative frameworks are perceived as neutral, accurate, ethical, representative, and correctable;
• Whether immediate organizational agents (supervisors and managers) enact those policies with interpersonal sensitivity, dignity, bias suppression, respect for employee rights, and honesty;
• The differential mechanisms through which formal structural safeguards versus direct relational treatments evoke generalized affective attachment, perceived organizational support, and cooperative prosocial actions.

Research and Clinical Applications

In academic research, the scale is widely applied to test models of social exchange, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), psychological contract breach, and workplace deviance. In applied organizational settings, executive leadership and industrial-organizational consultants employ the instrument to conduct organizational health audits, evaluate the climate surrounding mergers and acquisitions, diagnose causes of turnover intentions, assess grievance and appeal effectiveness, and evaluate management training programs designed to enhance supervisory fairness.

Psychological Construct

The construct assessed by Moorman’s (1991) measure is organizational justice, conceptualized as a multidimensional perception of workplace fairness. Rather than treating justice as a monolithic attitude, the instrument segments the domain into two critical, operationally distinct constructs: Formal Procedural Justice and Interactive Justice.

1. Formal Procedural Justice

Formal procedural justice refers to the perceived fairness of the formal rules, policies, mechanisms, and processes used by an organization to reach decisions and allocate resources. It embodies structural fairness—the institutional architecture that governs managerial decision-making. Moorman derived these items directly from the procedural criteria outlined by Leventhal (1980) and Leventhal, Karuza, and Fry (1980). A structurally fair procedure is defined by several key parameters:

• Information Accuracy: The degree to which decisions are based on valid, complete, and verifiable information rather than hearsay or incomplete metrics (e.g., collecting accurate data prior to performance evaluations).
• Correctability (Appeal): The existence of legitimate mechanisms, grievance processes, or open-door practices allowing decisions to be challenged, reviewed, or modified upon the presentation of new evidence.
• Representativeness: The extent to which all phases of the decision-making process reflect the basic concerns, values, and perspectives of all parties affected by the outcome.
• Consistency: The application of uniform decision standards across persons and over time, ensuring that favoritism does not dictate institutional practices.
• Feedback and Clarification: Providing transparent explanations regarding how decisions are made and allowing employees to request further clarification.

2. Interactive Justice

Interactive justice (subsequently termed interactional justice in broader literature, and later differentiated by some scholars into interpersonal and informational justice) refers to the quality of the interpersonal treatment an individual receives from authorities during the enactment and execution of organizational procedures. While formal procedures define the system on paper, interactive justice captures the human enactment of that system. According to Bies and Moag (1986), fair treatment relies on four communication criteria: respect, proprietary dignity, truthfulness, and justification. In Moorman’s operationalization, interactive justice focuses on whether the supervisor:

• Considers Employee Perspectives: Genuinely listens to employee voice and integrates their viewpoint into immediate interpersonal exchanges.
• Suppresses Personal Bias: Actively neutralizes personal prejudices, subjective preferences, and vindictiveness during interactions.
• Demonstrates Timeliness and Transparency: Delivers prompt feedback concerning decisions, clarifying how outcomes affect the employee.
• Upholds Interpersonal Dignity: Treats subordinates with politeness, kindness, consideration, and respect for their moral and legal rights.
• Practices Truthfulness: Interacts with honesty, candidness, and integrity, avoiding deceit or manipulative obfuscation.

Theoretical Framework

The Procedural and Interactive Justice Scale is grounded in three prominent sociological and psychological frameworks: Allocation Preference Theory, the Relational / Group-Value Model of Justice, and Social Exchange Theory.

Leventhal’s Allocation Preference Theory

Gerald S. Leventhal (1980) challenged the outcome-centric perspective of classic equity models by proposing that individuals maintain sophisticated cognitive frameworks regarding what makes allocation procedures fair. Leventhal posited six explicit procedural rules: consistency across individuals and time, bias suppression, accuracy of information, correctability (appeal mechanisms), representativeness of all affected constituencies, and ethicality with moral standards. Moorman translated these cognitive allocation principles into formal, self-report psychometric indicators, establishing that an individual’s evaluation of systemic legitimacy depends directly on the adherence to these structural rules.

The Group-Value Model and Relational Justice

E. Allan Lind and Tom R. Tyler (1988) formulated the Group-Value Model of procedural justice, which posits that people care deeply about procedures because they communicate symbolic information about social standing, inclusion, and respect within a valued collective. When authorities treat individuals with dignity, respect their rights, and suppress bias (the core of interactive justice), they signal to the employee that they are a respected, valued member of the group. Conversely, disrespectful, arbitrary, or exclusionary treatment conveys marginalization and social degradation. Moorman’s separation of formal procedures from interactive treatment reflects this distinction between macro-systemic legitimacy and micro-relational inclusion.

Social Exchange Theory and Norms of Reciprocity

The primary theoretical driver in Moorman’s (1991) empirical work was Peter Blau’s (1964) Social Exchange Theory and Alvin Gouldner’s (1960) norm of reciprocity. In contrast to economic exchanges—which are transactional, clearly defined, and contractually enforced—social exchanges involve unspecified obligations, mutual trust, and long-term socioemotional resources. Moorman argued that when employees perceive high procedural and interactive justice, they do not merely reciprocate by fulfilling formal, mandatory in-role job obligations. Instead, they reciprocate through discretionary, extra-role behaviors that benefit the broader collective: Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs). Because fair procedures and dignified interactions fulfill psychological needs for safety and respect, employees willingly engage in altruism, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy, and civic virtue.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Procedural and Interactive Justice Scale has been extensively corroborated across diverse industrial contexts, healthcare organizations, educational institutions, and multinational work environments.

Construct and Structural Validity

In his initial validation study involving 270 employees from two medium-sized cable television operating companies, Moorman (1991) performed exploratory and confirmatory analyses to evaluate the structural integrity of the scale. A principal components analysis with oblique rotation demonstrated that items assessing formal procedures and interactive justice loaded onto distinct, clean factors with minimal cross-loadings. While distributive justice loaded onto a distinct factor reflecting outcome equity, formal procedures and interactive justice formed two interrelated yet distinct process dimensions.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The scale exhibits robust convergent validity, as indicated by substantial inter-item correlations within subscales (average inter-item correlations exceeding .60) and significant associations with established measures of organizational climate and leadership behavior. Discriminant validity has been consistently confirmed against distributive justice measures (such as the Price & Mueller distributive fairness scale). Studies demonstrate that while formal procedural justice, interactive justice, and distributive justice are positively correlated (typically r = .40 to .65), multi-trait multi-method analyses and confirmatory factor modeling confirm that they represent separate empirical constructs rather than an undifferentiated general fairness factor.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

The scale possesses exemplary predictive utility across a range of vital organizational outcomes:

• Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: In Moorman’s (1991) foundational study, hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that interactive justice was a potent, statistically significant predictor of multiple supervisory-rated OCB dimensions—specifically Altruism, Courtesy, Sportsmanship, and Conscientiousness—accounting for unique variance even after controlling for job satisfaction.
• Retaliatory and Deviant Behavior: Skarlicki and Folger (1997) utilized the scale to investigate workplace retaliation. They discovered a critical three-way interaction: when distributive and procedural justice were low, low interactive justice dramatically escalated employee retaliatory behaviors (e.g., vandalism, gossiping, withholding effort). Conversely, high interactive justice significantly neutralized the retaliatory effects of unfavorable outcomes.
• Trust in Leadership and Job Attitudes: Research by Mansour-Cole and Scott (1998) demonstrated that interactive and procedural justice scores strongly predicted post-reorganization trust in direct managers and overall organizational commitment. Similarly, Skarlicki and Latham (1996, 1997) showed that training union leaders in procedural and interactive justice principles directly caused significant increases in member citizenship behaviors.

Reliability

The Procedural and Interactive Justice Scale exhibits exceptional internal consistency reliability across varied organizational levels, sample demographics, and international translations.

Internal Consistency Metrics

Across the literature, internal consistency reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha, $\alpha$) consistently exceed conventional psychometric benchmarks ($\alpha ge .70$, Nunnally, 1978):

• Formal Procedures Subscale: In Moorman’s (1991) original validation sample ($N = 270$), the 7-item formal procedures subscale yielded a Cronbach’s alpha of .94. Subsequent studies by Skarlicki and Folger (1997), Masterson et al. (2000), and Colquitt (2001) have reported alpha values ranging between .89 and .95.
• Interactive Justice Subscale: Moorman (1991) observed an alpha coefficient of .93 for the 6-item interactive justice subscale. Skarlicki and Folger (1997) reported an alpha of .94, while subsequent research across service and manufacturing industries has maintained coefficients between .91 and .94.
• Combined Procedural/Interactive Composite: In empirical contexts where researchers conceptualize justice as a unified structural-interactive procedural construct (e.g., Skarlicki & Latham, 1996; Mansour-Cole & Scott, 1998), the combined 13-item composite has demonstrated internal consistency coefficients spanning .95 to .96.

Temporal Stability

Although justice perceptions are responsive to administrative changes and managerial interventions, test-retest reliability evaluations over short-to-medium intervals (e.g., 4 to 8 weeks) demonstrate stable intraclass correlation coefficients ($r_{tt} \approx .78 – .84$) in stable organizational settings, confirming that the scale captures enduring cognitive appraisals rather than transient, momentary mood states.

Factor Analysis

The latent factor structure of Moorman’s scale has been evaluated through both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), playing a central role in historical psychometric debates regarding whether organizational justice comprises two, three, or four dimensions.

Exploratory Factor Structure

In the original 1991 study, Moorman conducted an EFA utilizing principal components extraction with an oblique (Promax) rotation on a pool of items representing distributive justice (5 items adapted from Price & Mueller), formal procedures (7 items), and interactive justice (6 items). The analysis produced three distinct factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0, accounting for 66.8% of the total variance:

• Factor 1 represented Interactive Justice, with factor loadings ranging from .76 to .88.
• Factor 2 represented Distributive Justice, with factor loadings ranging from .71 to .87.
• Factor 3 represented Formal Procedures, with factor loadings ranging from .64 to .86.

Crucially, all items exhibited strong primary loadings onto their intended theoretical construct, with secondary cross-loadings remaining below .25, demonstrating clear structural separation.

Confirmatory Factor Analyses and Model Fit

Subsequent psychometric examinations using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) software (e.g., LISREL, AMOS, Mplus) have consistently contrasted alternative competing models:

• One-Factor Model: All justice items load onto a single undifferentiated fairness factor. This model routinely exhibits poor fit across studies (e.g., $\chi^2/df > 5.0$, CFI < .80, RMSEA > .12).
• Two-Factor Model: Distributive justice forms one factor, while formal procedural and interactive items collapse into a combined procedural factor. While displaying acceptable fit in some early studies (e.g., CFI $\approx .88$), it remains significantly inferior to multidimensional specifications.
• Three-Factor Model: Distributive, Formal Procedural, and Interactive Justice are specified as three distinct, correlated latent variables. This model provides superior fit indices (e.g., $\chi^2/df < 2.2$, CFI $ge .95$, TLI $ge .94$, RMSEA $le .055$, SRMR $le .048$), statistically outperforming the one- and two-factor alternatives via chi-square difference testing ($\Delta\chi^2$, $p < .001$).

Later meta-analytic work by Colquitt (2001) built upon Moorman’s foundation to advocate for splitting interactive justice into interpersonal (respect and propriety) and informational (truthfulness and justifications) components, yielding four factors. Nonetheless, CFA analyses of Moorman’s 13 procedural-interactive items continue to demonstrate robust psychometric properties whether specified as two correlated first-order factors or as an overarching second-order procedural justice construct.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Procedural and Interactive Justice Scale (PIJS) is a standardized, self-report psychometric questionnaire designed for administration to organizational employees across all occupational sectors.

• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric rating scale.
• Domain: Industrial and Organizational Psychology / Organizational Behavior.
• Number of Subscales: Two primary subscales:
  • Formal Procedures Subscale: 7 items.
  • Interactive Justice Subscale: 6 items.
• Total Item Count: 13 items (can be administered alongside a 5-item distributive justice scale if a complete fairness battery is required).
• Response Format: 7-point Likert-type scale with the following anchor values:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Slightly Disagree
  • 4 = Neutral (Neither Agree nor Disagree)
  • 5 = Slightly Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 6 minutes for full completion.
• Scoring Protocol:
  • All items are framed positively; there are no reverse-scored items.
  • Formal Procedures Score: Calculated as the arithmetic mean of items 1 through 7 (range: 1.0 to 7.0). Higher scores denote greater perceived procedural fairness, consistency, and structural transparency within the organization.
  • Interactive Justice Score: Calculated as the arithmetic mean of items 8 through 13 (range: 1.0 to 7.0). Higher scores reflect elevated interpersonal respect, supervisory bias suppression, and communication quality.
  • Overall Procedural/Interactive Composite: When utilized as a global procedural fairness metric (as supported by Skarlicki & Latham, 1996), calculate the composite mean across all 13 items.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was formally published in 1991 by Robert H. Moorman in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Vol. 76, No. 6, pp. 845–855), copyrighted by the American Psychological Association (APA).

• Academic Research Use: Consistent with standard academic fair-use guidelines, individual researchers, faculty, and graduate students may utilize the scale items for non-commercial educational and empirical scientific investigations without paying licensing fees, provided proper citation and attribution are given to Moorman (1991) and the APA.
• Commercial and Organizational Consulting: Commercial organizations, corporate training providers, and consulting firms seeking to reproduce the instrument in commercial assessment platforms, fee-generating diagnostic toolkits, or published handbooks must request formal permissions via the APA Permissions Office or RightsLink®.
• Cost / Fee: The scale is free to administer for non-funded academic research. No proprietary purchasing fees are mandated for educational, scholarly, or thesis research.

References

• Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 267–299). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60108-2
• Bies, R. J., & Moag, J. F. (1986). Interactional justice: Communication criteria of fairness. In R. J. Lewicki, B. H. Sheppard, & M. H. Bazerman (Eds.), Research on Negotiations in Organizations (Vol. 1, pp. 43–55). JAI Press.
• Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and Power in Social Life. John Wiley & Sons.
• Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386–400. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.386
• Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092623
• Leventhal, G. S. (1980). What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. In K. J. Gergen, M. S. Greenberg, & R. H. Willis (Eds.), Social Exchange: Advances in Theory and Research (pp. 27–55). Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3087-5_2
• Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2115-4
• Mansour-Cole, D. M., & Scott, S. G. (1998). Hearing it through the grapevine: The influence of source, leader-member exchange, and justice on employee reactions to organizational change. Personnel Psychology, 51(1), 25–54. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1998.tb00715.x
• Masterson, S. S., Lewis, K., Goldman, B. M., & Taylor, M. S. (2000). Integrating justice and social exchange: The differing effects of fair procedures and treatment on work relationships. Academy of Management Journal, 43(4), 738–748. https://doi.org/10.2307/1556364
• Moorman, R. H. (1991). Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors: Do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship? Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(6), 845–855. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.76.6.845
• Skarlicki, D. P., & Folger, R. (1997). Retaliation in the workplace: The roles of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(3), 434–443. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.82.3.434
• Skarlicki, D. P., & Latham, G. P. (1996). Increasing citizenship behavior within a labor union: A test of organizational justice theory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81(2), 161–169. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.81.2.161
• Thibaut, J. W., & Walker, L. (1975). Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis. L. Erlbaum Associates.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)