Explain how procedural justice examines the impact of the process used to make a decision.

The perceived fairness of rules and procedures is referred to as procedural justice.Procedural justice holds that employees are going to be more motivated to perform at a high level when they perceive the procedures used to make decisions about the distribution of outcomes are fair.In organizations,procedural justice is very important to most employees,who are motivated to attain fairness in how decisions are made,as well as in the decisions themselves.Reactions to pay raises,for example,are greatly affected by employees' perceptions about the fairness of the raises.If in the minds of the employees the pay raises were administered fairly,the employees were more satisfied with their increases than if the employees judged the procedures used to make these increases to be unfair.The perceived fairness of the procedures used to allocate pay raises is a better predictor of satisfaction than the absolute amount of pay received.Similarly,students base their faculty member evaluations on perceptions of fair grading decisions.
In both the pay and evaluation situations,the individual can't directly control the decision but can react to the procedures used to make it.Even when a particular decision has negative outcomes for the individual (lay off,demotion),fair procedures help ensure that the individual feels that her interests are being protected.
Employees' assessments of procedural justice have also been related to their trust in management,intention to leave the organization,evaluation of their supervisor,employee theft,and job satisfaction.Procedural justice has also been found to affect the attitudes of workers who survive a layoff.When workers are laid off,survivors are often in a good position to judge the fairness of the layoff in terms of how it was handled.When a layoff is handled fairly,survivors feel more committed to the organization than when they believe that the laid-off workers were treated unfairly.