Chapter 9: Some Observations and Critical Thoughts About the Present State of Justice Theory and Research

This chapter deals with observations and critical thoughts about some aspects of current theory and research on justice. Commentary focusses on the following topics: (1) The subjectivity of evaluations of justice and problems that may result from disregarding it; (2) the measurement of justice judgments and some problems with so-called indirect measures; (3) the distinction between instrumental and noninstrumental accounts of why people care about justice and the lack of theories considering possible nonselfrelated and moral nature concerns about justice; (4) the question of whether the notion of justice is actually needed as an explanatory concept in some of our theories, and (5) the meaningfulness of the term organizational justice.