13768: Contextualising Organisational Justice: Insights from Chilean Workers in the Public Sector (session 25765)

How do employees understand the meaning and practices of OJ in workplaces in a developing country? This article explores situated understandings of organisational justice (OJ) to develop new research directions. Drawing on data from 48 interviews with workers in four organisations in the public sector in Chile, the article extends theorizing about OJ through a contextual analytical lens that interrogates experiences and interpretations within the socio-historical, economic, and political context in which they are produced. The article makes at least three theoretical contributions. First, it theorises OJ as a situated construct, underscoring the importance of embedding contextual factors to gain a more nuanced understanding of OJ. Second, it shows how context-specific cultural values and perceptions of fairness interplay to shape understandings of OJ. Third, the article offers a typology to understand how OJ emerges from this interplay. The article outlines the contours of a research agenda that shifts from a universalistic to a context-based approach in OJ research.

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