According to research, unfairness leads to such things as theft, sabotage, and even violence. Why do some employees respond in such an extreme and sometimes risky fashion? Such matters raise one of the core questions still not conclusively answered in the study of workplace fairness: why do people act in reaction to injustice in the first place? Historically, managerial scientists have distinguished two broad models, sometimes called instrumental and interpersonal, respectively (Cropanzano, Rupp, Mohler, & Schminke, 2001). We begin with that terminology but thereafter offer an alternative.
As proposed by the instrumental model, justice is important because it helps promote personal goals, while injustice jeopardizes them. Much early work tended to view the instrumental model as oriented around economic or quasi-economic self-interest, although this model can also be viewed as referring to a desire for psychological control (Cropanzano et al., 2001). The interpersonal model, on the other hand, views justice as important because it indicates one's standing within a valued social group. Injustice threatens a secure identity because it signals exclusion as a valued member of a desirable collective (cf. Tyler & Blader, 2000). Solid evidence supports each of these models. Psychological control and interpersonal standing can indeed influence a sense of fairness and, hence, reactions to unfairness as thereby perceived.
Despite this evidence, we argue that these two models, taken by themselves to the exclusion of all alternatives, do not provide a comprehensive set of justice motives, nor do they reflect a full set of reactions to (in)justice. In fact, they essentially ignore principled moral obligations and instead substitute personal desires as reasons for acting fairly or responding negatively to injustice. Surely accounts of justice remain incomplete without reference to morality. When people behave with fairness or react negatively to unfairness, they can have reasons other than the pursuit of psychological control or social esteem. Justice includes treating others as they should or deserve to be treated by adhering to standards of right and wrong. In other words, justice is in part a judgment about the morality of an outcome, process, or interpersonal interaction. It is concerned with what people view as ethically appropriate, and not merely what serves their economic self-interest or group-based identity.
It is not entirely clear how much the instrumental and interpersonal models pertain to morality as considered here. This is because they are formulated with respect to the needs of a particular individual and not about the well-being of others. According to the instrumental and interpersonal models, the reasons that individuals care about fairness is because injustice threatens control over