Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 1008–1012 (2011)

Published online 11 April 2011 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.752

Commentary Pitfalls of administering justice in an inconsistent

*Correspondence to: DLisbon 1649-023, Port

Copyright # 2011

world: Some reflections on the consistency rule

DAVID L. PATIENT*

Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Palma de Cima,Lisbon 1649-023, Portugal

Summary The unique legal context investigated by Stein, Steinley, and Cropanzano (this issue) highlights importantchallenges facing decision makers charged with administering justice in turbulent environments. First, rulesmay need to be adapted to new information and changed circumstances. Second, consistency over time cancompete with altruistic motives, moral convictions, and other important principles. Third, decisionmakersmay face demands from multiple audiences to re-interpret a rule in ways that are harsher, more lenient, orotherwise different than previously warranted. Since managers in other organizational settings can also facestrong pressures to change over time how they interpret and apply rules, the legal context highlights importantaspects of fairness that can compete with consistency over time, and that merit further investigation.Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: Terror Management Theory; procedural justice; fairness; terrorism; judicial sentencing

Introduction

To examine effects of terrorism on the consistency rule of procedural justice, Stein, Steinley, and Cropanzano

(this issue) examine real decisions made by real judges. Specifically, they test hypotheses derived from

Terror Management Theory (TMT) on the decisions of the entire population of US federal judges, a body ‘‘legally

bound to maintain fairness’’ and ‘‘charged with doling out consistent and fair punishment.’’ It is the apparent

failure of these conscientious and highly trained professionals to do so in the 12-year period bisected by the

devastating terrorist attacks of September 2001 that makes this research intriguing. The article and its central

finding should be of interest to both scholars and laypersons interested in effects of terrorism on the administration

of justice.

It veers toward understatement to say that this is an impressive dataset. Kudos to the authors for testing their

hypotheses using a database of almost 1 million criminal cases over a 12-year period. It is less usual than one would

expect, especially given the contributions from court settings to early research on procedural justice, to see

organizational justice investigated in legal domains. In addition, it is refreshing to see hypotheses regarding

organizational justice tested in the field and in a quasi-experimental design. Testing TMT in a field setting alone

counts as an important contribution. However, it is not exactly the one that the authors purport to make. Rather, the

article sets out to increase our understanding of organizational justice, a perspective that has tended to focus on

employee fairness perceptions regarding workplace allocations and treatment. Accordingly, in the comments that

avid L. Patient, Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Palma de Cima,ugal. E-mail: dapati@fcee.ucp.pt

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 31 January 2011, Accepted 5 February 2011

PROCEDURAL JUSTICE AND INCONSISTENCY OVER TIME 1009

follow I focus on the following question: what can we learn from the legal context that could inform our

investigations and understanding of procedural justice in other organizational contexts.

The unique setting and population that are strengths of this study can initially raise some concerns when it

comes to learning about justice within organizations. I would in fact suggest that this research is both oversold

and undersold when the authors suggest that the results from federal judges can be expected to apply, only more so,

to managers in response to employee infractions. Oversold because federal judges are not typical managers,

accused criminals differ from employees in important ways, and sentencing criminals for murder or kidnapping

is not like deciding who gets a bonus or the next promotion. Undersold because the setting – federal

judges sentencing criminal offenders – is different enough in important respects to bring to light aspects of

procedural justice that may be less apparent but nonetheless important in more mundane organizational settings.

Let me attempt to identify contributions of this research by addressing three questions. First, what do we learn?

Second, what don’t we learn? Finally, and as the focus of this commentary, what else can we learn from this

research?

What Do We Learn?

The article make several important points. Judicial sentencing for the same offence can be inconsistent across

time, violating a key aspect of procedural justice (Leventhal, 1980). Such inconsistency can be even observed in

the decisions of highly trained professionals, in the presence of highly constraining guidelines, and in spite of

a mandate to dispense justice consistently. How harshly judges sentence offenders can be affected by a

terrorist event, but only in the case of crimes that are intentional, that cause harm to individuals, and that violate

moral norms, i.e., for offences high in moral severity. This research provides strong support that hypotheses from

TMT can successfully be applied to organizational settings, including criminal courts and sentencing behavior.

Further, whereas, most research on organizational justice investigates perceptions of fairness, this research

contributes to the nascent literature examining predictors of just versus unjust behaviors, i.e., on justice as a

dependent variable.

What Don’t We Learn?

On the other hand, we don’t know for sure why judges begin to increase sentences for morally severe offences

following September 2001, nor why they continue to do so in the 4 years that follow. We also don’t know how the

key finding might apply to the decisions of other organizational actors, in response to more mundane infractions, and

following less calamitous event than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Importantly, we don’t know how the organizational

actors, in this case the federal judges, perceive the fairness of the longer post-9/11 sentences they levy. It is

tempting to simply take a third-party view of sentencing behaviors, as the authors have done, and label a sudden

change in sentences over time as procedurally unjust. But would the judge, members of the public, or even the

offender see harsher sentences as necessarily unjust? There can be value in exploring the reasons for the changes in

sentencing from the perspective of the actor, the judge who may be responding to new information, social

pressures, changed views of criminality, or other factors. Just as Taylor (2001) has emphasized the importance of

exploring what justice really is for employees, it strikes me as equally important to attempt to understand

what justice really is for individuals administering it, such as these federal judges. What insights can be gained

by asking how might they view, and explain, their (changed) sentencing behaviors, including in terms of procedural

fairness?

Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 1008–1012 (2011)

DOI: 10.1002/job

1010 D. L. PATIENT

What Else Can We Learn?

The authors have chosen not to focus on distinctive aspects of the legal context or decision makers, apart from

asserting that the mandate and training of judges should make any inconsistencies observed in their sentencing

‘‘more likely to generalize to other samples, where decision-makers have less formal training.’’ Otherwise, the

article has not explored differences between procedural justice in the legal context and procedural justice in other

organizational settings. For instance, the authors assert that ‘‘In term of assessing punishment, federal courts are

much like a human resources department,’’ and that ‘‘the deviant acts examined in the present paper are not, for the

most part, terribly different from the kinds of law-breaking that can take place in the workplace.’’

In fact, there may be important differences between legal and other contexts. In highlighting aspects that are

distinctive to or more salient in legal contexts, we might bring to light additional, perhaps neglected, aspects of

procedural justice. We can also attempt to identify aspects of this particular situation that might explain and mitigate

the apparent injustice caused by inconsistent sentencing. In other words: how might the sentencing behavior of the

federal judges be construed as fair?

They adapt and update the law to changed circumstances

Rules and their interpretation are not inert. A key role of judges, and of juries, has always been to reconcile the letter

of the lawwith prevailing social mores and changed fact-circumstances. Changes in the perceived severity of a crime

or of a punishment can make it inequitable to apply past formulas to balance specific offences and punishments. This

role of judges to update their interpretation and application of rules may be particularly important in situations where

the rules are outdated, hard to change, or ill-suited to the situation. We would expect this need for changes in rule

interpretation to increase in environments experiencing extreme tumult. It may be easier at such times for a manager

to change how they apply a rule than to have the rule itself changed – and then risk again becoming obsolete because

of changes in the context.

They apply other principles that compete with consistency over time

The authors correctly assert that the consistency principle is ‘‘among the most important factors affecting whether a

given decision is just.’’ Certainly, some regularity in application of rules are required if they are to guide andmotivate

behavior. However, consistency can compete with other principles that decision makers can regard as important. For

example, the consistency rule of procedural justice can compete with altruistic motives, which focus on helping

specific individuals rather than following general rules (Blader & Tyler, 2001). The consistency rule might also be

overridden in situations where decisions are evaluated according to strong moral convictions concerning the

outcome, rather than by procedural criteria (Skitka, 2010). The role of judges to ‘‘break’’ with previous decisions can

be particularly important in situations where the rote application of a rule could result in unintended outcomes.

They anticipate and respond to multiple audiences

Judges are accountable to multiple audiences. They are held to the standards of professional bodies. They can have

their decisions overturned by higher courts. In sentencing, judges must consider not only the perceptions of the

offender, but also the concerns of victim’s and victims’ families. Judges also seek to deter undesirable behavior by

potential offenders, to whom they must signal the severity of an offence. And judges in most democracies operate in

the public arena. Their decisions are announced publicly, scrutinized vigorously by different interest groups, and

widely commented on in the media. Public outcry can result when the decisions of judges are seen as too strict or too

Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 1008–1012 (2011)

DOI: 10.1002/job

PROCEDURAL JUSTICE AND INCONSISTENCY OVER TIME 1011

lenient, leading the judiciary to feel pressure to impose harsher or more lenient sentences for specific crimes, classes

of individuals, or types of offences.

The legal context and the unique pressures facing judges bring to mind at least the above three reasons for

violating the consistency rule of procedural justice. I have suggested that, at least some of the time, judges may feel

justified in changing over time their sentencing behaviors. They may see a key part of their role as the judicious

adapation of slow-changing rule to faster-changing situations. In fact, they may view interpreting rules differently

over time as a way, as circumstances change, to obtain decisions that are regarded as just.

Given the focus of the article and this commentary on organizational justice, what can be learned from this

research and from this unique legal context? A great deal, I would suggest, if many of these pressures facing judges

can also be experienced by managers taxed with administering rules, dispensing rewards, and punishments. Like

judges, managers must often balance procedural consistency against other important principles, adapt their decisions

over time to satisfy diverse audiences, and work around outdated rules. If judges are not careful to adapt to individual

and changing circumstances, social fairness and justice can be undermined by rigid reliance on rules and procedures

(Sitkin & Bies, 1993).

From the judicial context and this line of reasoning, several interesting questions emerge for organizational justice

research. First, under what circumstances does the consistent application (versus changes in interpretation) over time

of rules become seen as unjust, and to what effect? It is possible that the cross-sectional nature of most investigations

into organizations have led us to overestimate the importance in dynamic situations of consistency, and

underestimate the importance of adapting decisions to a changing environment. Second, further research should be

conducted into situations where moral mandates or altruistic intentions can be viewed by actors as elements of

fairness that are more important than consistent rule following. There are surely situations in organizations where it

can be viewed as unjust today to apply a rule in the same as it was applied yesterday, and these merit investigation.

Third, although organizational justice scholars have long acknowledged the perceptual and multi-faceted nature of

justice, researchers can do a better job of looking at justice in lived, complex situations, where conflicts frequently

arise between different aspects of fairness.

Conclusion

Stein and colleagues (this issue) find that how justice is administered can vary over time as a result of terrorist attacks.

Their hypotheses regarding TMT are supported, suggesting that the effects observed are in part a result of heightened

mortality salience. It is certainly reasonable to suspect that other organizational actors, including managers dispensing

rewards and punishments, might in similar circumstances also become more punitive toward transgressors. On the one

hand, such inconsistent decisions over time can be regarded as unjust because they violate the procedural rule of

consistency. On the other hand, I have tried to use this research as a springboard for contemplating several reasons why

judges – andmanagers –might justly and reasonably not always be consistent over time: the need to adapt their decisions

to changing circumstances, the need to balance consistency with other principles, and the need to anticipate and

respond to diverse audiences. Future research, especially if it looks at administration of justice over time and in

complex and challenging situations, may well find that how procedures are interpreted and applied differently over

time is an unexplored and important key to fairness in a dynamic – and often threatening – social world.

Author biographies

David L. Patient is an Assistant Professor in management at Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics

(CLSBE). He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Sauder School of Business at the University of

Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 1008–1012 (2011)

DOI: 10.1002/job

1012 D. L. PATIENT

British Columbia, Vancouver. His research focuses on predictors and consequences of organizational justice

perceptions and behaviors, especially relating to how negative news is communicated.

References

Blader, S. L., & Tyler, T. R. (2001). Justice and empathy:What motivates people to help others?. InM. Ross, & D. T. Miller (Eds.),The justice motive in everyday life (pp. 226–250). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Leventhal, G. (1980). What should be done with equity theory? In K. J. Gergen, M. S. Greenberg, & R. H. Willis (Eds.),Social exchange: Advances in theory and research, (pp. 27–55). New York, NY: Plenum.

Sitkin, S., & Bies, R. (1993). The legalistic organization: Definitions, dimensions, and dilemmas. Organization Science, 4, 345–350.

Skitka, L. J. (2010). The psychology of moral conviction. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4/4, 267–281.Taylor, S. (2001). Reflections on fairness: Continuing the progression of justice research and practice. Journal of VocationalBehavior, 58, 243–253.

Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 1008–1012 (2011)

DOI: 10.1002/job