EMPLOYEES’ ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE PERCEPTIONS
IN TURKISH SCHOOLS
Osman TiTrek
Sakarya University, Sakarya, Turkey
The purpose of this study was to determine the levels of organizational justice in staff at
Turkish schools, according to managers’ and employees’ perceptions. Participants were 104
school managers, 834 teachers and 78 other employees (1,016) who were selected from 7 city
schools. To gather data, the Perceptions of Fair Interpersonal Treatment Scale Turkish version
(Wasti, 2001) was used. Results from ANOVA and t test showed that most deficiencies in
organizational justice behaviors in Turkish schools related to managers’ behaviors towards
employees. School position, gender, experience, and marital status also significantly affect
employees’ perception.
Keywords: organizational justice, Turkish schools, managers, teachers.
One of the most important aspects of living as a society is acting justly. Justice
prevents conflict of benefits, lack of orderly planning and disagreements between
people. Justice is the basis of social order and for this reason the goal of the state
is to provide justice as the basis of its organizations. Justice refers to observing
the rights, laws and performing behaviors in the state’s social environment
(Atalay, 2005). Based on this description, justice is a concept that delivers
benefits equally to all, organizes social order to support correct behaviors, and
provides citizens with ethical and lawful rights to conduct their lives in society
and in organizations.
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2009, 37(5), 605-620
© Society for Personality Research (Inc.)
DOI 10.2224/sbp.2009.37.5.605
605
Osman Titrek, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Education,
Sakarya University, Turkey, and Affiliate Academician at Western Michigan University, Woodhall,
Kalamazoo, MI, USA.
Appreciation is due to anonymous reviewers.
Please address correspondence and reprint requests to: Assistant Professor Dr. Osman Titrek, Sakarya
University, Hendek Campus, 54300 Hendek, Sakarya, Turkey. Phone: +90 5353 697231; Fax: +90
2646 141034; Fax: otitrek@sakarya.edu.tr

ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE IN TURKISH SCHOOLS606
One of the dimensions of justice is organizational justice. The first studies
related to organizational justice were based on Adam’s equality theory. According
to Adams (1965), people develop their general perception of organizational
justice based on success in the job environment and their satisfaction from
the job. Organizational justice as a theory focuses on how individuals socially
construct incidents involving justice (Cropanzano & Greenberg, 1997; Folger
& Cropanzano, 1998, 2001; Folger & Martin, 1986; Folger, Rosenfield, &
Robinson, 1983; Greenberg, 1990; Poole, 2007). Furthermore, organizational
justice encourages managers and employees within an organization to act in a
fair and trustworthy manner (Ferrie, Kivimaki, Elovainio, & Vahtera, 2003).
When employees are exposed to unjust behaviors in an organization, they
become motivated to find justice and to make the situation just by their own
honest behaviors (Barclay, 2002). Employees compare their benefits with other
employees who work in a similar position for other organizations and, as a
result, they develop a positive or negative attitude about their jobs, managers,
and organizations. If employees think that in the organization people act fairly
and benefits are distributed fairly, a positive perception of organizational justice
develops. But if employees think they are not treated fairly and benefits are not
distributed equally to them, they develop a negative perception of justice (İşcan
& Naktiyok, 2004; Özdevecioğlu, 2004; Tan, 2006).
Based on the distribution of benefits, the perception of organizational justice
has five dimensions: distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice,
relational justice, and informing justice (Cropanzono & Greenberg, 1997).
Distributive justice is related to resource distribution, or justice as equity or
fair outcomes. Researchers have found that distributive fairness judgments are
influential determinants of satisfaction with conflict resolution and allocation
of organizational resources (Lind & Tyler, 1988). The relative distribution of
salaries and benefits, merit pay, office space, and budgetary funds are examples
of matters that employees often view through a distributive justice lens (Poole,
2007). The earliest researchers in this field suggested that employees perceived
resource allocation decisions as fair only when they were favorable to the
individual making the judgment. A distributive perspective on justice reinforces
the view that self-interest drives perceptions of justice (Cropanzano & Greenberg,
1997; Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, 2001). Other factors besides outcomes must
be influencing employees’ perceptions of justice, and among them are the
procedures used to make decisions.
Procedural justice is defined in terms of fair procedures and just decisions that
result from those fair procedures. Thibaut and Walker (1975; cited in Beugre,
1998) argued that “different conflict resolution procedures were needed,
depending upon whether disputes revolved around cognitive conflicts (beliefs
about truth) or conflicts of interest”. Since then, researchers have examined