Organizational justice is dedicated to the study of perceptions of fairness within the workplace. Hundreds of studies converge on the notion that justice matters, such that profound negative implications arise when individuals perceive unfairness. Previous research has sought to manage and repair violations of fairness through three distinct means: Managerial excuses and justifications, training interventions for managers, and remedies distributed by the organization. There is an ironic shortcoming with this generalization: It ignores the victim who is at the centre of an injustice. Herein lays the starting point of the current study. Putting the victim back into the forefront of justice research, this study examined the role of victims of workplace injustice in their own recovery process. The study introduced talk from clinical and social psychological literatures. Recovery was construed as a victim’s goal, with talk as the journey towards that goal. It asks; can victims recover from the negative effects of a fairness violation, and more specifically, can talk, that is, conversation with others, aid such a recovery process? Recovery is the emotional, cognitive and behavioral journey an individual goes through in order to work towards a resolution to their experience: It is a victim’s ongoing efforts to manage an injustice. A mixed methods design incorporating interviews and survey provided support for the presence of talk in the context of workplace injustice. Findings indicate the prevalence of a type of talk that embodies an emotion and cognition component, with anger and justice needs as the trigger for talk, and outcomes such as self-efficacy, a search for solutions, increased support and optimism, and lessened anger, all representing consequences of talk relevant for victim’s recovery.
HTML PDFShare this article
