The Importance of Organizational Justice in Personnel Selection: Defining When Selection Fairness Really Matters

The purpose of this paper is to examine the usefulness of the organizational justice approach to applicant reactions. We begin with an overview of the research relating the fairness of selection procedures ("selection fairness") to individual and organizational outcomes. Next we propose boundary conditions defining when fairness should matter, the appropriate outcomes to examine in applicant reactions research, and methodological issues limiting the contribution of much of the current literature. We then consider a range of questions that remain to be addressed and new issues such as high-tech testing. Finally, we propose a series of applied questions and recommendations based on both theory and empirical research.