It is impossible to maintain the proper state of human society without justice. As for the latter, it has a variety of definitions; nevertheless, in a general sense, it can be regarded as the use of principles allowing to give people everything that they deserve and prevent depriving people of anything that belongs to them. Despite the apparent simplicity of justice, there are several ways to administer it. Therefore, it can be stated that there are a few types of justice. Procedural justice and distributive justice are two types that are closely interconnected even though they deal with different aspects of social structure. To begin with, distributive justice is connected to the fairness of distribution. In other words, to administer distributive justice one should ensure that all the people are given equal rights and opportunities when it comes to the distribution of the resources (Greenberg & Colquitt, 2013, p.60).
The latter may include money, goods, material values, and even intangible things such as attention, proper treatment, and respect. Distributive justice is closely interconnected with the notion of equality and responsibility encouraging people to distribute the resources fairly and help those who are given less than the other people. If we speak about procedural justice, it is necessary to say that it is connected not to the resources themselves but to the particular ways and procedures used to distribute the resources that are essential for the well-being of humanity. This type of justice primarily refers to the application of the principle of fairness when it comes to resolving disputes and when there is a need to find the most appropriate way of distributing the resources. Therefore, there is a difference between these types of justice; at the same time, they are closely interconnected.
Another important question that is necessary to be considered is the role of supervisors within organizations in connection to procedural and distributive justice. There is an opinion that they are allowed to control everything connected to procedural justice in their departments whereas distributive justice is almost out of their control. I believe the given statement to be true. These people are responsible for the work of certain departments of their organizations and it means that they have to make decisions according to the principles developed by key management personnel. Each department is given only the part of resources, and the key principles of their distribution are usually pre-agreed; therefore, supervisors are not allowed to make decisions that are contrary to these rules. As for procedural justice, they are given greater authority in this sphere. Although there are certain measures that upper management recommends them to take, the primary value of the particular department for the management is its effective work. Furthermore, some cases should be regarded individually. Therefore, supervisors may develop their solutions concerning procedural justice in many cases.
If I was to prevent an employee from quitting due to her dissent from the opinion of her boss, I would try to apply the participation model to resolve the conflict (He, Zhu, & Zheng, 2014). According to this model, everyone who is connected to the situation and affected by it has a right to contribute to the final decision. Therefore, I would invite more people who could take an unbiased look at her performance and evaluate it. If the employee was right, I would explain it to her boss and ask him to apologize to her and change his position.
References
Greenberg, J., & Colquitt, J. A. (2013). Handbook of organizational justice. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
He, H., Zhu, W., & Zheng, X. (2014). Procedural justice and employee engagement: Roles of organizational identification and moral identity centrality. Journal of Business Ethics, 122(4), 681-695.