Organizational justice enactment: An agent-focused review and path forward

Justice enactment reflects the extent to which agents (e.g., supervisors, decision-makers, and others with power to treat others fairly) adhere to or violate justice rules. Despite the soaring interest that this vantage point has received in recent years, the justice literature focusing on the agent has remained rather fragmented. Further, this literature lacks a framework that integrates the recent empirical work, captures the current state of the field, and proposes questions that remain. Our review summarizes the extant findings on justice enactment by addressing two underlying questions: 1) why do agents behave fairly or unfairly? and 2) what helps or impedes agents' ability to adhere to well-established principles of organizational justice? Upon reviewing over forty empirical articles, we propose a path forward to optimize our understanding of justice enactment and its relationship with a host of individual, vocational, and organizational behaviors. We highlight various areas that are particularly well-suited to benefit from further research: 1) investigating additional justice motives, 2) approaching organizational justice enactment as a shared responsibility of targets and agents, 3) assessing justice enactment in agents' and targets' vocational development, 4) exploring the role of justice enactment in individuals' wellbeing, 5) advancing our understanding of cross-cultural factors in enacting justice, and 6) and nesting justice enactment within the context of contemporary culture and morality.