Understanding injustice-related aggression in organizations:: a cognitive model

Recent developments in the literature on workplace aggression emphasized the role of perceived injustice in the occurrence of aggressive behaviours in the workplace. The present article develops a cognitive model, which contends that perceptions of injustice are necessary but not sufficient to trigger aggressive behaviours in the workplace. Rather, retaliatory actions following perceived injustices are embedded in a nexus of personal values, blame attribution, opportunities to carry out the aggressive action, probability of retaliation from the target or a third party, and the advantages incurred by such actions. The paper develops three constructs, injustice threshold, repertoire of perceived injustices and psychological suspended sentence, to explain individual reactions to perceived injustices. Implications for empirical investigations and practice are discussed.