One hundred and ninety-four US working adults (99 female) were recruited via Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to complete an online survey for payment (Buhrmester et al., 2011; Mason and Suri, 2012; Paolacci and Chandler, 2014; Landers and Behrend, 2015). One case had incomplete data and was not included in the analyses. Participants completed the survey in reference to their current job. Average age of participants was 39.78 (SD = 14.20); 69% of respondents were employed full-time in a broad range of occupations (e.g., service, professional, academic); mean organization tenure was 6.96 years (SD = 7.60); and the median income category was $30,000–$39,000.

As in prior research (see Colquitt et al., 2013), perceptions of informational and interpersonal justice were highly inter-correlated (r = 0.719, p = 0.001). Given that (a) these scales shared over 50% of the variance (Law et al., 1998) and (b) we had no theoretical reason to distinguish the two facets (Colquitt and Shaw, 2005; Ambrose and Schminke, 2009), we combined them into a composite to reduce multicollinearity in the analyses. Although distributive and procedural justice were also significantly inter-correlated, the subscales shared less than 50% of the variance, thus we maintained their distinction in the analyses.

At the bivariate level, distributive, procedural, and informational/interpersonal justice correlated significantly with employee deviance (see Table 1). Consistent with past research, the overall mean level of deviance was relatively low (M = 1.97, SD = 0.83); however, the distribution was not excessively skewed and was therefore left untransformed. Deviance correlated negatively with employee age, replicating past findings. As expected, gender, tenure, and income were each related to at least one of our focal variables, therefore we included them as covariates in the primary analyses.

To test Hypotheses 1a and 1b, we conducted a hierarchical regression analysis with deviance as the criterion (see Table 2). Step 1 included the control variables, and explained a significant proportion of variance. Of the control variables, only employee gender predicted deviance. Step 2 included the focal mean-centered justice predictors and employee age; together these accounted for significant increment in variance explained. Distributive justice negatively predicted deviance; informational/interpersonal justice and procedural justice did not. As expected from past research, employee age negatively predicted deviance.

The three focal interaction terms were entered into Step 3 of the regression analysis and accounted for significant incremental variance. There was a significant interaction between employee age and distributive justice (B = 0.010, SE = 0.003, t = 2.838, p = 0.005, 95% CI [0.003, 0.017]), however, there was no significant interaction between employee age and procedural justice (p = 0.833). Hypothesis 1a was therefore partially supported. In support of Hypothesis 1b, employee age interacted with informational/interpersonal justice in predicting employee deviance (B = −0.011, SE = 0.005, t = −2.351, p = 0.020, 95% CI [−0.020, −0.002]).

As recommended by Aiken and West (1991), we plotted the interactions at one standard deviation above and below the mean on the predictors, and simple slopes were tested for significance (Dawson and Richter, 2006). Plotting interactions at one standard deviation on employee age is appropriate, as this represents employees at approximately 26 and 54 years of age (i.e., adequately representing younger and older employees in the workplace context; US Department of Labor, 2016). As shown in Figure 2, distributive justice was significantly related to deviance in younger employees (t = −3.665, p < 0.001), but not in older employees (t = 0.187, p = 0.852). Tests of simple effects showed that the effect of employee age at −1 SD on distributive justice was significant (t = −3.869, p < 0.001). Also, as shown in Figure 2 informational/interpersonal justice was significantly related to deviance in older employees (t = −3.610, p < 0.001), but not in younger employees (t = 0.216, p = 0.829). Tests of simple effects showed that the effect of employee age at +1 SD on informational/interpersonal justice was significant (t = −3.107, p = 0.002). Importantly, the findings from Study 1 are independent of employee gender, income, and tenure¹.

Two hundred and thirty-one US working adults were recruited via StudyResponse.net. StudyResponse.net is an academic organization that provides researchers with access to employees who participate in online research for pay, and has been used in prior psychological research (e.g., Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006; Bobocel, 2013; also see Landers and Behrend, 2015). Study 2 was administered in two sessions, separated by approximately 2 weeks. In the first session, employees provided demographic information including the control variables (to follow) as well perceptions of organizational justice in reference to their current job. In the second session, employees completed measures of emotional exhaustion and employee deviance. Forty-one participants from the first session failed to respond to the second session. Participants who failed to respond to the second did not differ significantly from those who completed both sessions on any of the focal predictors or control variables. Two participants submitted incomplete data and were not included in the analyses. In both sessions, we included two attention check items to assess careless responding (e.g., Meade and Craig, 2012). Five participants failed both items in at least one session and were therefore excluded from analysis, leaving a total sample of 183 (85 female), for a response rate of approximately 80%. Average age was 42.15 (SD = 13.55). All participants were employed full-time in a broad range of occupations (e.g., service, professional, academic), as in Study 1; mean tenure was 8.96 years (SD = 8.04), and the median income category was $70,000–79,000.

As in Study 1, informational justice and interpersonal justice items were combined given their substantial overlap, r = 0.781, p = 0.001. Distributive justice and procedural justice were also highly inter-correlated, r = 0.733, p = 0.001, and thus combined into a single index².

As expected, at the bivariate level, negative affect was highly correlated with emotional exhaustion, deviance, distributive/procedural justice, and informational/interpersonal justice (Table 3), and therefore was controlled in all subsequent analyses. Deviance was significantly correlated with emotional exhaustion, informational/interpersonal justice, and marginally correlated with distributive/procedural justice. Emotional exhaustion was significantly correlated with both justice composites. As expected in light of our focus on production deviance, the mean level of deviance (M = 2.31) and standard deviation (SD = 1.24) were greater in Study 2 compared to Study 1. Employee age was again negatively associated with deviance. Given their correlations with the focal measures, we statistically controlled employee gender, tenure, and income in all subsequent analyses, as in Study 1.

In the present research, we integrated organizational justice theory with the literature on human aging. In so doing, we add to a growing body of research that demonstrates the important role of employee age for the organizational sciences in general (Baltes and Finkelstein, 2011; Bertolino et al., 2011; Tenhiälä et al., 2013; Henry et al., 2015; Scheibe et al., 2015; Zacher and Griffin, 2015), and in the study of justice processes more specifically (also see Bal et al., 2011). Our research showed that, in general, older employees engage less in employee deviance compared to their younger counterparts—but more novel, we also found that age shapes employees' sensitivity to workplace conditions, in this case, fairness-related experiences. Although fair treatment is relevant to employees of all ages, our findings suggest significant differences in the type of justice to which employees are especially sensitive. Younger employees are more sensitive than older employees to justice that fulfills needs for instrumental control, whereas older employees are more sensitive to justice that fulfills needs for relational belonging. As noted earlier, our findings are not accounted for by age-related differences in income, workplace tenure, or gender. Thus, they are consistent with research on human aging that has documented age-related changes in the salience of people's needs for instrumental control and relational belonging.

The present research has several important implications for research on organizational justice and employee deviance. Although past research has demonstrated a reliable negative relation between organizational justice and deviance (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001, 2013; Dalal, 2005; Berry et al., 2007), we advance the literature by demonstrating that different facets of justice relate to production deviance for younger and older employees. Similarly, whereas past research has long argued for the mediating role of emotional exhaustion in the association between justice and deviance, only a few recent studies have examined this relation empirically (e.g., Matta et al., 2014). In Study 2, we found that the negative relation between justice and production deviance can be explained through the effect of justice on emotional exhaustion. Moreover, employee age moderated this mediated effect: Older employees were more emotionally exhausted and in turn less effective performers when they perceived lower informational-interpersonal justice; in contrast, younger employees were more emotionally exhausted and in turn less effective when they perceived lower distributive/procedural justice. A recent meta-analysis revealed a broad range in effect sizes for different facets of justice and employee deviance (Colquitt et al., 2013), which could indicate the presence of significant uninvestigated moderators. The current research suggests that employee age may be one such moderator and reveals the existence of a more complex set of relations between justice, emotional exhaustion, and production deviance than previously known, relations that may be obscured without considering employee age. Thus, these studies contribute to a growing body of work showing the importance of investigating the effect of employee age in organizations, in particular showing the importance of considering age differences in the organizational justice research. In fact, whereas most justice research has treated employee age as a control variable, in the current research we demonstrate that employee age can dramatically alter the relations between different experiences of justice and important organizational outcomes.

Our findings also have broader implications for justice theory. In particular, they provide indirect support for the multiple needs model of justice (Cropanzano et al., 2001), which suggests that justice fulfills needs for instrumental control and relational belonging (also see Lind, 2001), and that different fairness-related experiences may be especially relevant for satisfying these needs. In this way, the present research may provide a conceptual framework for future research examining differential effects of justice facets. To the extent that distributive and procedural justice have greater instrumental value relative to informational and interpersonal justice, whereas the latter have greater relational value, then other factors (e.g., certain leadership styles) that increase the salience of employees' instrumental vs. relational needs should moderate the impact of the justice facets, as we observed in the present research.

A key strength of the present research is the general convergence in findings across the two studies. Study 2 was designed as a constructive replication of Study 1, which allowed us to determine whether similar results would be observed within a different sample of employees and with a different survey design (time lagged vs. cross-sectional). As well, Study 2 extended Study 1 by examining mediation of the moderating effect of age. Although procedural justice did not have the expected role in Study 1, the results were similar, and in line with our conceptual model. Moreover, in Study 2, age did not moderate the direct path from justice to deviance when emotional exhaustion was included; nevertheless, our higher-order moderated mediation model was supported. Future research should investigate the conditions under which age determines the direct relations between justice and organizational outcomes.

Our research also has some key limitations. First, the data are correlational, and therefore causal inference is not permitted. Nevertheless, the results are consistent with our conceptual model, which we derived by integrating theory and prior research in different domains, justice, emotional exhaustion, deviance, and the psychology of aging. Moreover, in Study 2, we took steps to reduce third-variable alternative explanations, including using a two-wave study design and controlling for negative affect. Still, future research is needed to replicate our findings using experimental or longitudinal research designs, which enable causal inference among the variables.

In addition, employees may have exaggerated reports of unfairness and underreported the frequency of deviance given that our measures are self-reported. However, preliminary examination of the data revealed that responses to all measures in both studies were normally distributed and not excessively skewed; since responses were anonymous, threat of inflated or deflated reports is reduced (see Berry et al., 2012). Furthermore, our methods followed precedent in the measurement of justice, emotional exhaustion, and deviance. In particular, researchers have suggested that self-reports of deviance can be more reliable than other-reports because deviant behaviors are more likely to be acted out in private (e.g., Fox et al., 2007; Jones, 2009). Indeed, a recent meta-analysis comparing other- vs. self-reported deviance showed moderate-to-strong relations between the two, and recommended that self-reports are appropriate in most cases (Berry et al., 2012).

Our research also raises questions for future research. First, we hypothesized that employee age would moderate the relations between justice perceptions and psychological and behavioral outcomes due to age-related changes in the relative salience of basic psychological needs. Although we derived our hypotheses from existing theory and research, we did not assess the relative salience of instrumental and relational needs in the present research. Given this, we cannot make firm conclusions regarding the underlying role of psychological needs from the present research. Whereas the pattern of our data, the double dissociations in particular, are consistent with the underlying theory, it is necessary in future research to investigate directly the extent to which the salience of needs (e.g., across time or contexts) shapes employees' sensitivity to fairness.

Second, the theory guiding our research suggested that distributive and procedural justice should have similar effects, given their instrumental value to employees, as should informational and interpersonal justice, given their relational value. Thus, we had no reason a priori to separate the former, nor the latter justice facets. Nevertheless, in Study 1, distributive and procedural justice were only moderately inter-correlated, therefore, on empirical grounds we analyzed them separately, demonstrating the predicted effects for distributive but not procedural justice. In a follow up analysis, we created a distributive/procedural justice composite and re-ran the regression predicting deviance. Here, we found a significant and nearly identical interaction (t = 2.819, p = 0.005) with employee age, as reported in Study 2. Thus, although distributive and procedural justice were not as highly inter-correlated in Study 1 compared to Study 2, the findings are the same as in Study 2 when we combine them in the analysis. This supplementary analysis is supportive of Hypothesis 1a, but the inconsistency in results across the two studies—in particular, the differences in magnitude of inter-correlation between distributive and procedural justice—is a limitation (but see Footnote 2). Future research is needed to better understand under what circumstances, and to what extent, employee age alters the effect of different justice facets.

Third, whereas Study 1 used a broad measure of deviance, in Study 2 we focused on production deviance specifically. We made this adjustment in Study 2 because production deviance is more frequent than the more anti-social types of deviance (e.g., abuse, theft), especially among older employees. Furthermore, whereas emotional exhaustion should be sufficient to impair employees' ability to maintain appropriate job-related behavior, we expected that the more anti-social types of deviance may require additional motivational mechanisms, such as the desire for revenge (see Footnote 4). Thus, we reasoned that production deviance would be especially pertinent to our model. Although this adjustment provided greater specificity in Study 2, the inconsistency between the two studies remains. Future research is needed to examine whether employee age also alters the effect of justice on motivational mechanisms such as the desire for revenge, which tend to amplify the more anti-social types of deviance.

Fourth, we measured employees' perceptions of justice using an established measure, which assesses the extent to which respondents perceive that particular normative rules are upheld. Recent research suggests the utility in also assessing perceived injustice, that is, the extent to which respondents perceive that normative fairness rules are violated (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2015). Future research is needed to explore whether and the extent to which employee age also moderates the effects of perceived injustice. For example, it may be the case that older workers, although better able to suppress deviance in general, are more sensitive than younger workers to injustice, potentially because people become more motivated to pursue prosocial experiences as they age. In this case, the differences in reactions between younger and older employees to injustice may be even more pronounced than those we observed here.

Considering injustice may also have implications for studying the more anti-social types of deviance, discussed earlier. That is, given that people experience losses more intensely than gains (e.g., Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) justice violations should be experienced more intensely than justice adherence. As such, justice violations would be more likely to motivate the anti-social types of deviance. Indeed, Colquitt et al. (2015) found initial evidence that injustice explained incremental variance beyond justice on one type of anti-social deviance (i.e., supervisor-directed deviance). Thus, it is possible that our present conceptual model would also apply to the more anti-social types of deviance, when assessing injustice as the predictor. Future research should continue to test the differential effects of justice and injustice experiences on the varieties of employee deviance.

Finally, future research should examine other personal or situational factors that affect the salience of employees' instrumental relative to relational needs that may moderate the impact of the different facets of justice, similar to our findings with employee age. For example, personality characteristics (e.g., strong other-orientation), may relate to greater needs for relational belonging, and therefore to greater sensitivity to informational and interpersonal justice, relative to distributive and procedural justice. Importantly, much research in psychology has demonstrated that individuals' self-identities can shift as a function of situational factors (e.g., Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Turner et al., 1994). For example, employees' collective (other-oriented) self-identity is heightened in the presence of charismatic vs. transactional leadership (see Paul et al., 2001; Zdaniuk and Bobocel, 2015). Thus, it is possible that justice may have differential effects within-person, depending on the context. Future research is needed to examine differential justice effects both between and within-person.

Our findings have practical importance for organizational policy and decision-making. In particular, whereas managers need to understand the importance of distributing outcomes fairly and using fair decision-making procedures, our results suggest that they also need to recognize the increasing importance of ensuring informational and interpersonal justice, within the context of an aging workforce. The current findings also highlight that, despite the importance of all forms of fair treatment, it is important to consider the “fit” between fairness-related policies and employee age. Specifically, equitable pay and fair procedures may be insufficient to satisfy older employees, in the context of an organizational climate that fails to emphasize respectful treatment. Similarly, a respectful climate may be insufficient to satisfy younger workers, in the context of relatively less equitable pay.

Beyond implications for fairness-related policies, the findings could have implications for the success of any policies that fulfill employees' instrumental or relational needs, given that reactions to such policies might differ as a function of employee age. In particular, by considering age-related changes in the salience of needs, practitioners may gain insight into why such policies are (or are not) effective. It may also suggest ways to make certain that policies appeal to a broader range of employees. For example, past research showed that older employees are less motivated than younger employees to participate in training programs (Kooij et al., 2011); drawing on the present findings, it is possible that this may be because organizations mainly promote such programs by referencing their instrumental value for career advancement, which may appeal less to older employees. Rather, organizations might increase the appeal of training programs among older employees by highlighting the relational value of training. For example, practitioners could emphasize that training can provide opportunities for older employees to mentor junior colleagues, which may be appealing in light of their older employees' orientation toward generativity. Thus, by considering employee age and age-related changes in the salience of instrumental vs. relational needs, practitioners may be better able to manage a number of organizational policies.