Social Justice Research, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1987 Fairness and Participation in Evaluation Procedures: Effects on Task Attitudes and Performance Ruth Kanfer, 1,5 John Sawyer, 2 P. Christopher Eadey, 3 and E. Allan Lind 4 A laboratory study was conducted to examine the role of two components of participatory work evaluation procedures on fairness attitudes and work performance. "Opportunity for influential opinion expression" and "knowledge of evaluation criteria" were manipulated in a business simula- tion exercise. Thirty-eight male and 49female undergraduates worked under a task evaluation procedure that either did or did not allow them to express their opinions to the evaluator. In addition, subjects either were or were not provided with specific information about the criteria to be used in making the performance evaluation, and they received either a favorable or an un- favorable outcome. Questionnaire responses indicated that influential opi- nion expression enhanced perceptions of procedural and distributive fairness independently of the outcome of the evaluation. Both knowledge of evalua- tion criteria and perceptions of evaluation fairness correlated with subsequent task performance. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to understanding the influence o fprocedural justice on attitudes and task behavior in organizational settings. KEY WORDS: procedural justice; organizational behavior; social psychology; participation; performance appraisal. tDepartment of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 2Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois. 3Department of Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. 4The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California. 5All correspondence should be sent to Ruth Kanfer, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Elliott Hall, 75 E. River Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. 235 0885-7466/87/0600-02355o5.00/0 © i987 PlenumPublishing Corporation