What is it about?
Most research on organizational justice is based on Western samples, leaving Arab workplaces largely understudied. This article presents the first comprehensive meta-analysis of organizational justice in the Arab world, synthesizing evidence from 61 studies across 20 Arab countries. The findings show that employees’ perceptions of fairness strongly influence trust, commitment, job satisfaction, performance, and organizational citizenship behavior. Importantly, the study reveals that interpersonal justice—respectful and dignified treatment—plays a more central role in Arab contexts than procedural fairness, which is often emphasized in Western models. By comparing Arab findings with established Western meta-analyses, the study demonstrates that while some justice effects are universal, their relative importance is culturally shaped. These results challenge one-size-fits-all theories of fairness and call for culturally grounded approaches to organizational justice.
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Why is it important?
It fills a major gap in organizational justice research by integrating Arabic-language and regional studies that were previously excluded from global syntheses. It shows that fairness is not interpreted the same way across cultures, with relational treatment carrying exceptional weight in Arab workplaces. It provides evidence-based guidance for managers and policymakers working in Arab and high power-distance contexts. It advances cross-cultural organizational psychology by questioning the universality of dominant Western justice models.
Perspectives
As an organizational psychologist working in the Arab world, I have long been concerned by the limited representation of Arab contexts in mainstream organizational justice research. Much of what we know about fairness at work is derived from Western samples, yet these findings are often applied—implicitly or explicitly—to Arab organizations without sufficient empirical justification. This study grew out of a sustained effort to bridge that gap. Over many years of research, teaching, and supervision, I observed that employees in Arab workplaces frequently spoke about fairness in relational terms—respect, dignity, and humane treatment—rather than solely in terms of formal procedures. However, these insights were rarely reflected in global reviews or meta-analyses. By conducting this meta-analysis, my aim was not only to synthesize existing evidence but also to make Arab research visible, cumulative, and theoretically consequential. Bringing together studies published in both Arabic and English allowed us to test whether dominant justice theories travel well across cultures, or whether they require contextual recalibration. Personally, I see this work as part of a broader commitment to the indigenization of organizational psychology—where local research is not treated as peripheral, but as essential for refining theory, informing practice, and advancing a truly global science of work and organizations.
Prof. Othman H Alkhadher
Kuwait University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Organizational Justice in the Arab World: A Comparative Meta-Analytical Review of Constructs and Related Outcomes, Cross-Cultural Research, November 2025, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/10693971251383653.
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