Workplaces as communities: The role of social networks in who seeks, gives, and accepts information on justice issues

This article examines individuals in a community as defined by their membership in an organization. In such a setting, individuals often make use of their social contacts to make sense of events in the organization. Yet, the organizational justice literature is generally silent on how these contacts shape information seeking, volunteering, and acceptance. Using a social network Perspective, we found that expressive ties were positively related to information seeking, volunteering, and acceptance for both procedural and interactional justice issues. Instrumental ties were related to all dependent variables for procedural justice issues but only related to information seeking for interactional justice issues. The role of ties and networks in information flow is discussed. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.