Version of Record Doi: 10.1111/peps.12274

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Running head: JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
And Justice for All: How Organizational Justice Climate Deters Sexual Harassment
Cristina Rubino
California State University, Northridge
Derek R. Avery
Wake Forest University
Patrick F. McKay
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Brenda L. Moore
University of Buffalo
David C. Wilson
University of Delaware
Marinus S. Van Driel
Cut-e Group
L. Alan Witt
University of Houston
This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been
through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to
differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi:
10.1111/peps.12274.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Daniel P. McDonald
Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute
Acknowledgements
A prior version of this paper was presented at the 25th annual SIOP conference in Atlanta, GA in
2010.
Abstract
Sexual harassment is hurtful for victims, observers, and the organizations that employ them. Although
previous studies have identified numerous gender-specific antecedents such as sex similarity and
climate for sexual harassment, the present study considers the role of a more general contextual
construct – organizational justice climate. Beyond examining justice climate as a predictor of sexual
harassment, we also assess its potential moderation of well-established relationships between
antecedents (i.e., climate for sexual harassment and sex similarity) and sexual harassment at both the
individual and unit levels. In two large military samples (Ns = 26,018 and 8,197), we found that
psychological and collective justice climates (a) related negatively to sexual harassment and (b)
moderated the effects of sex similarity and sexual harassment climate on sexual harassment. These
findings indicate that harassment is less prevalent and established antecedents are less impactful when
greater value is perceived to be placed on fairness. Moreover, the attenuating effects of justice climate
appear interchangeable with those of harassment climate or sex similarity, suggesting that managing
justice climate effectively generally helps to deter sexual harassment.
Key words: Justice climate, sexual harassment, relational demography

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Statistics suggest sexual harassment is highly prevalent in today‘s workforce. According to
the 2017 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll, 35% of women and 9% of men report having experienced
it. And, 78% of women and 60% of men feel that sexual harassment is a serious problem (The
Economist/YouGov Poll, 2017). This problem is prevalent around the world, with 40-50% of women
in the European Union and 30-40% of women across Asia having experienced workplace sexual
harassment (UN Women, Fast facts: statistics on violence against women and girls, 2012). This
pervasiveness should prove troubling to organizations for several reasons. For instance, the U.S.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received nearly 7,000 charges of sexual
harassment amounting to $46 million in monetary benefits over litigation costs for charging parties in
2015 alone (EEOC, 2015). Sexual harassment also affects organizationally-valued outcomes
including employee withdrawal, satisfaction, organizational commitment, and team processes and
outcomes (e.g., conflict, cohesion, and financial performance; O‘Leary-Kelly, Bowes-Sperry, Bates,
& Lean, 2009; Raver & Gelfand, 2005; Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007). In addition to affecting
retention of current employees, the publicity resulting from sexual harassment lawsuits can influence
the recruitment of new employees negatively. Moreover, sexual harassment is ethically unjust, and
socially responsible organizations are concerned with ensuring the fair treatment of their employees
and protecting them from the deleterious outcomes of sexual harassment, such as negative mental and
physical health (Willness et al., 2007).
These alarming consequences prompted over 30 years of research dedicated to the
investigation of individual and organizational antecedents to sexual harassment in an effort to identify
ways to prevent its occurrence. Scholars have identified sexual harassment climate and job gender
context as the two most well-established precursors of sexual harassment, both reflecting
organizational commitment to the prevention of sexual harassment (O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009;
Willness et al., 2007). Organizational climate for sexual harassment refers to the extent that an

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organization is viewed as intolerant of gender-specific harassing behavior in terms of its policies
regarding sexual harassment and subsequent reactions to it, and job gender context is conceptualized
as the gender ratio in the workgroup and the nature of the job duties (i.e., traditional vs. non-
traditional). In the present study, we focus on the gender ratio component of the job gender context,
which we refer to as sex similarity (i.e., the proportion of unit members of the same biological sex as
the respondent).
Though the identification of these key antecedents has driven organizational interventions
aimed at deterring sexual harassment (e.g., policies, procedures, training), the effectiveness of these
initiatives has been limited and sexual harassment is still very prevalent in today‘s workplace
(Suddath, 2016), underscoring the need to explore other factors that may be influential in deterring its
occurrence. Numerous scholars have highlighted the importance of considering broader contextual
factors when looking to effectively manage a diverse workforce (Guillaume, Dawson, Woods,
Sacramento & West, 2013; Joshi & Roh, 2009; Shore, 2009) and specifically, to ensure the success of
HR initiatives (Avery & McKay, 2010; Bezrukova, Jehn, & Spell, 2012; Guillaume et al., 2013).
Further, examining sexual harassment climate and sex similarity independently limits the theoretical
meaningfulness of existing findings by negating other contextual factors that could influence how
effective these antecedents are in preventing harassment (Denison, 1996; Johns, 2006). Yet, despite
the decades of research linking these and other antecedents to sexual harassment, most of these
studies focus on gender-related antecedents and fail to explore more general organizational factors. As
such, practitioners and scholars alike lack a comprehensive understanding of sexual harassment within
the broader organizational context and other factors that may impact its occurrence and/or function as
boundary conditions of these relationships remain poorly understood.
The broad organizational context is comprised of various focused climates (e.g., justice,
service, safety) that are each related to a certain aspect of the work environment. As sexual

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harassment climate is only a part of this larger context, examining it in isolation fails to consider other
organizational climates that affect the influence of this particular climate on myriad employee and
organizational outcomes. Indeed, scholars have criticized climate research, which typically focuses on
specific climates independently, as being too narrow in scope (Kuenzi & Schminke, 2009) and
instead, emphasize the importance of taking a more holistic approach to climate research by
examining the interactive effects of multiple focused climates (Jiang & Probst, 2015; Kuenzi &
Schminke, 2009; McKay, Avery, Liao, & Morris, 2011; Schneider et al., 2013; Schneider, González-
Romá, Ostroff, & West, 2017).
The present study aims to expand the sexual harassment antecedent domain in hopes of
augmenting our understanding and, ultimately, reducing its occurrence. We respond to these
criticisms and address these gaps by extending sexual harassment research to explore the role of a
broader, contextual antecedent, organizational justice climate (i.e., employee beliefs that their
employer is fair), together with the two most well-established, gender-related antecedents – sexual
harassment climate and sex similarity. Organizational justice climate may be a particularly salient
antecedent to sexual harassment behavior because it advocates that all policies and procedures are
implemented equally across employees, which makes employees feel valued and shapes how
employees behave toward one another (Lin & Leung, 2014).
A few studies (Hertzog, Wright, & Beat, 2008; Lim & Cortina, 2005) have linked incivility,
which is conceptually related to justice climate, to sexual harassment. Incivility refers to behavior that
is rude, disrespectful, or condescending (Lim & Cortina, 2005), whereas a climate for incivility refers
to shared perceptions that incivility is commonplace and is the norm within a group (Paulin & Griffin,
2017). These studies focused on uncivil behaviors rather than climate for incivility, and report that
sexual harassment and incivility occur together, such that employees or organizations who experience
sexual harassment are also likely to experience uncivil behavior. Incivility and justice climate are

6
related in the sense that they both are concerned with how individuals are treated in the workplace,
but they differ in that one focuses on negative behavior and the other on promoting positive behavior.
Although it may appear that they are inversely related, incivility only overlaps with justice climate
when uncivil behavior is prevalent, such that when individuals experience incivility, they are more
likely to perceive there to be injustice (Griffin, 2010; Leiter, 2013). The absence of uncivil behavior
(i.e., low levels of incivility), however, does not translate into justice climate perceptions; just because
people are not rude does not mean that they treat others fairly. Climate for incivility also differs from
justice climate in its relationship with sexual harassment, as high climates for incivility have higher
occurrences of sexual harassment and sexual harassment behavior being perceived as uncivil. To
prevent sexual harassment, justice climate goes beyond establishing norms that people should not be
rude or disrespectful to others, to promote fairness for all group members which addresses the
underlying causes of harassment and promotes positive treatment of others.
As such, we propose that organizational justice climate may directly impact sexual
harassment and function as an important contingency factor of relevance to the previously established
sex similarity – sexual harassment and sexual harassment climate – sexual harassment linkages.
Specifically, we explore whether (a) justice climate contributes incrementally beyond other known
antecedents in predicting sexual harassment (direct effect) and (b) the effects of these antecedents are
attenuated when justice climate is high. Examining justice climate as a boundary condition of well
supported relationships enables us to determine conditions when established antecedents predict
sexual harassment and whether justice climate is also a salient antecedent to sexual harassment. In
doing so, our findings have the potential to debunk and shed further light on how contextual factors
relate to sexual harassment and extend the organizational justice literature examining the effect of
justice climate on behavioral outcomes. We also build upon climate research by examining the
interaction between these two related, yet distinct climates (i.e., sexual harassment climate and justice

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climate). In general, the understanding and identification of organizational antecedents, as opposed to
nonmalleable individual characteristics, are especially important because they provide organizations
with actionable tools to shape sexual harassment behavior. As the prevalence of sexual harassment
remains high despite ongoing initiatives, our findings have the potential to shift organizational efforts
to deter sexual harassment toward a new, more effective approach.
In two studies, we explore these relationships at the individual- and group- levels, by
examining both psychological and collective climate constructs. In our first study, we focus on
individual-level relationships. As such, in Study 1, organizational justice and sexual harassment
climates refer to psychological climate perceptions (James et al., 2008), which involve individual
workers‘ impressions of the valuations placed upon aspects of the organizational environment (e.g.,
pay structures, work arrangements, and equity of treatment). Whereas psychological climate, assessed
at the individual level, is a measure of individuals‘ cognitive schema of their work environments,
researchers have stressed the importance of also considering aggregate or shared climate perceptions
at the group level (e.g., Colquitt, Noe, & Jackson, 2002) to ascertain whether individual-level findings
generalize to the group level. This is a markedly important issue to examine within the sexual
harassment literature because group expectations likely influence the treatment of individuals. Due to
the nature of the Study 1 data, descriptive information regarding group membership is not available,
preventing group-level analyses. Therefore, in the second study, we examine collective climate
perceptions, which refer to aggregated perceptions of justice and sexual harassment climates at the
unit level, to determine if there is consistency in the effects across the individual and group levels.
Antecedents of Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment is sex- (or gender-) based treatment that aims to derogate, demean, or
humiliate another individual (Berdahl, 2007). Although there is an inherently subjective component,
sexual harassment measures vary based on the extent to which they are subjective (i.e., psychological,

8
sex-based) or more objective (i.e., legal, behavioral) in focus (O'Leary-Kelly et al., 2009). Subjective
measures (i.e., psychological, sex-based) focus on whether the target of an act perceives it to be
sexual harassment, which is impacted by individual differences and situational factors (Herrera,
Herrera & Expósito, 2017), whereas more objective measures (i.e., legal, behavioral), while still
somewhat subjective, assess the occurrence of specific, offensive or unwanted sexual harassment
behaviors rather than an individual‘s reaction to it (O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009). In the EEOC‘s Study
of Harassment in the Workplace (Feldblum & Lipnic, 2016), 25% of women report being sexually
harassed when asked simply whether they experienced ‗sexual harassment‘, but this number increases
to 40% when using a behavioral measure because it captures incidents of offensive, unwanted
sexually-based behaviors (i.e., sexual harassment) that may not always be labeled or reported as such
(Bowes-Sperry & O'Leary-Kelly, 2005). Even if the target does not perceive there to be ‗sexual
harassment‘, offensive sex-based behavior still affects victims and has broader implications for
observers‘ well-being and withdrawal, future sexual harassment behavior, and the normalizing of this
behavior (Bowes-Sperry & O'Leary-Kelly, 2005; Miner-Rubino & Cortina, 2007; Pryor, LaVite, &
Stoller, 1993). As such, in this study, we conceptualize sexual harassment from a legal, behavioral
perspective, focusing on specific sexual harassment behaviors, which can be grouped into three types
of sex-based behaviors that, in aggregate, provide a holistic view of the prevalence of sexual
harassment. Borrowing from O‘Leary-Kelly et al. (2009, p. 506), we define sexual harassment as:
A stable behavioral construct consisting of three primary dimensions: gender
harassment, which consists of sexual hostility (explicitly sexual verbal and nonverbal
behaviors) and sexist hostility (insulting verbal and nonverbal behaviors that are not
sexual but are based on gender), unwanted sexual attention (unwelcome, offensive
interest of a sexual nature), and sexual coercion (requests for sexual cooperation in
return for job benefits).

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Over 30 years of sexual harassment research suggests that sexual harassment behavior is more
likely to occur in settings that are ostensibly stratified by sex (i.e., job gender context/sex similarity),
and the social context (or climate) supports such behaviors (i.e., climate tolerant of sexual harassment
or low sexual harassment climate). Fitzgerald, Hulin, and Drasgow‘s (1994) influential model of
sexual harassment identified these two antecedents as organizational or situational predictors of
harassment. Follow-up studies found that these two constructs – climate for sexual harassment and
sex similarity – predict sexual harassment across a variety of populations, including the military (e.g.,
Fitzgerald et al., 1995, Williams, Fitzgerald, & Drasgow, 1999), higher education (e.g., Glomb,
Munson, Hulin, Bergman, & Drasgow, 1999), private sector organizations (e.g., De Coster, Estes, &
Mueller, 1999; Wasti, Bergman, Glomb & Drasgow, 2000), and random samples of the general
population (Gruber, 1998). Further, they were found to predict sexual harassment for both men and
women, though the relationships are stronger for women (Fitzgerald et al., 1999). In general, there
was consensus among early scholars that a climate intolerant of sexual harassment was the best single
predictor of sexual harassment (Fitzgerald, Gelfand, &Drasgow, 1995; Fitzgerald et al., 1997; Welsh,
1999; Pryor, 1995). Corroborating these early findings, a meta-analysis (Willness et al., 2007) found
these two antecedents as central in predicting sexual harassment across over 41 studies (70,000
participants) and provided strong empirical and theoretical support for sexual harassment climate as
the strongest predictor of sexual harassment, with gender context having a significant, yet much
weaker effect.
Recent reviews of the sexual harassment literature continue to position sexual harassment
climate as the best predictor of sexual harassment (O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009; Pina & Gannon, 2012).
In their review, O‘Leary-Kelly et al. (2009) draw attention to the importance of the organizational
context, by integrating new research that expands the organizational antecedent domain and
encourages scholars to go beyond previous findings. While noting the significance of sexual
harassment climate in the literature, O‘Leary-Kelly et al. emphasize that without identifying specific

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things organizations can do to deter sexual harassment, it will continue to occur. Another recent
review (Pina & Gannon, 2012), though focused specifically on women and individual-level
antecedents, also supports the notion that the organizational context matters.
Taken as a whole, this body of literature underscores how fundamental the organizational
environment is in deterring sexual harassment. Over the years, researchers and organizations alike
have devoted countless resources to identifying and implementing the most influential policies,
procedures, and training to prevent harassment behavior (Williams et al., 1999), yet these have not
been highly effective, as sexual harassment remains prevalent (Suddath, 2016). Despite the need to
expand research to identify other factors that can prevent its occurrence (O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009),
there is a very limited exploration of broader contextual factors that may be influential in deterring
harassment. The present study explores the potential of a novel antecedent – organizational justice
climate – to impact sexual harassment behavior beyond the two established antecedents (i.e., sexual
harassment climate and sex similarity).
The Role of Organizational Justice Climate in Sexual Harassment
Though the tie to harassment may be less straightforward than sexual harassment climate and
sex similarity, there is reason to anticipate that organizational justice climate also plays a key role in
either promoting or preventing this type of behavior. To make the case for organizational justice
climate as an antecedent of harassment, we begin by examining its definition. Previous scholars have
looked at justice or fairness climate perceptions as they pertain to outcomes, processes, and more
recently, interactions. Following much debate on the dimensionality of organizational justice climate,
Colquitt (2001) integrated these streams of research, proposing four related, yet distinct factors:
distributive justice (i.e., whether outcome decisions are perceived to be consistent with allocation
norms, such as equity, equality, and responsibility), procedural justice (i.e., whether employees have a
voice or influence during the process that leads to decision outcomes and whether the process adheres

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to procedural rules - ethical, consistent, free of bias, based on accurate information), informational
justice (i.e., whether the explanations provided about decision-making processes are candid, thorough,
reasonable, timely, and personalized), and interpersonal justice (i.e., whether employees are treated
with sensitivity – politely, with dignity, and respect). Recently some scholars (e.g., Ambrose &
Arnaud, 2005; Ambrose & Schminke, 2009; Lind, 2001; Lind & van den Bos, 2002) have shifted
away from looking at justice climate as four separate dimensions as this ―may not capture the depth
and richness of individuals‘ justice experiences‖ (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009, p. 491) and instead
focused on overall justice climate perceptions, which capture individuals‘ perceptions of the different,
yet related, justice types collectively. An overall sense of fairness, rather than perceptions of specific
justice climate facets, is thought to drive behavior (Lind, 2001) and was found to mediate the
relationship between specific justice climate dimensions and employee attitudes (Ambrose &
Schminke, 2009; Jones & Martens, 2009). In line with these scholars, we focus on overall justice
climate by taking into account whether individuals perceive that outcome decisions, processes, and
interactions are fair.
Organizational justice climate is related to, yet distinct from sexual harassment climate. They
are linked by their focus on the well-being or mistreatment of employees, but despite this association,
the two represent distinct focused organizational climates. Climate scholars advocate that climate
conceptualizations focus on specific aspects of the work context or outcomes (i.e., focused climates),
criticizing early, molar conceptualizations of climate (e.g., climate for well-being) for having little
validity and not contributing to our understanding of climate (Schneider, 1975; Schneider et al.,
2013). Focused climates can be classified as either strategic outcome climates (i.e., those focused on
influencing specific behaviors or tangible outcomes; e.g., safety climate) or process climates (i.e.,
those focused more on organizational processes; e.g., ethical climate; Schneider, Ehrhart, & Macey,
2013). Organizational justice climate is positioned as a process climate due to its focus on the fair

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treatment of employees during their day-to-day work (Schneider et al., 2013; Schneider et al., 2017),
whereas sexual harassment climate may be conceptualized as an outcome climate because it is
strategically focused on specifically deterring sexual harassment behavior. As a process focused
climate, justice climate has broader implications than sexual harassment climate for employee
behavior, which may include harassment.
Another interesting distinction is that, unlike most types of climate (e.g., sexual harassment
climate), justice climate is not based on employee perceptions of behaviors that are rewarded,
supported or expected in the organization; instead, it focuses on how fairly employees feel the
organization acts (Ambrose & Schminke, 2007). Yet, justice climate still provides an indication of
norms for behavior and values, even though not explicitly. Interestingly, Lin and Leung‘s (2014)
findings suggest that justice climate reflects an organization‘s moral/ethical code, affecting
employees‘ respect for others, benevolence, and integrity, and a recent study (Schminke, Arnaud, &
Taylor, 2015) found that departments with strong justice climates valued welfare (i.e., being
concerned for and interested in positively affecting others) over power and achievement). Further,
organizational justice climate has been linked to the way employees treat others at work (e.g., Chen,
Lam, Naumann, & Schaubroeck, 2005a; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001; Liao &
Rupp; 2005). Numerous studies find that employees reporting higher justice climate (at both the
individual- and group- level) tend to perform more organizational citizenship behaviors (e.g., helping
and cooperating with other, following and promoting organizational rules and norms; Liao & Rupp,
2005; Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, & Taylor, 2000; Moorman, 1991; Naumann & Bennett, 2002;
Niehoff & Moorman, 1993) and fewer deviant (e.g., violence, gossip, threats) and political (i.e.,
manipulative, self-serving) behaviors (Priesemuth, Arnaud, & Schminke 2013). By promoting
fairness across all employees when implementing policies, procedures, and rewards, justice climate
seems to establish expectations for how employees should treat all others (e.g., not harass certain team

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members; treat members similarly irrespective of gender) and foster these same values in employees
(i.e., treating others fairly).
As sexual harassment behavior is rooted in inequality, we believe organizational justice
climate may influence this specific behavior because it addresses all acts of potential discrimination
by promoting fairness for all group members. Perpetrators engage in sexually harassing behavior for a
number of reasons. Chief among these is to maintain status hierarchies by socially excluding members
of the victim‘s gender group (Berdahl, 2007). Essentially, individuals may perceive colleagues of the
opposite sex or who are members of less powerful social groups as potential threats to their work
group. Based on this perceived threat, a desire may arise (consciously or subconsciously) to engage in
actions that prevent members of the subordinate group from achieving equality by excluding them
from formal and informal organizational channels. One such action is sexual harassment because by
harassing victims, perpetrators are able to prevent them from assuming their rightful position as full
organizational contributors. By definition, however, an organizationally just climate promotes fairness
for all employees thereby deterring social stratification along any demographic dimension while
supporting stratification based on organizational standards (i.e., the most qualified person is
promoted, assigned to the job, etc.). Indeed, an unjust climate not only engenders power differentials,
which predict sexual harassment behavior (Harned, Ormerod, Palmieri, Collinsworth, & Reed, 2002),
but further exacerbates these differences if high status individuals have power over how policies,
resources, etc. are applied (Fortin, 2008). As such, in high justice climates, because employees tend to
treat others fairly and not differentiate based on sex, they should be less likely to engage in
harassment behavior.
In short, we contend that justice climate perceptions discourage sexual harassment. We first
focus on psychological justice climate, or individual-level perceptions, in predicting sexual
harassment together with sexual harassment climate and sex similarity. As sexual harassment is

14
inherently unfair, focusing on the promotion of fairness for all group members is likely to address
underlying causes of harassment, have broader implications for promoting positive behavior, and
further deter harassment behavior, over simply focusing on the organizational reaction to unfair
behavior toward the sexually harassed (i.e., sexual harassment climate) or creating gender-balanced
groups (i.e., sex similarity).
Based on the interplay between contextual characteristics, individual perceptions, and
behavior, it also is important to consider causality. One could argue rather than psychological climate
predicting sexual harassment, individuals who experience sexual harassment may perceive to their
environment as tolerant of sexual harassment (i.e., low sexual harassment climate), because it brings
to light existing policies and procedures and how they are implemented and enforced across
employees, and unfair (i.e., low psychological justice climate) because they were mistreated.
Although there is little empirical, longitudinal evidence for causality (O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009),
Glomb et al. (1999) examined these relationships across two time points, finding support for sexual
harassment climate as an antecedent of sexual harassment, but also some evidence that sexual
harassment affects one‘s perceptions of the organization. Though sexual harassment may have some
impact on perceptions, we position both psychological justice climate and sexual harassment climate
as precursors to sexual harassment because: (a) there is ample sexual harassment theory and empirical
studies posing sexual harassment climate as an antecedent (e.g., Raver & Gelfand, 2005), (b) findings
support that justice climate drives employee behavior, not vice versa, and (c) climate variables are
shaped by many previous experiences, rather than single events. Thus, we predict that psychological
justice climate perceptions will influence occurrences of sexual harassment over and above its two
most well-established antecedents.
Hypothesis 1: Psychological justice climate will relate negatively to sexual
harassment, such that individuals will report less harassment when they perceive the

15
work contexts as being just, after taking into account the effects of sexual harassment
climate perceptions and sex similarity.
In addition to this main effect, we expect psychological justice climate to play a moderating
role in the relationships between these established antecedents and sexual harassment, as well. The
prevalence of sexual harassment behavior despite efforts to create climates intolerant of sexual
harassment and creating more gender-balanced workplaces suggest that other contextual factors may
impact the effectiveness of these antecedents. Although increasing the number of in-group members
in one‘s surroundings (i.e., sex similarity) is likely to reduce power differences and the occurrence of
sexual harassment behavior, it may not impact how members are perceived and consequently, treated
if there is a low justice climate. Justice climate, however, creates an atmosphere wherein others are
respected and preferential treatment is minimized and harassment of any form is unlikely to be
tolerated, irrespective of the group composition. When individuals perceive there to be a high justice
climate and thus, one that values the fair treatment of others, the likelihood that they will experience
sexual harassment is likely to be suppressed, even if they are dissimilar from other group members.
Conversely, when organizations do not promote fair treatment, personnel are more apt to perceive
mistreatment as permissible (Krings & Facchin, 2009). In such a setting, being surrounded by a
greater amount of individuals of the same sex should decrease the likelihood of sexual harassment, as
well as provide cues regarding the acceptability of identity-based mistreatment.
Thus, focusing again on individual-level relationships, we anticipate that the propensity for
sex similarity to deter harassment experiences will be more pronounced when psychological justice
climate is low. Yet, when support for fair treatment prevails (i.e., high psychological justice climate
perceptions), the incremental value of sex similarity with one‘s group members is likely to be
attenuated because everyone is less likely to sexually harass, irrespective of relative representation.

16
Hypothesis 2: Psychological justice climate will moderate the sex similarity – sexual
harassment relationship, such that the negative relationship is stronger among
personnel reporting low (unfair) than high (fair) psychological justice climate
perceptions.
Psychological justice climate also may moderate the sexual harassment climate – sexual
harassment relationship. Whereas perceived tolerance for sexual harassment is very specific in nature,
psychological justice climate reflects the extent to which organizational outcome decisions and
processes are deemed just and all organizational members are thought to be treated fairly (e.g.,
respect, equality; Li & Cropanzano, 2009). Though organizations perceived to be fair also might take
a hard stance against sexual harassment, this is not necessarily the case. For example, an organization
may strongly enforce sexual harassment policies (i.e., high sexual harassment climate) but not have
invested resources in ensuring that fairness is promoted throughout the organization. Conversely, an
organization may value and promote fairness but may not explicitly address sexual harassment in the
workplace. As sexual harassment climate is based on procedures and policies, a low sexual
harassment climate does not mean that the environment promotes sexual harassment behavior; rather,
it is an environment where there are few policies and procedures that explicitly prohibit sexual
harassment and reprimand those who engage that sexual harassment. As such, it seems that even if
units do not have policies and procedures in place that deter sexual harassment, they may still promote
fairness in their procedures, outcomes, and interactions.
Though sexual harassment climate deters sexual harassment behavior through anti-harassment
policies, procedures and training, because organizational justice climate represents a broader
construct, indicating the degree to which the organization values and treats its diverse organizational
members, rather than focusing solely on sexual harassment, it has a strong impact on employee
behavior related to mistreatment (Chen et al., 2005a; Colquitt et al., 2001; Liao & Rupp, 2005). Such

17
climates likely prevent the targeted mistreatment of personnel based on their identity group
membership, such as sexual harassment, irrespective of the organization‘s sexual harassment policies
(Krings & Facchin, 2009). In fact, sexual harassment is more common in environments where other
forms of mistreatment also prevail (Lim & Cortina, 2005). When perceived justice climate is high,
women and men alike are prone to feel that they are valued, respected, and integrated within the work
domain. Thus, we expect less sexual harassment when perceived justice is high, irrespective of
beliefs about the organization‘s particular views on harassment. Perceived organizational tolerance for
sexual harassment should be more closely associated with harassment behavior, however, when in the
absence of justice climate because of the lack of a general atmosphere encouraging the fair treatment
of all employees.
Hypothesis 3: Psychological justice climate will moderate the sexual harassment
climate – sexual harassment relationship, such that the negative relationship is
stronger among personnel reporting low (unfair) than high justice climate.
Relationships between Unit-Level Antecedents and Sexual Harassment
It is improper to simply assume that a relationship at one level extends to another level of
analysis (Chen, Bliese, & Mathieu, 2005b). In this case, however, logic suggests that unit-level,
collective justice climate also negatively influences sexual harassment. Though the focus of
Hypotheses 1-3 was on employees‘ individual-level psychological climate perceptions, organizational
justice climate beliefs are prone to reflect the unit‘s collective climate (particularly when climates are
stronger; Dickson, Resick, & Hanges, 2006); therefore, we expect collective justice climate
perceptions to exhibit a similar relationship with harassment. As such, Hypotheses 4-6 replicate
Hypotheses 1-3 at the unit level.

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Consistent with the aforementioned rationale for why psychological justice climate is likely to
be predictive of sexual harassment behavior, a unit with an environment that promotes fairness would
likely minimize the likelihood of identity-based mistreatment, thereby resulting in fewer instances of
sexual harassment (Lim & Cortina, 2005). As it broadly advocates for the fair treatment of all
employees, collective justice climate perceptions are likely to impact the occurrence of unit-level
sexual harassment behavior, irrespective of whether the climate is intolerant of sexual harassment or
the gender composition of the team.
Hypothesis 4: Collective justice climate will relate negatively to sexual harassment
behavior after controlling for unit-level sexual harassment climate perceptions and sex
ratio, such that there will be less harassment in work units perceived as having high
justice climates.
Additionally, collective justice climate perceptions are likely to moderate the unit-level
climate for sexual harassment – sexual harassment and sex similarity – sexual harassment
relationships. Again, we anticipate that sex similarity and climate for sexual harassment will be more
likely to coincide with less sexual harassment behavior when there is a low collective justice climate).
Conversely, in units with high collective justice climates, all members are prone to treat each other
fairly and feel valued and respected within the unit. Thus, the influence of sex similarity and climate
for sexual harassment should be weakened because unit members are less susceptible to sexual
harassment regardless of the gender make-up of the group, or the group‘s tolerance for sexual
harassment.
Hypothesis 5: Collective justice climate will moderate the sex similarity – sexual
harassment relationship, such that the negative relationship is stronger in units
reporting low (unfair) than high justice climates.

19
Hypothesis 6: Collective justice climate will moderate the sexual harassment climate –
sexual harassment relationship, such that the negative relationship is stronger in units
reporting low (unfair) than high justice climates.
Overview of Studies
We designed two studies using two military samples to test our model and hypotheses (see
Figure 1). In Study 1, we test the hypothesized direct and moderated effects of psychological justice
climate perceptions, sexual harassment climate perceptions, and sex similarity on the frequency in
which an individual experienced sexual harassment behavior (Hypotheses 1-3). In Study 2, we
explored these relationships at the unit-level (Hypotheses 4-6) to determine assess their generality to
higher levels of analysis. We assert that the military samples will enable us to effectively test our
hypotheses, as numerous studies (Fitzgerald et al., 1994; Fitzgerald et al., 1995; Fitzgerald et al.,
1999; Williams et al., 1999) provide support for the use of military samples to explore sexual
harassment, as the military regularly assesses sexual harassment behavior and established antecedents
and the relationships between established organizational antecedents and sexual harassment have been
found to be generalizable across military and non-military samples, with the relationships being
stronger in non-military samples (Willness et al., 2007). Based on theory and empirical evidence, we
have no reason to believe that the relationships hypothesized would look differently in non-military
and military populations.
Study 1 Method
Participants and Procedure
The study data were gathered from the 2006 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey
(WGRS) of active duty members of the Armed Forces. Using a stratified random sampling approach,
a sample of more than 86,000 individuals was identified and 30% of those contacted responded to the

20
invitation to participate. Of the 26,018 respondents with complete data, 35% (n = 9,181) were in the
Army, 23% (n = 5,843) in the Air Force, 21% (n = 5,411) in the Navy, 11% (n = 2,958) in the Marine
Corps, and 10% (n = 2,625) from the Coast Guard. The gender composition of the sample was 71%
male (n = 18,473) and 29% female (n = 7,545). Thirty-three percent of the participants were classified
as minorities. Eleven percent had less than three years of work experience, 16% had between 3-6
years, 14% had between 7-10 years, and 60% had ten years or more experience. The age distribution
of the participants was 36% under 29, 39% between 30-39 years of age, and 25% 40 years and over.
Measures
All of the measures were taken from the 2006 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey
(WGRS) of active duty members of the Armed Forces.
Sexual Harassment. We assessed sexual harassment using Stark, Chernyshenko, Lancaster,
Drasgow, and Fitzgerald‘s (2002) shortened SEQ-DoD fourteen-item measure ( = .91). Respondents
were asked to indicate how often sex/gender-related treatment, including sexist behavior, sexual
hostility, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion, happened to them over the past twelve
months. A sample item is: ―Made gestures or used body language of a sexual nature that embarrassed
or offended you?‖ Participants rated the items on a 5-point Likert scale (1= Never to 5= Very Often)
and responses were averaged to create a scale.
Sex Similarity. Respondents were asked to report the gender composition of their current
work group, defined as the people they work with on a day-to-day basis, on a seven-point scale (1= all
men, 4= about equal numbers of men and women, 7= all women). To assess sex similarity for female
participants, actual scores on this item were used as they represent sex similarity, with a score of ‗7‘
indicating the female is 100% similar in terms of gender with group members and a score of ―1‖
indicating that the female is the only woman in the group (i.e., lowest level of sex similarity). To
assess sex similarity for male participants, responses to this item were reverse to create their

21
comparable index of sex similarity, as a response of ―1‖ is indicative that the male is similar in
regards to gender with all other members. Importantly, perceptual measures such as this have been
shown to correlate significantly with other approaches to capturing similarity (e.g., Euclidean
distance) and produce highly similar relationships with constructs of interest (Riordan & Wayne,
2008).
Sexual Harassment Climate Perceptions. We measured intolerance for sexual harassment
using a 10-item measure developed by the Department of Defense (Nye, Lytell, Ormerod, Larsen,
Perry, Wright, Fitzgerald, & Drasgow, 2007). This measure is based on Hulin, Fitzgerald, and
Drasgow‘s (1996) Organizational Tolerance of Sexual Harassment measure. The scale asks
respondents to indicate their perceptions of how the organization will react to acts of sexual
harassment perpetrated by coworkers or supervisors, and what provisions the organization has made
to prevent harassment. Participants rated the items on a 5-point Likert scale (1= Strongly Disagree to
5= Strongly Agree). Responses demonstrated sufficient internal consistency ( = .82) and were
averaged to form a scale with higher scores indicating greater intolerance. A sample item is, ―A
sexual harassment report is taken seriously.‖
Psychological Justice Climate Perceptions. We assessed psychological justice perceptions
using a four-item measure ( = .83). Respondents rated the items on a 5-point Likert scale (1=
Strongly Disagree to 5= Strongly Agree). The items were: ―I trust my supervisor to deal fairly with
issues of equal treatment at my workplace‖, ―At my workplace, a person's job opportunities and
promotions are based only on work-related characteristics‖, ―At my workplace, all employees are kept
well informed about issues and decisions that affect them‖, and ―My supervisor helps everyone in my
workgroup feel included.‖ These items tap procedural, distributive, informational, and interpersonal
justice climate perceptions and though they bear conceptual resemblance to those in established scales
(e.g., ―For the most part, this organization treats its employees fairly‖; Ambrose & Schminke, 2009),

22
we elected to conduct a post hoc validation with two established justice climate scales in the
literature: Ambrose and Schminke (2009) and an aggregation of Colquitt‘s (2001) four subscales.
Essentially, this entails collecting responses to the new scale and existing scales, and
comparing their means, internal consistencies, and correlations (Payne, Finch, & Tremble, 2003).
Scales may be considered roughly equivalent if items appear similar to subject matter experts, mean
differences are small, and the correlation between the new scale and existing scales approaches the
level of internal consistency of the existing scale. We used Amazon‘s MTurk to recruit an employed
American sample (80.5% full-time). Of the 169 participants (58% male), the average age was 33.65
years (SD = 9.80), 45.6% were White/Caucasian, 7.1% were Black/African American, 40.8% were
Asian/Asian American, 5.3% were Hispanic and the remaining 1.2% were Native Americans.
Participants were asked to complete questionnaires that included items from the various justice
climate measures, which were randomly shuffled to control for order biases.
As mentioned above, the items exhibit conceptual overlap with those in the existing scales.
The mean differences observed were small between this scale and that of the established scales
(Ambrose & Schminke d = .13; Colquitt d = .23). Even more importantly, scores on the new scale
correlated significantly with those from both of the existing scales, and these correlations approached
the internal consistency estimates for the three scales (Ambrose & Schminke,  = .85, r = .69;
Colquitt,  = .93, r = .84). Thus, we believe it is reasonable to view this scale as an indicator of
psychological justice climate perceptions.
Control Variables. We controlled for branch of service, tenure, gender, pay grade and age
based on research suggesting that they are related to sexual harassment incidence (e.g., Bergman &
Henning, 2008).
Results

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Descriptive statistics and correlations are presented in Table 1. Prior to testing the hypotheses,
we subjected the three scales (i.e., climate for sexual harassment, psychological justice climate, and
sexual harassment) to confirmatory factor analyses, to ensure that survey respondents adequately
differentiated among the three constructs measured. A factor model is deemed to have acceptable fit
when (a) the chi-square statistic (χ2) is non-significant, (b) the comparative fit index (CFI) is .90 or
greater, and (c) the root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA) is .08 or less (Bentler, 1990;
Browne & Cudeck, 1993). Moreover, significant chi-square difference tests (Δχ 2) confirm the relative
superiority of model fit for a particular factor model compared to other, nested factor models differing
in the number of parameters estimated. Because of the non-normality of the harassment items, we
used diagonally weighted least squares. Results indicated that the expected 3-factor model (χ2(347) =
28,514.07, p < .01; CFI = 1.00; RMSEA = .06) fit the data better than a 2-factor model combining the
two forms of climate (χ2(349) = 35,668.87, p < .01; CFI = 1.00; RMSEA = .07; Δχ2(2) =7154.80, p <
.01), or a single-factor model combining all three constructs (χ2(350) = 175,164.57, p < .01; CFI =
1.00; RMSEA = .15; Δχ2(3) = 146650.50, p < .01). This suggests the participants viewed the three
constructs as distinctive.
After determining that sexual harassment was skewed considerably, we performed a natural
log transformation, which is a common approach to normalize the distribution of a skewed variable
and was computed by taking the natural logarithm of each data point (X = ln x). We used this
computed variable as the outcome in moderated multiple regression to test our hypotheses. To
estimate effect sizes, we computed both R2 values for the model (see Table 2) and relative weights
(RW; those for higher-order terms are residualized) that partition the model‘s total explained variance
among the predictors (LeBreton, Tonidandel, & Krasikova, 2013; Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2011). The
model was hierarchical with the main effects of sex similarity, climate for sexual harassment,
psychological justice climate, and the control variables entered in step 1, and the sex similarity x

24
psychological justice climate, and the perceived intolerance for sexual harassment x psychological
justice climate entered in step 2 (see Table 2). Though not hypothesized, we detected the commonly
reported negative effects of sex similarity and perceived intolerance on sexual harassment. This
indicates that individuals perceived less harassment when surrounded by more same-sex individuals
or they perceived that the organization was intolerant of sexual harassment.
Hypothesis 1, which predicted a negative association between psychological justice climate
perceptions and sexual harassment, was supported as less harassment was reported by individuals who
perceived their work unit‘s justice climate to be more fair (b = -.03 p < .01, RW = .04). Hypothesis 2
posited that psychological justice climate perceptions would moderate the sex similarity – sexual
harassment relationship. Consistent with this expectation, we found a significant interaction in step 2
(b = .02, p < .01, RW = .01). As depicted in Figure 2, the similarity – sexual harassment relationship
was roughly a fourth as strong when the unit was viewed as promoting fairness (i.e., +1 SD; b = -.01,
p < .01) compared to when it was not (i.e., -1 SD; b = -.04, p < .01). Thus, the first two hypotheses
received strong support.
Hypothesis 3 proposed that psychological justice perceptions would moderate the negative
climate for sexual harassment – sexual harassment relationship. We observed a significant interaction
in step 2 (b = .03, p < .01, RW = .01). As depicted in Figure 3, the impact of perceived intolerance on
sexual harassment was half as large when units were perceived as more (b = -.05, p < .01) as opposed
to less (b = -.11, p < .01) just. This finding provides support for Hypothesis 3. We also examined
whether the hypothesized effects were consistent across employee sex. Though there were some
significant interactions involving sex, their effect sizes were quite small (average RW < .005) and the
pattern of the results (in terms of direction and significance) were the same for men and women.
Although the Study 1 response rate is acceptable, the possible influence of non-response bias
on our findings should be considered. The researchers that collected the data used information about

25
the composition of the military as a whole (i.e., the target population) and information from this
sample to compute weights that would make the results generalize from the sample to the population.
To examine possible non-response bias, we used these weights to re-run our analyses and found that
the pattern of results was identical to those reported. Moreover, because data was collected both via
the internet and paper-and-pencil, it is possible that the nature of our findings vary by survey
administration type. We empirically examined this issue and found that none of our proposed 2-way
interactions were moderated by survey administration type (despite our considerable power).
However, all three main effects were moderated by administration type as the effects were slightly
stronger for those taking the paper administration although all simple effects were statistically
significant.
Discussion
Study 1 examined the effect of psychological justice climate on sexual harassment, and its
role as a moderator in the relationships between well-established antecedents of sexual harassment
(i.e., sex similarity and perceived intolerance for sexual harassment; O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009;
Willness et al., 2007) and sexual harassment behavior. We found support for the direct and
moderating effect of psychological justice climate perceptions. The linkages between sex similarity
and perceived intolerance with sexual harassment were considerably smaller when individuals
perceived their workplace to have a favorable justice climate. These findings suggest sex similarity
and perceived intolerance for harassment may be less impactful in environments perceived as just.
Unfortunately, the data used in this study do not contain descriptive information about the nesting of
the participants within their respective work units. Though this makes it impossible to account for
potential non-independence of observations, there would need to be numerous instances of
participants working in the same group for nesting to impact our findings. As the researchers
employed a complex random, stratified sampling procedure that identified nearly 80,000 individuals

26
from the pool of almost 1.3 million active military personnel, of which roughly 25,000 ended up
providing data for our sample, the statistical likelihood of multiple individuals from the same work
group is relatively small. Taking into account nesting at the group level, the data in Study 2 allow us
to replicate the results of the first study and assess their generality to unit-level analysis.
Study 2 Method
Participants and Procedure
The study data were collected by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute in
2011. When requested by a military commander or leaders of a civilian federal organization, all
members of an organization are asked to complete the 2011 Defense Equal Opportunity Climate
Survey (DEOCS), in which the items described below were embedded. Though the DEOCS can be
administered via paper-and-pencil, only responses to the web-based version were used in this study.
An invitation containing a web link (URL) to the online instrument was distributed to organizational
members, who were assured that any data they provided would be anonymous. A total of 8,906 active
duty members of the Armed Forces took part in the survey and the DEOCS response rate during the
data collection period was 53%. Because our interest was in climate at the unit level of analyses (i.e.,
collective justice climate), we did not retain data from units with fewer than 4 respondents (Mean
group size = 15.02), thereby reducing the usable sample size to 8,197. Of these individuals, 17% were
female, 39% belonged to racioethnic minority groups, and the age distribution of the participants was
16.7% between 18 and 21, 47.6% between 22 and 30 years of age, 23.6% between 31 and 40, 10.2%
between 41 and 50, and 2% 51 years and over. As in Study 1, we considered the possible role of non-
response bias despite the relatively high response rate (53%). In study 2, we were unable to obtain
data on all of the units sampled to compare this information to our respondents. However, we were
able to obtain information on a small subsample (n = 50) and found that the mean percentage of
women did not differ significantly between our data and the units.

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Measures
Unless otherwise noted, all measures used Likert-type responses ranging from 1 = strongly
disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The climate measures were the same as in Study 1, aggregated to the
unit level.
Sexual Harassment. We assessed sexual harassment using 13 of the items from the first
study. Although the measure typically consists of 14 items, as in Study 1, one of the 14 harassment
items was inadvertently left off as a result of human error. However, respondents indicated if they
had personally experienced the described incident within the past 12 months (1 = yes, 0 = no). The
responses demonstrated good internal consistency ( = .91) and, thus, were summed.
Sex Similarity. Like previous researchers (e.g., Peccei & Lee, 2005), we computed sex
similarity by calculating the percentage of individuals belonging to the same sex as the respondent
within their work unit.
Control Variables. We controlled for branch of the military, gender, pay grade,
racioethnicity, and age based on research suggesting that they are related to sexual harassment
incidence (e.g., Bergman & Henning, 2008; Fitzgerald, Magley, Drasgow, & Waldo, 1999).
Results
Descriptive statistics and correlations are presented in Table 3. As in Study 1, we subjected
the climate for sexual harassment, collective justice climate, and sexual harassment items to
confirmatory factor analyses (using diagonally weighted least squares) to ensure that survey
respondents adequately differentiated between the three constructs they were intended to measure.
Results indicated that the expected 3-factor model (χ2(321) = 5001.23, p < .01; CFI = .94; RMSEA =
.04) fit the data better than a 2-factor model combining the two forms of climate (χ2(323) = 5,435.53,

28
p < .01; CFI = .94; RMSEA = .04; Δχ2(2) = 434.29, p < .01), or a single-factor model combining all
three constructs (χ2(324) = 25,644.61, p < .01; CFI = .69; RMSEA = .10; Δχ2(3) = 20,643.37, p < .01).
Although the correlation between collective justice and harassment climates is higher than ideal (.77),
it is less than the conventional threshold of .8 for construct discriminant validity (Brown, 2006) and
the factor analysis results suggest that, as anticipated, the participants viewed the three constructs as
distinctive.
The referent for all of the collective justice and harassment climate items was the unit level of
analysis. However, prior to aggregating these scales to the unit level, researchers must demonstrate
that there is (a) sufficient agreement, or direct consensus at the unit level, (b) significant variance at
the unit level, and (c) sufficient reliability of the group-level means. This entails examining within
group agreement (e.g., ADM(J)) and intraclass correlations 1 and 2 [ICC(1) and ICC(2)] to determine if
ADM(J) is statistically significant, ICC(1) is statistically significant, and ICC(2) is greater than the
commonly accepted .7 threshold. The ADM(J) values were less than the critical thresholds of
significance (Dunlap, Burke, & Smith-Crowe, 2003) for both collective justice (.74) and harassment
(.82) climates, fulfilling the first requirement. Likewise, the ICC(1) values were statistically
significant for the collective justice (ICC(1) = .08, F(545, 7561) = 2.24, p < .001) and harassment
(ICC(1) = .07, F(545, 7647) = 2.46, p < .001) climate measures, thereby fulfilling the second
requirement. Finally, the ICC(2) values indicated that the unit-level means of the collective justice
(ICC(2) = .55) and harassment (ICC(2) = .59) climate scales were lower than conventional standards
for reliability, which is not atypical in the organizational sciences (Bliese, 2000). Low ICC(2) values
make it more difficult to detect significant effects for higher level constructs. Consequently, we
proceeded to compute the unit means for sexual harassment climate and collective justice climate
based on the significant group level variation and within group agreement, realizing that our tests

29
might provide conservative assessments of the unit-level effects of collective justice and harassment
climates.
Because military personnel are nested within larger work units indicating non-independence
of Level 1 data from employees (e.g., sex, age) and Level 2 work-unit data (e.g., justice climate,
harassment climate), we used Hierarchical Linear Modeling 6 software (HLM6; Raudenbush, Bryk,
Cheong, Congdon, & du Toit, 2004) to investigate our Hypotheses 4-6. This statistical package is
useful for estimating both individual- and group-level effects on individual outcomes within nested
data structures. As in Study 1, we used a natural log transformed version of sexual harassment as the
dependent variable.
Prior to testing the hypotheses, we ran a null model to determine whether the nesting of
participants had a significant impact on their reports of harassment. Roughly 4% of the variance in
harassment scores was due to group membership (F(545, 7651) = 1.70, p < .01) and, thus, we
conducted a series of multilevel models to test the hypotheses (see Table 4). All continuous variables
were grand mean centered to facilitate the interpretation of the coefficients (Hofmann & Gavin,
1998). As in the first study, the collective justice climate-harassment linkage was significant (γ = -.10,
p < .01, R2 = .01), indicating that participants reported fewer experiences of harassment when they
worked in units with collective justice climates. For the sake of comparison, we computed
standardized coefficients as well and found that the effect of collective justice climate was roughly
60% the size of those for sex similarity and harassment climate, respectively.
Turning to the interactive effects, in a cross-level interaction, collective justice climate
moderated the effect of sex similarity (γ = .31, p < .01) on harassment, accounting for a 27% reduction
of variance in sex similarity‘s random slope. Collective justice climate also interacted with unit level
harassment climate (γ = .13, p < .01). As in the first study, sex similarity was significantly less
impactful in high (b = -.08, p = .09) than in low (unfair) collective justice climates (b = -.30, p < .01),

30
this time at nearly a 4:1 ratio. Likewise, harassment climate exhibited nearly twice as strong an effect
in low (γ = -.20, p < .01) than high collective justice climates (γ = -.11, p = .01). Figures 4 and 5
provide graphical illustrations of these effects, and they bear considerable resemblance to those found
in the first study for psychological (individual-level) justice climate perceptions. Although the 
pseudo R-squared associated with the inclusion of these interactions is modest, it is noteworthy that
this indicator of effect size often poorly captures the practical significance of cross-level interactions
(Aguinis, Gottfredson, & Culpepper, 2013). Rather, a 27% reduction in the random slope is
considerable. Moreover, the difference in the simple slopes for harassment climate (i.e., four times as
large when collective justice climate is low) suggest both interactive effects are both statistically and
practically significant. Hence, the results replicate and extend those of the first study and support
Hypotheses 4–6.
As in Study 1, we conducted exploratory analyses of whether gender influenced the
hypothesized relationships. We examined whether gender moderated the effect of sex similarity,
sexual harassment climate, and psychological justice climate on sexual harassment and found that it
did not. Additionally, results showed that gender did not affect the moderating role of justice climate
and, therefore, it appears that the relationships proposed and tested in this study apply equally well to
men and women alike.
Because the data from Studies 1 and 2 were cross sectional, it is possible that we misspecified
the causal direction of the relationship between justice and harassment. To assess this possibility
empirically, we collected a follow-up indicator of unit-level harassment for many of the units (n =
376) one year following the administration of the Study 2 measures. As part of the annual DEOCS,
which is staggered throughout the year, personnel respond to a single-item indicating whether they
believe they experienced sexual harassment within the past year (1 = yes, 0 = no). When aggregated to
the unit-level, this represents the prevalence of perceived harassment within a unit. Because

31
harassment is a fairly low base rate event (M = .05; Range = .00-.40), we created a binomial variable
indicating whether anyone in the unit perceived harassment and regressed this variable (using
binomial regression) on the unit-level equivalents of the variables included in Table 4 (e.g., percent
female personnel in place of the female dummy). The main effect of collective justice climate was
significant and in the expected direction (b = -1.36, p = .015, OR = .26, R2 = .01), indicating that
greater fairness corresponded with lower incidence of harassment over the following year. Moreover,
collective justice climate interacted with average sex similarity (b = 4.85, p = .05, OR = 127.49), but
not harassment climate (b = -.22, p = .70, OR = .81) to predict harassment. The simple slopes
indicated that the effect of sex similarity was roughly twice as large when collective justice climate
was lower (b = -9.64, p < .01) as opposed to higher (b = -4.85, p = .04). Thus, we believe these time-
lagged results provide good support for the proposed causal relationship underlying our hypotheses.
Discussion
Study 2 aimed to extend the findings of Study 1 by examining collective justice climate at the
unit level as a predictor of sexual harassment, and as a moderator of the sex similarity – sexual
harassment and harassment climate – sexual harassment relationships. We found that collective justice
climate impacts individual sexual harassment similarly when operationalized at the unit level. This is
important because harassment research has tended to rely almost exclusively on climate perceptions
while largely failing to consider effects of collective climate (Willness et al., 2007). Respondents
experienced less harassment in units with high collective justice climates. Additionally, though sex
similarity and harassment climate were predictive of sexual harassment behavior in the expected
directions, their relationships with sexual harassment were considerably smaller or even non-
significant when units had high collective justice climates. Study 2 findings indicate that the role of
justice climate in deterring sexual harassment behavior is generalizable to the group level – justice
climate appears to be highly influential in minimizing sexual harassment.

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General Discussion
The present study aimed to expand the sexual harassment model (Fitzgerald et al., 1994) by
investigating the moderating role of organizational justice climate, a previously underexplored
organizational characteristic, at both the individual and unit levels. Although the relationships
between job gender context, climate for sexual harassment, and sexual harassment are well
established (O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009; Willness et al., 2007), the boundary conditions of these
relationships remained understudied. In line with previous findings (Willness et al., 2007), these
established antecedents each related negatively to sexual harassment. More importantly, the results
indicate that justice climate (psychological and collective) accounted for incremental variance in
harassment and moderated the relationships between these well-established precursors and sexual
harassment behavior. Namely, Study 1 found that the effects of sex similarity and perceived
intolerance for sexual harassment on sexual harassment were weakened when individuals perceived
the environment to promote fairness (i.e., high psychological justice climate). Extending these
findings to the unit level, Study 2 found support for collective justice climate as an independent
predictor of harassment, and a moderator of the effects of objectively-measured sex similarity and
harassment climate on sexual harassment. These results underscore a number of important research
and practical implications.
Implications
Research. A primary research implication follows from our introduction of the justice climate
construct to sexual harassment research, which typically has focused solely on climate for sexual
harassment. Justice climate, however, is broader and reflects the extent to which an organization is
perceived to treat its employees fairly. Conversely, climate for sexual harassment is limited to worker
perceptions regarding a firm‘s stance (e.g., policies) on sexual harassment. Based on our results,
justice climate not only explains additional variance in sexual harassment, but also influences the

33
strength of the harassment climate – harassment relationship. Justice climate seems to offer an
alternative approach from sexual harassment climate to deter sexual harassment. Accordingly, we
encourage organizational justice theorists to expand their conceptual models to include sexual
harassment as a potential outcome. Similarly, we urge sexual harassment theorists to include justice
climate as an additional antecedent of sexual harassment.
Dual consideration of justice climate and harassment climate also has implications for climate
research overall, which primarily has focused on the impact of psychological climate dimensions
(Schulte, Ostroff, Schmulyian, & Kinicki, 2009), rather than including multiple climate dimensions
within the same framework. Following the advice of other scholars (Kuenzi & Schminke, 2009;
McKay et al., 2011), we took a more holistic approach to examining organizational context by
including multiple organizational climate dimensions, rather than consider just one aspect of climate
(e.g., sexual harassment climate), in order to (a) allow for better comparisons across organizations,
and (b) enhance theoretical meaningfulness (Denison, 1996; Johns, 2006; Schulte et al., 2009). By
examining justice climate in conjunction with the commonly studied sexual harassment climate
variable, we were able to extend previous findings by determining how these constructs
complemented or offset one another. Though the present study included an additional climate
variable, we encourage future researchers to include other facet-specific climates (e.g., incivility) that
may also impact sexual harassment behavior. For example, one study (Timmerman & Bajema, 2000)
found that social climate, the extent to which the organization is employee-oriented, displays a
concern for people, respects the workers, and is interested in their personal problems, is related to
occurrences of sexual harassment.
The findings also emphasize the importance of understanding the interplay between well-
established and potential antecedents to sexual harassment. As indicated, when levels of established
precursors, such as harassment climate and sex similarity, are not high, other factors may be

34
influential in predicting sexual harassment. Likewise, when justice climate was low, harassment
climate and sex similarity become more impactful, suggesting that the established antecedents and
justice climate may be substitutable for one another – at least with respect to their impact on
harassment. In short, prevailing sexual harassment models should be broadened to include other
potential antecedents and moderators. Whereas the present study illustrates the role of justice climate
in this capacity, other variables including both individual and organizational characteristics (e.g.,
gender-role identification, supervisor-subordinate sex similarity, senior management team sex
composition; Ely, 1995) also may moderate the relationships between commonly-studied predictor
constructs and sexual harassment.
Further, the present study examined the generalizability of individual-level findings to the
group level, which scholars have deemed an important issue (Chen et al., 2005b; Colquitt et al.,
2002). Most of the existing research on sexual harassment has focused on individual perceptions of
climate and experiences of sexual harassment without taking into consideration how group
expectations impact behavior. We found similar relationships when examining individual perceptions
and group-level shared perceptions. Following in our footsteps, studies looking to build upon these
findings by incorporating additional moderators should consider investigating them at both the
individual and group levels to prevent the proliferation of assumptions that relationships between
constructs generalize across levels.
Practical Implications. Our results also have key implications for organizations. In addition
to the sexual harassment policy guidelines put forth by the EEOC (EEOC, 2017), organizations could
more broadly focus on strategically promoting fairness in outcome decisions, processes, and treatment
of employees rather than focusing on harassment specifically, which will not only yield similar results
but can produce organizational environments that facilitate equity and reduce the likelihood of
identity-based mistreatment in general. Though our effect sizes are somewhat modest, they are of

35
practical significance. For instance, the costs of defending an organization with 500 employees
against a single harassment lawsuit are estimated at $2.73 million (about $5,500 per employee;
Sample, 2007). The costs increase substantially as the size of an organization grows, with companies
of 20,000 employees having estimated costs of $12.25 million (around $600 per employee). This
means even small changes in justice climate can have considerable financial implications for
organizations. To better promote fairness, organizations should ensure top management commitment
to fairness in outcome decisions, create processes that proactively promote fairness, reward and
recognize all employees equitably, fairly, and consistently, and encourage participation of employees
in organizational processes (Li & Cropanzano, 2009).
The proactive management of fairness by tailoring organizational outcome decisions,
processes, and norms facilitates the creation of a strong justice climate. In doing so, these efforts
would not only deter sexual harassment, but may positively impact many other organizational
outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, retention, and performance
(Cropanzano et al., 2005; Moliner et al., 2005; Naumann & Bennett, 2002; Simons & Roberson, 2003;
Whitman et al., 2012). Indeed, research supports that sexual harassment affects team processes and
performance (Raver & Gelfand, 2005). Additionally, our results provide an alternative on how to
allocate company resources to decrease sexual harassment; companies can either focus broadly on
justice climate or more specifically on gender-related antecedents that focus on preventing of sexual
harassment sexual harassment. Further, the creation of fair workplaces appears to be a more practical
approach to reducing sexual harassment than efforts focused upon decreasing sex dissimilarity with
regards to work unit sex composition.
Limitations and Conclusions
All data involved military samples, thereby raising questions regarding generalizability.
However, the level of harassment incidence in our studies (32.12% reported at least some harassment)

36
is low for the military and quite consistent with estimates for other industries in the literature (Ilies,
Hauserman, Schwochau, & Stibal, 2003). Moreover, given recent meta-analytic evidence showing
that relationships between organizational characteristics and sexual harassment were stronger in
nonmilitary than military samples (Willness et al., 2007), the effects reported here may be
conservative. Nevertheless, we suggest replication in non-military samples. Additionally, due to the
cross-sectional nature of the data in both studies, the research design does not allow for causal
conclusions to be drawn. While these constructs are positioned as antecedents in the sexual
harassment and organizational justice literatures, scholars note that there is limited evidence for
causality (O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009). Though it could be that justice climate perceptions are
influenced by experiences of sexual harassment behavior, the consistency of the findings of our
lagged supplemental analyses with those of Studies 1 and 2 suggests our model is specified properly.
Still, there is a need for future studies that utilize a longitudinal design. Under ideal circumstances,
justice climate and sexual harassment climate would be measured prior to sexual harassment
experiences and all constructs would be measured multiple times over an extended period of time to
examine the interplay between these constructs. Another limitation is the potential nesting and non-
independence of Study 1 participants. As discussed in Study 1 Discussion, however, it is statistically
unlikely that there are multiple individuals from the same group. Further, using the grouping variables
in Study 2, we examined the magnitude of differences the between coefficients derived from OLS and
multilevel modeling, which allowed us to test the model examined in Study 1 (i.e., climates
conceptualized as psychological as opposed to collective). This analysis revealed that the differences
between the coefficients were minimal to non-existent, suggesting that possible non-independence
had a minimal effect on our findings.
In sum, it appears that organizational justice climate (a) helps diminish the likelihood of
sexual harassment occurring and (b) is as effective in preventing sexual harassment as to sex

37
similarity and sexual harassment climate. Importantly, these relationships were consistent across
individual and unit levels of analysis. Preliminarily, we surmise that effective management of fairness
perceptions can be a useful tool for organizations to decrease the occurrence of sexual harassment, as
it reflects organizational standards that all members subscribe to and support. With organizational
commitment to justice, not only are issues of underrepresented groups addressed, but also those of
dominant-group members. In sum, managing fairness is an all-inclusive approach, focusing on
promoting a justice climate for all within an organization.
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Table 1
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1) Navy .21 .41 --
2) Marines .11 .32 -- --
3) Air
.23 .42 -- -- --
Force
4) Coast
.10 .30 -- -- -- --
Guard
- -
5) Pay 2.8 1.3 .03* .02*
*
.10* *
.08* --
grade 4 8 * *
- - -
6) * *
.33 .47 -.00 -.01 .06 .08 .19* --
Minority * * *
- - -
*
.07* * *
.13*
7) Female .29 .46 .01 .02 *
.06 .11 *
--
* * *

48
- - - - -
4.2 1.6 .04* * * *
.49* *
8) Age *
.16 .04 .02 *
.05 .19* --
2 3 * * * * *
- - - -
3.2 1.0 .03* * *
.42* *
.77*
9) Tenure *
.11 .05 .00 *
.02 .21* *
--
3 6 * * * *
10) - - -
4.2 *
.06* .18* * *
.22* .21*
Harassmen .74 .03 .00 *
-.01 *
.11 .21 * *
--
0 * * *
t Climate
- - - -
11) Sex 4.6 1.4 *
.06* *
.05* *
.05* .09* .14*
.03 *
.06 *
-.00 .09 .71* * * *
--
Similarity 5 4 * * * *
12) Psych - -
3.5 *
.03* .17* * *
.15* .14* .42* .09*
Justice .89 .00 .01 *
-.01 *
.05 .14 * * * *
--
0 * *
Climate
13) Sexual - - - - - - - -
1.1 .03* * * * *
.08* .30* * * * *
Harassmen .38 *
.01 .06 .02 .16 * *
.19 .20 .42 .27 .29*
7 * * * * * * * *
t
Note. N = 24,563. Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, Minority, and Female are dummy coded.
* p < .05
** p < .01
Table 2
Summary of Regression Analyses Predicting Sexual Harassment
Variable B (SE) RW B (SE) RW B (SE) RW

Navy -.00 (.00) .00 .00 (.00) .00 .00 (.00) .00
Marines -.00 (.00) .00 .00 (.00) .00 .00 (.00) .00

49
Air Force -.04** (.00) .00 -.04** (.00) .00 -.04** (.00) .00
Coast Guard -.02** (.00) .00 -.02** (.00) .00 -.01** (.00) .00
Pay Grade -.01** (.00) .01 -.01** (.00) .01 -.01** (.00) .01
Minority -.01 (.00) .00 -.00 (.00) .00 -.00 (.00) .00
Female (F) .07** (.00) .05 .07** (.00) .04 .07** (.00) .04
Age -.00 (.00) .01 -.00* (.00) .01 -.00* (.00) .01
Tenure -.01** (.00) .01 -.02** (.00) .01 -.02** (.00) .01
Sex Similarity (SS) -.02** (.00) .04 -.02** (.00) .04 -.02** (.00) .04
Har. Climate (SHC) -.11** (.00) .14 -.09** (.00) .11 -.08** (.00) .11
Psych Jus. Climate (JC) -.03** (.00) .05 -.03** (.00) .05
JC x SS .02** (.00) .01
JC x SHC .03** (.00) .01
R2 .26** .01** .02**
R2 .26 .28 .30
Note. N = 24,563. Navy, Marine, Air Force, Coast Guard, Minority, and Female are dummy coded.
Coefficients are unstandardized and standard errors are in parentheses. RW = Relative Weight. * p <
.05 ** p < .01
Table 3
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations in Study 2
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1) Navy .20 .40 --
2)
.15 .36 -- --
Marines
3) Air
.02 .14 -- -- --
Force

50
4) Coast
.01 .11 -- -- -- --
Guard
5) Pay -
1.83 .64 .01 .07** -.00 --
Grade .10**
6) - -
.39 .49 .02 -.01 ** **
.03* --
Minority .05 .05
7) Female - -
.17 .38 .06** **
.00 -.00 **
.11** --
.08 .04
8) Age -
2.33 .94 .04** **
.12** -.00 .50** .03* -.02* --
.16
9)
- -
Harassme 4.07 .37 .12** .11** .10** .15** .02 .22** .92
.03** .07**
nt Climate
10) Sex - - - - -
.77 .25 **
.12** -.01 -.00 -.01 ** ** **
--
Similarity .12 .14 .81 .05 .03**
11) Unit - - - - - - - - --
15.0 17.0 .08* .09*
Size .07* .07* .07* .13* .05* .08* .19* .17*
2 2 * *
* * * * * * * *
12) Coll. -
** ** ** ** **
- * ** ** **
Justice 3.86 .43 .09 .03 .11 .03 .07 -.02 .11 .77 .03 .08* .86
.07**
Climate *
13) .02* -
** *
- ** **
- - -
Harassme .69 2.03 -.01 .03 -.03 -.01 **
.04 .15 ** ** **
.13*
.06 .08 .14 .14 *
nt
Note. N = 8,197. Harassment climate, unit size, and justice climate are at level 2. Navy, Marines, Air
Force, Coast Guard, Minority, and Female are dummy coded. Reliability estimates appear on the
diagonals. * p < .05 ** p < .01

51
Table 4
Summary of Multilevel Regression Analyses Predicting Sexual Harassment
Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Level-1 Predictors
Intercept .21** (.01) .21** (.01) .20** (.01)
Navy -.01 (.02) -.01 (.02) -.00 (.02)
Marines .05 (.02) .05 (.02) .06* (.02)
Air Force -.04 (.05) -.03 (.05) -.02 (.05)
Coast Guard .04 (.06) .02 (.06) .02 (.06)
Pay Grade -.02 (.01) -.02 (.01) -.02 (.01)
Minority -.01 (.01) -.01 (.01) -.01 (.01)
Female (F) .22** (.03) .22** (.03) .21** (.03)
Age -.02** (.01) -.02** (.01) -.03** (.01)
Sex Similarity (SS) -.20** (.05) -.19** (.05) -.20** (.05)
Level 2-Predictors
Unit Size -.00 (.00) -.00 (.00) -.00 (.00)
Harassment Climate (HC) -.28** (.02) -.18** (.04) -.16** (.04)
Coll. Justice Climate (JC) -.10** (.03) -.11** (.03)
HC x JC .13** (.04)
Cross-Level Interactions
SS x JC .31** (.09)
R2 .42 .01 .01
R2 .42 .43 .44
Deviance 13,828.39 13,818.13 13,793.50
Note. Level 1 N = 8,197; Level 2 N = 546. Sexual harassment is natural log transformed. R2 and R2
for the models were calculated using the formula provided by Snijders and Bosker (1994) for the total
variance explained at both levels of analysis. Female (1= female) and minority (1 = minority) are
dummy coded. Coefficients are unstandardized and numbers in parentheses are standard errors. The 3-
way interactions are modeled separately because the correlation between sex and sex similarity
prevents modeling random coefficients simultaneously. * p < .05 ** p < .01

52
Figure 1
Overall model and hypothesized relationships
Level 2
Level 1
Figure 2

53
The interactive effects of sex similarity and psychological justice climate on sexual harassment.
0.250
0.200
Sexual Harassment
0.150
Justice Climate (-1 SD)
0.100
Justice Climate (+1 SD)
0.050
0.000
Low (-1 SD) High (+1 SD)
Employee-Coworker Sex Similarity
Note. Harassment is natural log transformed

54
Figure 3
The interactive effects of psychological harassment and psychological justice climates on sexual
harassment.
0.250
0.200
Sexual Harassment
0.150

0.100
0.050
0.000
Harassment Climate

55
Figure 4
The interactive effects of sex similarity and collective justice climate on sexual harassment.
0.35
0.3
0.25
Sexual Harassment
0.2

0.15
0.1
0.05
0
Employee-Coworker Sex Similarity

56
Figure 5
The interactive effects of harassment climate and collective justice climate on sexual harassment.
0.35
0.3
0.25
Sexual Harassment
0.2

0.15
0.1
0.05
0
Harassment Climate

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1

Running head: JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

California State University, Northridge

Wake Forest University

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Marinus S. Van Driel

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute

harassment, we also assess its potential moderation of well-established relationships between

justice climate effectively generally helps to deter sexual harassment.

Key words: Justice climate, sexual harassment, relational demography

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Statistics suggest sexual harassment is highly prevalent in today‘s workforce. According to

physical health (Willness et al., 2007).

These alarming consequences prompted over 30 years of research dedicated to the

investigation of individual and organizational antecedents to sexual harassment in an effort to identify

organizational commitment to the prevention of sexual harassment (O‘Leary-Kelly et al., 2009;

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

organization is viewed as intolerant of gender-specific harassing behavior in terms of its policies

boundary conditions of these relationships remain poorly understood.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Romá, Ostroff, & West, 2017).

employees behave toward one another (Lin & Leung, 2014).

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

underlying causes of harassment and promotes positive treatment of others.

supported relationships enables us to determine conditions when established antecedents predict

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

climate). In general, the understanding and identification of organizational antecedents, as opposed to

to deter sexual harassment toward a new, more effective approach.

individual-level relationships. As such, in Study 1, organizational justice and sexual harassment

Antecedents of Sexual Harassment

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JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

A stable behavioral construct consisting of three primary dimensions: gender

return for job benefits).

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JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

sexual harassment identified these two antecedents as organizational or situational predictors of

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

harassment climate and sex similarity).

The Role of Organizational Justice Climate in Sexual Harassment

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

interactions are fair.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

whereas sexual harassment climate may be conceptualized as an outcome climate because it is

strategically focused on specifically deterring sexual harassment behavior. As a process focused

behavior, which may include harassment.

manipulative, self-serving) behaviors (Priesemuth, Arnaud, & Schminke 2013). By promoting

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JUSTICE CLIMATE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

(i.e., treating others fairly).

As sexual harassment behavior is rooted in inequality, we believe organizational justice

organizational contributors. By definition, however, an organizationally just climate promotes fairness

focus on psychological justice climate, or individual-level perceptions, in predicting sexual