Pay procedures—what makes them fair?

Instrumental and value‐expressive models of procedural justice were the basis of a field study with 612 employees of a large county government. The purpose was to identify the standards used to assess the fairness of pay procedures, and to determine the extent to which instrumental and value‐expressive models of procedural justice explain procedural assessments. Results support the inference that both instrumental and value‐expressive evaluation standards are used for fairness judgments of pay procedures. Results also indicate that the relevance of instrumental and value‐expressive standards is dependent upon the component of the pay process being evaluated and the criterion referent.