The World Justice Project demands that Sustainable Development Goal 16 promises "justice for all." Yet 5 billion people have unmet justice needs globally, including people who cannot obtain justice for everyday problems, those excluded from the opportunities the law provides, and individuals living in extreme conditions of injustice. Bridging this justice gap will require outside-the-box thinking and massive, global action from a wide range of actors. Central to this effort is the concept of commitment, a driving force that can sustain and propel efforts toward achieving universal justice. And this will be our theme today, the six letters in our JUSTICE framework.
Commitment to Justice could be better explained when divided into two counterparts: what is Commitment and how could one have a Commitment to Justice. The rule of commitment, as Erik Sorenson finds, is that you are only committed if you are 100% all in while you remove any ties to things that will pull you back to your pre-commitment self. The rule also states that when 99% committed, you are really 0% committed and will never ultimately reach your goal. How is one committed to justice, on the other hand, is what Allen Buchanan finds, the commitment of The Natural Duty of Justice is the limited moral obligation to contribute to ensuring that all persons have access to just institutions, where this means primarily institutions that protect basic human rights. A combination of two gives us: Commitment to Justice requires not only full and unwavering dedication to the cause of justice but also an active moral responsibility to participate in creating and maintaining systems that ensure fairness and protect fundamental rights for all. However, it is important to note that when it comes to justice, commitment manifests in various forms such as individual actions, organizational efforts, and institutional reforms. It does not limit itself to merely one aspect.
To give a clearer picture, let's delve into Rex D. Foster’s research on Resistance, Justice, and Commitment to Change. The study reflects on different aspects of individuals' responses toward organizational change. His findings revealed that procedural justice, or fairness in the processes leading to outcomes, was the strongest factor influencing affective commitment to change, or emotional attachment to the change effort. In fact, the study by Foster has contradicted the conventional thinking that resistance to change is a direct obstacle to commitment; instead, he proposed that justice of the organization will open the way to commit to the change, regardless of individual tendencies to resist.
First, Foster sampled 218 employees from three U.S.-based organizations undergoing changes. Using well-established scales—such as Colquitt's four-factor organizational justice scale and Herscovitch and Meyer's commitment to change scale—the study analyzed how the perceptions that workers have of the fairness of their workplace influenced their willingness to commit to changes, despite changes being inherently resisted. By utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM), the statistics revealed a strong correlation between procedural justice—-or the degree to which an employee is emotionally supportive of or attached to a given change. The strongest relationship Foster found was between procedural justice and affective commitment, with a significant correlation of 0.61-on a scale where 1.0 perfect correlation. This indicates that once employees feel the change process is nondiscriminatory, transparent, and consistent, then they are emotionally more willing to support and even advocate for the same.
On the other hand, resistance to change, traditionally regarded as an obstacle, proved to have a very weak relationship with commitment compared to what was supposed. According to Foster's findings, resistance to change, which may manifest itself in the form of reluctance, fear of disruption, or emotional aversion, makes little impact on the level of commitment. The correlation between resistance to change and the affective commitment to change was a low value of -0.14, which is statistically insignificant and infers a weak or negligible relationship. This result was important because it showed that employees who are even inclined toward resisting change can commit to it provided the process is perceived to be fair and just. In other words, resistance was not a block that could not be moved; it was surmountable or even nullified by perceptions of procedural justice, which had a much stronger impact, correlating at 0.61 as mentioned earlier. This proves that nurturing fairness and transparency in the decision-making process can break down the natural resistance that many organizational changes face.
The research by Foster therefore conveys an important lesson from a commitment perspective that anchors into the wider context of justice. This further reiterates and cements the fact that individuals, at an organizational or societal level, are capable of overcoming resistance to change if the process is perceived as fair and transparent. This becomes all the more critical as pointed out by the World Justice Project, given the enormous unmet justice needs among 5 billion people in the world. Achieving commitment to justice will have to start with fostering procedural justice in the world's legal systems, institutions, and governance frameworks.
The takeaway from Foster's work is clear: commitment to justice, like commitment to organizational change, is not only about overcoming resistance but about building trust in the processes that lead to just outcomes.
Fair treatment, being heard, and consistency and transparency of the decision-making process are indeed increased commitments to causes, reforms, or changes in general. The same, of course, happens on a global scale when it concerns the justice gap. In other words, where procedural fairness is the guiding principle in legal reforms, governance structures, and international initiatives towards closing the gap in the provision of justice, then the people and communities are likely to participate, support, and commit to such initiatives. Justice, then, is no longer an ideal but a reality with commitments as its bedrock, nurtured by fairness. In a quest to attain "justice for all" under Sustainable Development Goal 16, it is this unwavering commitment-supported by fair and just processes-that will ultimately drive the progress needed to meet the world's unmet justice needs.
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