Justice plays an important role in our culture. The topic of justice has
attracted the attention of scholars all over the world. Beginning in
1985, a continuing series of international conferences on social justice
in The Netherlands at which scientists present and discuss started
papers, exchange information, and choose new roads to theory build- ing.
In this volume, a selection of papers, presented at the International
Conference on Social Justice in Human Relations (Leiden, 1986) is
published. There has been some refinement and improvement, thanks to the
comments made by experts in the field. The chapters in this volume
represent second (and, in some cases, even third or fourth) versions of
the papers. As organizers of the conference and editors of this volume,
we hope that the reader will be pleased by the content and the high
quality of the chapters. There is some diversity, but there also are
some common themes. We have organized the chapters with respect to what
we think are two important themes: (1) behavioral and attitudinal
reactions to (in) justice and (2) macrojustice. These categories are not
mutually exclusive, for some chapters could have been placed in both
categories. Still, we think the distinction between these themes has
value.