The effectiveness of organizational interventions is typically evaluated using changes in mean levels. However, Golembiewski, Billingsley, and Yeager (1976) proposed the existence of three types of change: alpha, beta, and gamma. This paper applies the tripartite conceptualization of change to the evaluation of fairness in the context of a workplace reorganization to determine whether employees conceptualized organizational justice equivalently between groups as well as over time. Results indicate that (a) groups differ by hierarchical level in their conceptualization of both procedural justice and interpersonal justice, (b) groups also experience gamma change for these dimensions pre- and post-reorganization, (c) groups do not differ either by level or over time in their conceptualization of informational justice, and (d) groups do, overall, experience beta change, both between levels as well as over time, and thus responses to informational justice items are not uniformly calibrated. Results also illustrate the necessity of explicitly testing assumptions that the constructs being assessed are equivalent both for all groups as well as over time; they may, in fact, be neither.
