The relationships of distributive justiceand compensation system fairness toemployee attitudes in international jointventuresJAEPIL CHOI1*AND CHAO C. CHEN21Department of Management of Organizations, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong2Department of Management and Global Business, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,New Jersy, USASummary Employee perceptions of the fairness of general corporate systems have thus far not receivedenough attention in the organizational justice literature. To fill this gap, we examinedperceptions of the fairness of the compensation systems of international joint ventures inChina. It is argued that perceptions of compensation system fairness are positively related tothe three distributive justice dimensions, i.e., performance-based distributive justice, com-parative distributive justice relative to foreign expatriates, and comparative distributive justicerelative to local colleagues. Perceptions of compensation system fairness are also hypothes-ized to mediate the relationships between the three distributive justice dimensions andorganizational commitment and turnover intention. A survey of 161 Chinese employees inSino-foreign joint ventures found a positive relationship between perceptions of distributivejustice and perceptions of compensation system fairness. In particular, compensation systemfairness was more strongly associated with performance-based distributive justice than withthe other two distributive justice dimensions based on social comparison. The mediating roleof compensation system fairness was strongly supported.