The Ethical Basis of Restorative Justice in Repairing Damaged Relationships in Organizations: A Lévinasian Approach

The issue of damaged relationships and of how to repair them after being damaged is very important, especially in recent years with reports of organizations damaging relationships with various stakeholders. Many studies have investigated how individuals react to damaged relationships after perceiving injustice or receiving offense in organizations. A part of this research has focused on revenge or other types of negative responses. However, individuals can choose to react in other ways than revenge, willing to repair relationships through forgiveness and reconciliation. More recently organizational scholars have begun to investigate the problem of repairing relationships after they have been damaged. Moreover, the effectiveness of the process of reconciliation after relationships have been damaged has been linked to obtaining a sense of justice by the actors involved. Organizational justice researchers generally understand fairness as a subjective perception by a person or persons, and have identified three main types of justice: distributive, procedural and interactional. More recently, the effectiveness of forgiveness and reconciliation to repair damaged relationship in organizations has been linked to a fourth type of justice, that is restorative justice. For the purpose of this article we are interested in investigate how restorative justice can be effective in repairing or restoring damaged or broken relationships in organizations, as inspired by principles of compassion, empathy, or mercy. In this sense, we look for a convincing philosophical foundation for restorative justice, proposing Lévinas’ ethics of responsibility as a way to normatively justify it.