Although social harmony is one of the most important cultural values in many of Asian societies it has rarely been studied in the mainstream management literatures. Based on the group-value theory of justice we examined how group justice climates influence group effectiveness through group harmony. Analyses of data on 106 upper-level management teams from Chinese organizations showed that justice climates were positively associated with group harmony, which in turn was positively associated with team task performance and team helping behavior. Group harmony was found to significantly mediate the positive effect of both distributive and interactional justice climates on team helping behavior but only marginally on team task performance. Finally, in support of past research both at the group and individual level, procedural justice climate had the weakest effect on group processes and outcomes. By applying the group value theory on group harmony this paper aims to integrate Eastern and Western perspectives on one hand and the justice climates and group harmony research on the other. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The business ethics literature has paid little attention to the similarities, differences, and interactions between ‘justice climate’ and ‘ethical work climate’, two key perspectives on the moral dimension of organizations that are related to cultural diversity. In this conceptual paper we argue that integrative studies of justice and ethical work climates could contribute significantly to our understanding of the moral dimensions of organizations. We propose a model showing that an organization's moral climate can perform both normative and evaluative functions. With the globalization of business and increasing diversification of the labour force, cross-cultural differences regarding organizational perceptions and behaviours are increasingly salient. Hence, we also explore the influence of cultural diversity in our integrated model with the Chinese business context as a specific example. We conclude by discussing directions for further research on the relationship between cultural diversity and moral climate in organizations.