Rethinking Organisational Justice in Healthcare Through Nurses' Voices: Insights From Nancy Fraser's Theory of Justice

ABSTRACT

Organisational justice has emerged as a key area of interest given the challenges of protecting the health and well‐being of nurses in healthcare organisations. Existing research shows significant conceptual and methodological limitations that must be addressed to achieve a more comprehensive and ethically grounded understanding of nurses’ needs in the healthcare system. This article explores how nurses experience their working conditions within public healthcare organisations through a theoretical lens of social justice to unveil the systemic injustices embedded within them. Adopting a critical discourse analysis approach, this study draws on 31 semi‐structured interviews with nurses working within the public healthcare sector in the Balearic Islands (Spain), informed by Nancy Fraser's feminist theory of justice. The findings illustrate that nurses conceptualised organisational justice as the condition that allows them to practice their profession in accordance with their professional ethos. This novel understanding of organisational justice underscores the economic, social, cultural and political manifestations of gendered injustices nurses face in their daily practice and that prevent them from being considered as peers in the social life of healthcare organisations. This study highlights the imperative to rethink organisational justice through a lens that accounts for the gendered nature of care and nursing work. Nancy Fraser's theory of justice emerges as a groundbreaking framework that offers novel insights to guide this transformative endeavour.