research paper on organizational justice

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The effects of organizational justice on positive organizational behavior: evidence from a large-sample survey and a situational experiment.

• 1 School of Culture and Social Development Studies, Southwest University, Chongqing, China
• 2 School of Social Work, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, United States
• 3 Department of Sociology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Employees' positive organizational behavior (POB) is not only to promote organizational function but also improve individual and organizational performance. As an important concept in organizational research, organizational justice is thought to be a universal predictor of employee and organizational outcomes. The current set of two studies examined the effects of organizational justice (OJ) on POB of employees with two different studies, a large-sample survey and a situational experiment. In study 1, a total of 2,566 employees from 45 manufacturing enterprises completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires assessing organizational justice (OJ) and positive organizational behavior (POB) of employees. In study 2, 747 employees were randomly sampled to participate in the situational experiment with 2 × 2 between-subjects design. They were asked to read one of the four situational stories and to image that this situation happen to the person in the story or them, and then they were asked to imagine how the person in the story or they would have felt and what the person or they subsequently would have done. The results of study 1 suggested that OJ was correlated with POB of employees and OJ is a positive predictor of POB. The results of study 2 suggested that OJ had significant effects on POB and negative organizational behavior (NOB). Procedural justice accounted for significantly more variance than distributive justice in POB of employees. Distributive justice and procedural justice have different influences on POB and NOB in terms of effectiveness and direction. The effect of OJ on POB was greater than that of NOB. In addition, path analysis indicated that the direct effect of OJ on POB was smaller than its indirect effect. Thus, many intermediary effects could possibly be between them.

Introduction

Employee motivation and organizational effectiveness are the eternal topics of enterprise human resource management. The human resource management in an enterprise is finding ways to achieve the ultimate goal of inspiring employee motivation. Therefore, the study of employees' positive organizational behavior (POB) is attracting more and more attention. Luthans (2002a , b ) introduced the theory of positive psychology to the field of organizational behavior, and defined POB as “the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace” (2003, p. 179). Based on the Chinese cultural background, ( Pan, 2008 ), and Pan and Qin (2009) defined POB as organizational behavior of employees which are beneficial to organizations. It can promote organizational function as well as improve individual and organizational performance. They also identified six dimensions of POB: devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behaviors.

Several studies have been conducted in order to find the reasons behind the employees' willingness to show their POB. There are several factors including personal traits ( Youssef and Luthans, 2007 ; Uymaz, 2014 ; Leephaijaroen, 2016 ), job characteristic ( Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008 ), work stressors ( Munir, 2013 ), and economic situation ( Giorgi et al., 2015 ; Mucci et al., 2016 ; Lopez-Valcarcel and Barber, 2017 ). Giorgi et al. (2015) suggested that during the economic crisis, employees are more likely to have an ambiguous view of their role in organizations or a perception that hard work is more stressful as they would not get fruitful benefits. These thoughts may negatively affect their emotional and behavioral outcomes for organizations, such as less cooperative. However, what worth mentioning are these aspects described above should not be viewed as a comprehensive, exhaustive explanation of what influences POB of employees. The study of POB needs further discussion as there may have better explanatory factors affecting POB of employees.

According to Organs view ( Organ, 1990 ), an organizational member's decision to behave may be a function of the degree to which an employee believes that he or she has been treated fairly by the organization. Previous researches showed that organizational justice is associated with different positive organizational outcomes. For example, Wang et al. (2010) suggested that organizational justice can help improve the employees' work performance. Demirkiran et al. (2016) showed that if employees perceive that actions and practices in the organization are fair and honest, they will show more extra-role behavior, which is beneficial to the development of organizations. Saifi and Shahzad (2017) found that positive perception of employees in relation to organizational justice is an important antecedent to employees' job satisfaction, which in turn promote positive behavior of employees. On the other hand, researches suggested that employees may respond to perception of unfair treatment with a range of negative behavioral responses (e.g., theft, withdrawal, resistance, vandalism, sabotage, and reduction of positive behavior; Fox et al., 2001 ; Lilly, 2017 ).

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between organizational justice and POB of employees, and whether different dimensions of organizational justice can have different impacts on POB and NOB of employees.

The Theoretical Background and Hypothesis

Organizational justice.

Justice is recognized as an action or decision that is understood to be morally right on the basis of ethics, religious, fairness, equity, or law ( Pekurinen et al., 2017 ). It is a major area of concern for both organizations and employees ( Swalhi et al., 2017 ). Organizational justice refers to employee's perception of fairness within an organization ( Greenberg, 1990 ; Asadullah et al., 2017 ).

The earliest idea of organizational justice was derived from equity theory ( Adams, 1963 , 1965 ). It suggested that people compare the ratios of their own perceived work outcomes to their own perceived work inputs with the corresponding ratios of their counterparts. So, their organizational participation can be changed ( Colquitt et al., 2001 ). Input here refers to time and effort and output refers to rewards, such as promotion, pay, recognition, equipment, or any other job-related resources that assist employees in job tasks or maintain overall well-being ( Ghosh et al., 2017 ). If the ratios are equal, people in the organizational contexts are expected to have equitable and satisfied feelings. However, if the ratios are unequal, employees may have the feeling of injustice, they would try to change the situation to create new balance. For example, they may choose to reduce their input-output comparison ( Shkoler and Tziner, 2017 ). Furthermore, organizational justice is also rooted in social exchange theory, which treats social life as a series of sequential transactions between two or more parties ( Blau, 1964 ). In these transactions, resources are exchanged through a process of reciprocity. Therefore, one party tends to repay the good (or sometimes bad) deeds of another party ( Cropanzano et al., 2017 ). Work relationship can be seen as a form of transaction. For example, someone exchanges work for income ( Cropanzano et al., 2002 ). Employee's perception of justice determines the quality of exchanging relationship with organization ( Swalhi et al., 2017 ). When employees perceive fair treatment from the organization and its authorities, they may feel a sense of obligation to create a good act in return ( Ghosh et al., 2017 ).

A number of studies suggested that organizational justice is a key cause of many factors which affect employees' attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment) and behaviors, such as innovative work behavior, organizational citizenship behavior as well as work performance. For example, Usmani and Jamal (2013) examined the relationship between organizational justice and job satisfaction and found that distributive justice, interactional justice and personal time are positively related to job satisfaction. Employees are willing to do more work and exhibit higher levels of performance when they believe they are treated fairly ( Köse, 2014 ). Akram et al. (2016b) suggested that organizational justice has a strong and positive impact on the innovative work behavior of the Chinese employees. Swalhi et al. (2017) demonstrate that organizational justice affects the behavior and performance of employees in the some small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Studies also showed that justice perceptions have a robust link with organizational citizenship behavior ( Karriker and Williams, 2009 ; Tziner and Sharoni, 2014 ; Gurbuz et al., 2016 ). When perception of organizational justice is high, it can enhance employees' positive attitudes toward their organizations and OCB ( Özbek et al., 2016 ). Nevertheless, low level of organizational justice would lead to dissatisfaction and negative feelings of employees, which, in turns, lead to some negative consequences. For example, Pekurinen et al. (2017) stated that low organizational justice may has an adverse effect on nurses' behavior toward colleagues (e.g., collaboration) and may lead to poor employee-patient interactions and change nurses' behavior toward patients. Shkoler and Tziner (2017) shown that the perception of injustice can pose a threat to employees' resources and give them a feeling of inappropriate resources. It makes them feel frustrated and even wear them out, which, in turn, evolve into burnout and destructive organizational behaviors, such as theft, sabotage, withdrawal, harassment.

In developing the theory of organizational justice, researchers have identified three main models including (a) two-factor model, namely distributive and procedural justice; (b) three-factor model, namely distributive, procedural and interaction justice; (c) four-factor model, namely distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice. Although many existing researches studied organizational justice by using the three-factor or four-factor model ( Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ; Colquitt et al., 2001 ; Tessema et al., 2014 ; Akram et al., 2016a , b ), there is less agreement about the distinction between the interactional justice and procedural justice, informational justice and interactional justice due to the high inter-correlation ( Colquitt et al., 2001 ). Hence, it is currently unclear that whether organizational justice should be divided by the three or four factors. Nevertheless, it must be noted that researchers have reached an agreement regarding the distinction between the procedural and distributive justice ( Tessema et al., 2014 ). The two-factor model is the most common model used to analyze organizational justice ( Alexander and Ruderman, 1987 ; Moorman, 1991 ; McFarlin and Sweeney, 1992 ; Karriker and Williams, 2009 ; Strom et al., 2014 ; Ghosh et al., 2017 ) and also serves as a baseline for the following three-, four-factor models. Each of the justice factors is briefly discussed as below.

Distributive Justice

Distributive justice denotes the perceived fairness of the outcomes received by an employee ( Moorman, 1991 ). Lawler suggested that these outcomes, such as pay, promotion, status, performance evaluations, and job tenure would have great influences on job satisfaction, quality of work life, and organizational effectiveness ( Alexander and Ruderman, 1987 ). It is the equity theory that guides the outcome-oriented viewpoint. Adams conceptualized distributive justice ( Tessema et al., 2014 ) and claimed that people are concerned about whether the outcomes are fair instead of the absolute level of the outcomes ( Colquitt et al., 2001 ). When an outcome is perceived to be unfair, it can affect individual's emotion (e.g., anger, happiness, pride, or guilt) and cognitions (e.g., cognitively distort inputs and outcomes of himself/herself or of the other) as well as their behavior (e.g., performance and withdrawal; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ). Campbell et al. (2013) suggest that the perception of distributive justice is associated with the allocating resources. In other words, the feeling of fairness depends on such a way that employees perceived that resources have been shared equitably and replenished adequately. A number of studies suggested that distributive justice and procedural justice have different impacts on organizational outcomes. For example, McFarlin and Sweeney (1992) utilized a main effect approach to examine the predictive roles of distributive and procedural justice and found that distributive justice tends to be a stronger predictor of personal outcomes (e.g., pay level satisfaction, and job satisfaction). Fields et al. (2000) found that distributive justice has larger effects on Hong Kong employees' intent to stay and job satisfaction, but procedural justice plays a more important role in determining Hong Kong employees' evaluation of supervision. Cropanzano et al. (2002) suggested that distributive justice tends to strongly correlate with reactions to specific outcomes and less strongly correlate with reactions to the organization or to one's supervisor. Ghosh et al. (2017) found that distributive justice is a stronger predictor of the sacrifice dimension of organizational embeddedness than procedural justice.

Procedural Justice

Procedural justice refers to “the individual's perception of fairness of procedural elements within a social system regulates allocation of resources” ( Leventhal, 1980 ). It fits with the final outcomes that are equitably deal with methods, mechanisms, and processes ( Swalhi et al., 2017 ). It is considered to exist when procedures embody certain types of normatively accepted principles. Specifically, the fairness of the procedures shall meet the following criteria: the extent to which they suppress bias, create consistent allocations, rely on accurate information, are correctable, represent the concerns of all the recipients, and are based on the prevailing moral and ethical standards ( Leventhal, 1980 ).

In the setting of organizations, procedural justice is considered as the root of social exchange ( Swalhi et al., 2017 ). It has a significant impact on employees' cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions toward the organization ( Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ). For example, Cropanzano et al. (2002) suggested that procedural justice is more likely associated with trust in upper management and organizational commitment. Kim and Park (2017) stated that procedural justice positively influences employee's work engagement, knowledge sharing and innovative work behavior. Lee et al. (2017) showed that procedural justice can facilitates employees to accept the change of values and objectives of organization and also adapt themselves to pressures of external change. Furthermore, certain findings suggested that the process of allocating rewards is more important than the result ( Lind and Tyler, 1988 ; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ).

Positive Organizational Behavior

POB stems from positive psychology which was led primarily by Seligman and other well-known positive psychologists ( Wright, 2003 ). Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2014) suggested that the purpose of positive psychology is “to begin to catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from repairing the worst things in life to building positive qualities.” Therefore, positive psychology primarily studies individuals' strengths and virtues that are beneficial to the development of individuals and communities ( Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008 ). Following the lead of positive psychology, Luthans (2002a) perceived the need for a new theoretical and research-driven perspective and approach to the organizational research, which he termed POB, that is “the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace” ( Youssef and Luthans, 2007 ). Specifically, a positive psychological capacity which can be included into the POB framework must be positive and must have theory and research back-up as well as valid measures. Furthermore, this capacity should make it open to any change and development (i.e., state-like) and have relation to performance improvement in the workplace ( Luthans, 2002b ). The six positive psychological capacities, namely confidence (or self-efficacy), hope, optimism, resilience, subjective well-being (or happiness), and emotional intelligence specifically meet the definition of POB and inclusion criteria, and are viewed as a contribution to understand POB and have considerable impacts on organization performance ( Luthans, 2002b ; Youssef and Luthans, 2007 ). However, Wright (2003) counterbalanced this utilitarian and management-driven view as well as the focus on organization instead of individuals, and argued that the objective of POB should also include the pursuit of employee happiness and health as viable goals in themselves. He introduced Fredrickson's broaden-and-build model which suggests the potentially adaptive and interactive nature of positive emotions ( Wright, 2003 ). According to Fredrickson (2002) , the adaptive or moderating nature of such positive emotions as happiness and joy is potentially more robust for those who are more joyous than for those who are less joyous. He suggested that such positive impetus can enable people to be more creative, resilient, socially connected, and physically and mentally healthy ( Wright, 2003 ). Bakker and Schaufeli (2008) proposed that the organization-based perspective of Luthans and the employee-based perspective should be integrated; POB should emphasize on individual positive psychological conditions and human resource strengths that are relevant to both performance improvement and employees' well-being.

But it should be noted that these researches related to POB are normally concentrated on the implicit and psychological constructs of POB, has not yet attached with importance to the explicit form of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities. Accordingly, Pan (2008) , based on the Chinese cultural background, proposed a new perspective of employees' POB, which could be defined as employees' positive behavior in organization. They proposed that employees' POB is mainly composed of devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behavior ( Pan and Qin, 2009 ). Employees' POB can not only to promote organizational function but also improve individual and organizational performance. In this study, employees' POB consisting of devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behavior was considered as the dependent variable, while organizational justice was regarded as the independent variable.

Relationship between OJ and POB

Organizational justice is found to be a key factor of many organizational outcome variables, such as trust, commitment, job satisfaction, organizational citizen behavior, job performance, and POB ( Alexander and Ruderman, 1987 ; Moorman, 1991 ; McFarlin and Sweeney, 1992 ; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ; Colquitt et al., 2001 ; Wong et al., 2006 ; Karriker and Williams, 2009 ; Zainalipour et al., 2010 ; Keyvanar et al., 2014 ; Khan et al., 2016 ; Nastiezaie and Jenaabadi, 2016 ). For instance, Alexander and Ruderman (1987) suggested that all fairness variables, as a group, are significantly associated with employees' work-related attitudes and behaviors and procedural fairness and distributive fairness have distinct effects on the organizational outcomes. Keyvanar et al. (2014) studied organizational justice and POB in the context of hospital and found that organizational justice is related to POB (hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resiliency) and work engagement through the attainment of personal career goals. Nastiezaie and Jenaabadi (2016) showed that organizational justice has a significant and positive correlation with POB A small number of researches explored how perceptions of fair treatment influence the employee's beneficial behavior. For example, Joseph et al. (2015) found that organizational justice had a significant effect on interpersonal helping behavior. Walumbwa et al. (2009) examined the relationship between organizational justice and voluntary learning behavior, and found that perceptions of employee distributive and procedural justice had an indirect impact on learning behavior. These studies all suggested that organizational justice and positive behavior in organization have certain correlation, and organizational justice would have a significant impact on employees' positive behavior. By contrast, employees treated with organizational injustice might perform negative behavior. For example, DeMore et al. (1988) found that low perceived equity (lack of fairness in one's social or environmental arrangements) can predict vandalism. Ambrose et al. (2002) examined the relationship between injustice and workplace sabotage, and found that injustice is the most common cause of sabotage. Min et al. (2014) suggested that perceived injustice during work is significantly associated with an increased risk of occupational disease and absenteeism for Korean employees. Mingzheng et al. (2014) suggested that organizational justice is negatively correlated with counterproductive work behavior among Chinese public servants. Finding from Michel and Hargis (2017) showed that procedural injustice motivates deviant behavior in the workplace.

Based on these considerations, we expect that organizational justice and POB of employees will have a significant relationship, and different dimensions of organizational justice will lead to different behavioral outcomes. Thus, we want to investigate the relationship between POB and OJ and how distributive justice and procedural justice will affect the POB of employee and negative organizational behavior (NOB).

In view of the above, four hypotheses are proposed as the following:

H1: If OJ is positively related to POB, then employees with a high level of OJ will perform more POB.

H2: If OJ is a positive predictor of POB, then higher level of OJ will predict higher level of POB.

H3: OJ was expected to have a significant main effect on employees' POB.

H4: If procedural justice differs from distributive justice in terms of influence effectiveness and direction, then procedural justice and distributive justice will have different influences on employees' POB and NOB.

Overview of Studies

Justice theory states that the perception of the employees about fairness leads to certain reactions (positive or negative), and in turns leads to certain behavior (positive or negative; Akram et al., 2016b ). Specifically, the perceived justice can motivate employees to perform more beneficial and positive behavior for organizations, while, when experiencing injustice they might react negatively ( Graso and Grover, 2017 ). A substantial body of empirical work demonstrates that organizational justice have significant impact on employees' behavior, and distributive justice and procedural justice can distinctly influence employees' work-related attitudes and behavioral outcomes ( Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ). Therefore, we employed a large-sample survey and a situational experiment to examine the effect of OJ in the form of distributive justice and procedural justice on POB and NOB among enterprise employees. In study 1, we attempted to analyze the relationship between OJ and POB among enterprise employees through a survey study in which participants were then asked to report their level of organizational justice (OJ) and positive organizational behavior (POB) with self-made valid scales. In study 2, we attempted to further findings from Study 1 through a situational experiment with 2 × 2 between-subjects design in which participants were asked to read one of the four situations stories and to imagine that this situation happen to either the person in the story (Evaluate by the situation) or them (Evaluated by self-experience), and then they were asked to imagine how the person in the story or they would have felt and what the person or they subsequently would have done. Specifically, in situational experiment organizational justice including distributive justice and procedural justice would be reflected in two aspects (justice and injustice), and the outcome variables include POB and NOB of employees. We examined whether procedural justice differs from distributive justice in terms of effectiveness and direction of effect on POB and NOB of employees.

Participants and Procedure

From 13 cities in China, a total of 2,566 employees were randomly selected from 45 manufacturing-type enterprises. Male employees accounted for 44.7% and females accounted for 55.3%. Respondents aged under 25 accounted for 30.7%, 25–34 years old accounted for 35.9%, 35–44 years old accounted for 22.8%, 45–54 years old occupied 8.7%, and 55 years old and above took up for 1.9%. Respondents graduating from high school and below accounted for 62.4%, with junior college degree accounted for 24.9%, with bachelor degree accounted for 11.3%, and with master's and Ph.D. degree occupied 1.4%. In addition, ordinary employees accounted for 60.5%, first-line managers accounted for 24.2%, middle managers accounted for 10.4%, and senior managers occupied 4.8%. Respondents with < 1 year work experience accounted for 14.2%, with 1–2 years work experience took up for 32.8%, with 3–5 years work experience accounted for 22.6%, with 6–10 years work experience occupied 11.7%, and with over 10 years work experience accounted for 14.6%. Respondents who received a monthly salary of ¥2,000 accounted for 25.4%, received a monthly salary of ¥2,001 to ¥3,500 accounted for 51.1%, received a monthly salary of ¥3,501 to ¥5,000 accounted for 13.7%, and those who received ¥5,000and above accounted for 9.8%. This study received ethics approval from the University of Southwest's Human Research Ethics Committee'. All participants were informed that participation was purely voluntary. No payments were offered in exchange for participation. After providing the written informed consent, participants completed two self-made questionnaires. In order to minimize common method bias, we firstly assured the anonymity and confidentiality of all survey responses by tracking data with site coding rather than respondents names and having surveys returned directly to the researchers. Secondly, we designed the response questionnaire with A and B columns (column A—for any one company; column B—for your company), reflecting the combination of self-evaluation and other-rated method, to reduce potential social desirability. Subsequent analyses suggested that the difference between A and B was not significant ( t = 1.826, P > 0.05), the social desirability effects were deemed small. Thirdly, we utilized the pre-survey with a small sample of 368 employees from 12 companies, and 3 months later in the formal investigation these participants were again asked to complete the same questionnaire. Subsequent analysis suggested that there is no significant difference between these two survey outcomes ( t = 1.912, P > 0.05). Additionally, we adopted other ways to minimize the effect of non-related variables on the survey outcomes such as training investigators, using the unified instruction and trying to control the effect of the situational factors.

Organizational justice

According to Joy and Witt's (1992) theory that organizational justice can be divided into distributive and procedural justice, we developed a 12-item scale as an instrument for measuring organizational justice. Because the set of 12 items tapped different aspects of organizational justice, we carried out EFA to identify any underlying dimensions. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) yielded two factors that explained 72.11% of the common variance. For the distributive justice factor, a measure consisting of 5 items (factor loading range from 0.672 to 0.836) was constructed. For the procedural justice factor, a measure consisting of three items (factor loading range from 0.818 to 0.843) was constructed.

Further, to take into consideration organizational justice in its entirety, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in which all the organizational justice items were loaded onto their respective factors. The results showed a good fit (χ 2 /df = 7.68, GFI = 0.97, NFI = 0.99, RFI = 0.98, IFI = 0.99, CFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.075 and SRMR = 0.024) and the coefficient alpha was 0.913.

Positive organizational behavior (POB)

Employees' POB was measured by using the scale developed and validated by Pan (2008) , Pan and Qin (2009) . This scale consists of 33 items loading on six distinct factors, which include devoted behavior (employees devote their time and energy to their work), responsible behavior (employees complete their work voluntarily), active behavior (employees can adapt to the external environment willingly), innovative behavior (employees are willing to embrace new technologies and apply or create new technology at work), helping behavior (employees help colleagues complete work willingly), and harmonious behavior (employees cooperate with others in a friend way). The EFA yielded six factors that explained ~70% of the common variance. The results of CFA showed a good fit (χ 2 /df = 3.96, RMSEA = 0.065, GFI = 0.86; NFI, NNFI, CFI, IFI, RFI, and TLI were above 0.95). The coefficient alpha was 0.97 and the retest reliability was 0.88 ( r = 0.88).

To verify the validity of the hypotheses proposed in the current study, we used SPSS 20.0 and LISREL8.7 to analyze the obtained data.

Correlation Analysis

Table 1 reports the means, standard deviations and correlation coefficients between all the variables in the current study.

Table 1 . Correlation analysis ( n = 2566).

These tests are based on the scores from the scales previously mentioned. Overall POB and OJ were calculated according to the scores of its own dimensions. The results show that there are numerous significant positive correlations between all the variables. H1 was therefore accepted.

Multiple Regression Analysis

For testing the casual effect of distributive justice, procedural justice and overall OJ on employee devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, harmonious behavior, and overall POB, a number of models were developed by multiple linear regression analysis.

As shown in the Table 2 , the results revealed that the regression equation established by the two factors of OJ and all factors of staff POB had significant statistical significance (each F- value's p < 0.001). Moreover, the procedural justice and distributive fairness had very significant positive effect on various factors of employees' POB. Procedural justice and distributive justice commonly explained investment, responsible, initiative, innovation behavior, helping, and harmonious behaviors by 14, 11, 17, and 18, 22, and 18% of variation, respectively. Moreover, the results show that overall OJ is a positive predictor (β = 0.51, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.26) of overall POB. H2 could be proved.

Table 2 . Regression analysis of OJ on POB ( n = 2566).

Path Analysis

In Table 3 and Figure 1 , path analysis can allow us to examine the direct, indirect, and total effect between the analysis variables. The results show that the total effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on all dimensions of POB of employee were significant. Specifically, the total effects of distributive justice on devoted behavior and responsible behavior were strongest (β = 0.55, t = 37.35, p < 0.001 and β = 0.50, t = 31.99, p < 0.001, respectively), and procedural justice was the strongest predictor of active behavior of employee (β = 0.36, t = 21.72, p < 0.001). By contrast, the overall effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on helping behavior of employee were relatively low (β = 0.17, t = 8.59, p < 0.001 and β = 0.25, t = 12.53, p < 0.001, respectively).

Table 3 . Path analysis.

Figure 1 . Standardized path coefficients of the effect of OJ on POB. PJ, Procedural justice; DJ, Distributive justice; J1~J8, items of the scales of Organizational Justice.

Furthermore, the direct effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on all dimensions of POB of employee were quite low. Particularly, distributive justice failed to directly affect innovative behavior, and procedural justice failed to directly affect active, helping behavior. However, it should be noted that distributive justice and procedural justice have significant and positive indirect effects on all dimensions of POB of employee. Hence, we can conclude that the relationships among distributive justice and innovative, procedural justice and active behavior, and procedural justice and helping behavior were mediated by other variables. Thus, these results provide support for H3.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

In the pre-test, we randomly selected 96 employees from three manufacturing-type enterprises located in Chenzhou, China. These subjects were equally divided into four groups with 24 subjects in each group. Each group was randomly assigned to a situation. The pool of subjects included 51 male and 45 female employees, and their average age was 36.31 years old. Thirty one were managers and 65 were ordinary employees. The number of people with the degree above junior college was 63.

In the formal experiment, a total of 800 employees were randomly selected from 16 manufacturing-type enterprises located in six cities of Hunan, Guangdong, and Zhejiang province, China. Similarly, these were equally divided into four groups with 200 subjects in each group. Each group was randomly assigned to a situation. Finally, a total of 747 effective samples were obtained. Among them, 191 were effective samples for situation 1 (A1B1), 177 for situation 2 (A1B2), 189 for situation 3 (A2B1), and 190 for situation 4 (A2B2). The pool of subjects included 418 men (56%) and 329 women (44%). In this sample, 25 years old and below accounted for 30.1%, 25–34 years old 37.7%, 35–44 years old 22.9%, 45–54 years old 6.9% and 55 years old and above 2.3%. In terms of level of education, 52.7% of respondents graduated from high schools and below, 26.8% of respondents held a junior college degree, 17.7% of respondents held an bachelor degree and 2.7% of respondents held a master's and Ph.D. degree. In addition, ordinary employees accounted for 64.4%, first-line managers 22.3%, middle managers 10.8% and senior managers 2.5%.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of “the University of Southwest's Human Research Ethics Committee” with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects were purely voluntary, and gave the written informed consent. No payments were offered in exchange for participation.

Experimental Materials

Before the experiment, the research interviewed the participants about the bonus issues, and gathered the typical cases of distributive justice and injustice and procedural justice and injustice in the process of bonus distribution. After refining these typical cases, four situational stories on bonus distribution were designed as experimental materials. These four situational stories respectively represented four type of experimental treatments, which included A1B1 (distributive justice × procedural justice); A1B2 (distributive justice × procedural injustice); A2B1 (distributive injustice × procedural justice); and A2B2 (distributive injustice × procedural injustice). Each story was in accordance with the logic of the event development, which means that the bonus distribution was conformed to the order from the process to the outcomes.

This is an example of the situational story one. (A1B1: distributive justice × procedural justice). The situational stories of A1B2, A2B1, and A2B2 are shown in the Appendix.

(Story) Senior managers of a company intend to give a large amount of bonus for employees. They formulate the standards and organize managers of each layer and representative of the employees to have a discussion. After discussions, the distributive standard is determined preliminarily. Then, the document of the standard is shown publicly to collect opinions of ordinary employees until the document is approved by all staff. Based on the arrangement without objection, the Personnel Department evaluates every employee according to the distributive document and personal job performance. The result is shown publicly for correction of mistakes. According to the distributive arrangement and personal job performance, Zhangsan obtained the lowest score and the minimum bonus .

(Instructions)Please answer the following questions based on your real thoughts and physical truth according to the situational story. When answering the questions, mark directly on the selected option (5 = Absolutely agree, 4 = Partly agree, 3 = A little bit agree, 2 = Partly disagree, and 1 = Absolutely disagree).

Absolutely disagree—Absolutely agree

(1) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, Zhangsan will think it is fair and he will do his work actively .

(2) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we will also feel it is fair and do our work actively .

(3) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, Zhangsan will feel it is unfair. He will slow down, be absent, not obey the arrangement in his work, or even resign .

(4) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we will also feel it is unfair. We will slow down, be absent, not obey the arrangement in our work, or even resign .

The situational experiment used a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. The independent variables were organizational justice in form of distributive justice and injustice and procedural justice and injustice. The specific operational definition of these independent variables as follows: (1) Distributive justice: More labor efforts, higher production rate, and more contributions result in higher bonus. By contrast, less labor effort, lower production rate, and less contribution resulted in lower bonus; (2) Distributive injustice: More labor effort, higher production rate, and more contributions result in lower bonus. By contrast, less labor effort, lower production rate, and less contribution led to higher bonus. (3) Procedural justice: Bonus distribution standard justice, process-transparent, accurate information, publicly showed result, and correctable mistakes; (4) Procedural injustice: Injustice bonus distribution standard, closed procedure, inaccurate information, and closed results. The response variables are POB and NOB of employees. POB here refers to the devoted, active, helping, responsible, innovative and harmonious behavior. NOB refers to inimical, aggressive, and backward-looking behavior, and mainly performs as discontentment, hostility, sabotage, absence, and retirement. The response variables were measured by two types of indexes: (1) Evaluated by the situation (The subject was asked to give a response to the experience of hero in the story) and (2) Evaluated by self-experience (the subject was asked to read the situational story carefully and then answer the following questions according to his real thoughts assuming that he is the hero in the story). The scores of these two types of indexes both adopted a five-point Likert scale, where 1 indicates disagree absolutely and 5 indicates agree absolutely. Additionally, we controlled for age, gender, level of education, and organizational position to rule out possible alternative explanations for our findings.

At the beginning of this study, the examiners explained to each subject about the nature and the aim of the manipulation and ensured all responses would be kept confidential and anonymous with the same instruction and same situational condition. Subsequently, examiners randomly assigned one certain situational story to each group and asked the subjects to read the story carefully and then make judgment: (a) choosing the best answers to the following questions according to the feelings of the person in the story—Evaluated by the situation; (b) choosing the best answers to the following questions according to their own feeling supposing themselves as the person in the story—Evaluated by self-experience.

Correlation Analyses

The means, standard deviations, and correlations among the study variables are displayed in Table 4 . The results show that distributive justice and procedural justice were correlated with POB, and further the correlation between procedural justice and POB ( r = 0.319, p < 0.01) was greater than between distributive justice and POB ( r = 0.079, p < 0.05). Additionally, age, level of education, and organizational position were correlated with distributive justice and procedural justice. Therefore, we decided to examine the effects of these demographic variables in the subsequent analyses.

Table 4 . Correlation analysis ( n = 747).

Hierarchical Regression Analyses

We preformed a hierarchical regression analysis for the effect of each predictor on the outcome variable POB of employees. Our goal was to determine if the hypothesized variables added a unique contribution in the prediction of the criterion above and beyond the control variables. As such, we first entered the control variables. Second, we entered the distributive justice. Next, we entered the procedural justice. To control for potential demographic effects, we included age, gender, highest level of education and organizational position as control variables.

As shown in Table 5 , the individual characteristics did not account for the variance in POB, and distributive and procedural justice predicted 10% of the variance in POB of employees. Excluding the effects of distributive justice, the strongest predictor of POB was procedural justice which means that the higher the perceptions of procedural justice, the more POB employees performed.

Table 5 . Hierarchical regression analyses ( N = 747).

Examining the Effectiveness of Experimental Operation

Before verification of the research hypothesis, the discriminability of dependent variable was examined through the pretest. As shown in the Figure 2 , the results of t -test indicated that the experience of distributive justice was more frequent than the experience of distributive injustice to the subject under the situation of distributive justice (M distributive justice = 3.08, M distributive injustice = 1.92, t = 97.10, P < 0.001). The experience of procedural justice was also more frequent than the experience of procedural injustice to the subject under the situation of procedural justice (M procedural justice = 2.91, M procedural injustice = 1.97, t = 32.87, P < 0.001). Hence, OJ experienced by the subjects was equal to the experimental orientation, and the experiment had obvious discriminability.

Figure 2 . Experimental operational effectiveness of dependent variable.

The effectiveness of evaluation by situation and evaluation by self-experience were also examined. As shown in the Figure 3 , the results of the t -test indicated that the difference in OJ evaluation between others in the situation and themselves in the situation was obvious. Thus, (Situation 1: M peer assessment = 3.17, M self−evaluation = 3.62, t = 3.20, P < 0.01; Situation 2: M peer assessment = 2.56, M self−evaluation = 1.97, t = 2.58, P < 0.01; Situation 3: M peer assessment = 2.95, M self−evaluation = 2.55, t = 3.55, P < 0.001; Situation 4: M peer assessment = 1.98, M self−evaluation = 1.61, t = 3.12, P < 0.01). The results indicated a subject effect. Therefore, the effect of the independent variable on two response variables should be further examined.

Figure 3 . The effectiveness of evaluation by situation and evaluation by self-experience.

Full Model Analysis

As presented in Table 6 , we used multivariable variance analysis to examine the hypothesis proposed in this study. The results showed that distributive justice and procedural justice had a significant effect on employee POB, both in situational or self-experienced behavior. Furthermore, the interactions between distributive justice and procedural justice are significant ( p < 0.001).

Table 6 . Full model analysis.

Analysis of the Effect of Distributive Justice and Procedural Justice on POB and Negative Organizational Behavior

The full model test to experimental hypothesis was general, which made the analysis of the effects of independent variable on dependent variables difficult to conduct. Hence, a one-way ANOVA was adopted in this study to verify H4.

As shown in Table 7 and Figure 4 , employee positive behavior under the situation of distributive justice was more common than under the situation of distributive injustice (M distributive justice = 3.28, M distributive injustice = 2.93, F = 9.67, P < 0.001). Employee negative behavior under the situation of distributive justice was less than the behavior under the situation of distributive injustice (M distributivejustice = 2.41, M distributiveinjustice = 2.75, F = 7.87, P < 0.001). Employee positive behavior under the situation of procedural justice was more common than that under the situation of procedural injustice (M proceduraljustice = 3.47, M procedural injustice = 2.71, F = 127.35, P < 0.001). Employee negative behavior under the situation of procedural justice was also less than that in the situation of procedural injustice (M procedural justice = 2.35, M procedural injustice = 2.77, F = 19.17, P < 0.001). This outcome further confirmed that the distributive justice and procedural justice had significant effects on the pros and cons of employees' POB. The difference of interaction level between the distributive justice and procedural justice was significant ( P < 0.05). In terms of the positive behavior, the diversity among A1B1, A2B1, and A1B2 showed that A2B2 was more obvious. In terms of the negative behavior, the diversity among A1B1, A2B1, and A1B2, A2B2 was less obvious. The difference between these situations was also obvious. Hence, procedural justice had a significant effect on POB, while distributive justice had a significant effect on NOB. In addition, from R 2 in Table 7 , the explanation of distributive justice and procedural justice effects on POB was 13.8% and for the NOB, the rate was only 3.6%. Therefore, OJ had greater effect on POB than that on the NOB. Therefore, H4 could be verified.

Table 7 . Effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on positive/negative organizational behavior.

Figure 4 . Effects of Distributive Justice and Procedural Justice to Positive/Negative Organizational Behavior.

In addition, the results also showed that distributive justice and procedural justice explained 13% variation of POB of employee, and explained only 3.6% variation of NOB. Therefore, OJ had greater effect on POB than NOB.

General Discussion

The correlation analysis showed that overall POB of employee has a significant correlation with organizational justice in manufacturing-type enterprises. The results also suggested that all dimensions of POB of employee were significantly related to distributive justice and procedural justice ( r > 0.3, P < 0.001). Multiple regression analysis showed that OJ has a significant effect on POB of employees, and procedural justice and distributive fairness had significant positive effects on all dimensions of POB of employees. In other words, OJ is a positive predictor of POB of employee.

The situational experiment also confirmed the significant effects of procedural and distributive justice on positive and negative justice, as well as their interaction. The results confirmed that distributive and procedural justice had a significant effect on POB from the pros and cons of employee's POB. Many researches demonstrated that OJ had the remarkable two-way effect on employees' behavior. Specifically, organizational justice would boost employees' positive attitudes and behavior related to organizations such as improving employee job satisfaction ( Tammy et al., 2010 ; Yijuan et al., 2011 ; Khan et al., 2015 ), organizational commitment ( Ölçer, 2015 ; Sökmen and Ekmekçioglu, 2016 ), organizational productivity ( Imran et al., 2015 ), organizational citizenship behavior ( Karriker and Williams, 2009 ; Tziner and Sharoni, 2014 ; Gurbuz et al., 2016 ) and job performance ( Walumbwa et al., 2009 ).

But if employees feel organizational injustice, they will display negative attitudes and behavior outcomes ( Adams, 1965 ; Greenberg, 1990 , 1993 , 2001 ; Li and Shi, 2003 ; Pi, 2006 ; Ceylan and Sulu, 2011 ; Mingzheng et al., 2014 ; Chih et al., 2016 ). These results were in line with previous studies. Further, this research examined different directions of procedural and distributive justice on POB. Procedural justice is more likely to trigger POB of employees, whereas distributive injustice tended to result NOB. OJ also had greater effects on the POB of employees than NOB.

Further, this research examined different direction of procedural and distributive justice on POB. Procedural justice is more likely to trigger POB of employees, whereas distributive injustice tended to trigger NOB. OJ also had greater effects on the POB of employees than NOB. Therefore, future researchers should further analyze the relationship of these related factors with OJ or the POB of employees.

In addition, the findings revealed the remarkable result that the explanatory power of OJ theory to employees' POB was weak, which may have something to do with the effects of the Chinese traditional culture. In China, people pay attention to humanity, face, and euphemistical interpersonal association. In addition, people think highly of collectivity, collective honor, connotation, and great harmony. Under the cultural background of harmony ( Yang, 1988 ; Wang and Zheng, 2005 ), the consciousness of dealing with affairs according to justice, procedure, social contract, and regulation is weaker than among Western people. In China, social relation network, implicit rules, and the way of saving the nation by curve may be more effective in social and enterprise management. Thereby, the consciousness of justice is weak in the mind of enterprise employees. The relationship comes down in one continuous line with the discovery that Chinese enterprise employees attach considerable attention to seeking harmonious interpersonal relations. Given the special cultural background in China, employee ownership of organizational achievement and reputation, organizational belongingness, sense of worth and pride based on the organization, sense of cohesiveness formed by organizational ideals and organizational support have far more significant effect on employees' POB than OJ. Hence, future replication studies in other contexts are needed to verify the findings of this study and consider the relationship between these factors described above and POB of employees.

Strengths and Limitations

A key strength of the present research is that we used a newly explicit definition of POB: an organizational behavior of employees would be beneficial to organization. The POB of employee is mainly composed of devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behavior. It is important to emphasize that this framework of POB can be measureable, assessable, controllable and changeable and it was conformed to the Chinese cultural background. Future research should investigate whether this definition of POB can conduct on other specific cultural, industrial and regional group.

The study has several limitations. First, all the measures in this study draw on self-reported data of individuals' attitudes and perceptions. Although we have used the pre-control method, such as ensuring the anonymity of respondents, designing the response questionnaire as a combination of self and peer evaluation and conducting the investigation in different periods, it may lead to common method variance that would has a negative impact on the reliability of the obtained results. We would encourage future researches to use longitudinal design to make causal statement address any concerns related to causal relationships, and also collect multiple data to measure the behavioral outcomes of POB. This would strengthen the research design and enhance the reliability of the results.

Second, the present study adopted two-factor models to analyze organizational justice because it was regarded as the most common model. However, it is suggested that for better understanding of OJ, interactional justice and informational justice can be included into the framework of OJ. Future researchers can analyze the effect of four dimensions of OJ on the POB of employees in detail.

Third, the experimental study used four different stimulus stories as materials to analyze the relationship between OJ and POB of employees, including devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping and harmonious behavior. Although these stimulus stories were considered to be effective and reliable because of the connotation of these stories contains every facet of POB of employees (e.g., “striving for the best,” “working hard,” and “helping others”), we did not adequately measure other facets of POB of employees except for “active behavior”. Therefore, future research should address this issue by using diverse and complete materials and devising more elaborate procedures to examine the effect of OJ on POB of employees.

Theoretical and Practical Implications

The findings of this study have many theoretical and practical implications for researchers and managers. From the theoretical perspective, firstly, the current research contributes to the existing literature by empirically investigating and validating relationships between organizational justice and POB. The obtained results of research demonstrate that the direct and positive relationships between organizational justice and POB are all statistically significant. And it reveals that procedural justice has a more powerful effect on POB of employees, whereas employees' NOB is more strongly influenced by distributive injustice. Moreover, the results of the path analysis show that organizational justice has stronger indirect impact on POB of employees than direct effects. Based on the findings of current research, researchers could extend the results of this study by considering other variables, in order to better comprehend and generalize the results of this study. Furthermore, researchers could consider the effect of economic situation on organizational outcomes. Specifically, whether people have stronger feelings of injustice during economic downturn and to what extent the economic crisis negatively affect employees' emotional and behavioral outcomes for organizations.

In addition, the current study distinguished that two dimensions (distributive and procedural justice) of OJ have distinct influence to employees' organizational behavior. It suggested that distributive justice and procedural justice would trigger different behavioral aspects of employees, which may make a contribution to the previous knowledge about the theory of organizational justice.

From the practical perspective, employees of an organization will reflect positive behavior and productivity if they perceive their organization as fair and just in its procedures and distribution systems. Enhancing organizational justice results in improved outcomes from employees. Therefore, managers should make efforts to enhance the perceived organizational justice of employees to improve their POB. Furthermore, the findings suggest that procedural justice differ from distributive justice in effectiveness and direction of effect. It is important for organizational managers to consider when they formulate and implement justice strategies to influence employees' related attitudes and behaviors. They should ensure both processes are fair, transparent and just and distributions are equitable and reasonable. Therefore, managers are encouraged to have a comprehensive consideration to increase the POB of employees and to decrease the NOB of employees, due to the employees' negative perception about distributive injustice.

To conclude, this current study contributes to the literature in the following ways. First, the current study offers a new perspective about POB of employees, including devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behavior. Second, this study confirms past findings by showing organizational justice has a significant impact on POB of employees. Finally, the study contributes to our understanding that two forms of organizational justice have different influences on employees' organizational behavior. In other words, procedural justice significantly influenced POB of employees, and distribution injustice significantly influenced NOB.

Employees' POB has an obviously positive relation with OJ in the manufacturing-type enterprises. OJ clearly indicates the positive prediction on POB. Situational experiments have further confirmed that the main effect of procedural and distributive justice on POB and NOB is obvious, and there is frequent interaction between them. In addition, the influence orientation and the effectiveness between procedural and distributive justice also differ. In other words, procedural justice is prone to result in POB and distributive justice has a significant effect on negative organizational behavior. Furthermore, path analysis suggested that OJ has more indirect effects on POB than direct effects, which could probably because the effects of other mediating variables.

Ethics Statement

The study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of “the University of Southwest's Human Research Ethics Committee” with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the “the University of Southwest's Human Research Ethics Committee.”

Author Contributions

The current research was carried out in collaboration between all authors. XP designed the study, analyzed the data and wrote the framework of the manuscript. MC analyzed the literature and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. ZH and WB conducted the literature research and carried out experimental process. Finally, XP and MC revised and perfected the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

The study is supported by “Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU 1709740)”.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Scene 2: A1B2 (distributive justice × procedural injustice)

Senior managers of a company intend to give a large amount of bonus for employees. Not only the distributive standard is not known by employees, but also the evaluation process is not transparent. Even they don't know how their evaluation score is calculated by company. The result is not shown publicly. No reason for complaint if mistakes exist. Finally, zhangsan obtained a bonus. Later he learned that his bonus roughly consistent with his income .

(Instructions) Please answer the following questions based on your real thoughts and physical truth according to the situational story. When answering the questions, mark directly on the selected option (5 = Absolutely agree, 4 = Partly agree, 3 = A little bit agree, 2 = Partly disagree, and 1 = Absolutely disagree).

(1) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, Zhangsan will think it is fair and he will do his work actively.1 2 3 4 5

(2) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we would also feel it is fair and do our work actively.1 2 3 4 5

(3) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, Zhangsan will feel it is unfair. He will slow down, be absent, not obey the arrangement in his work, or even resign. 1 2 3 4 5

(4) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we would also feel it is unfair. We would slow down, be absent, not obey the arrangement in our work, or even resign. 1 2 3 4 5

Scene 3: A2B1 (distributive injustice × procedural justice)

Senior managers of a company intend to give a large amount of bonus for employees. They formulate the standards and organize multi-level managers and representatives of employees to have a discussion. After discussion, the distributive standard is determined preliminarily. Then, the standard is shown publicly to collect opinions from ordinary employees until all staves approve the standard. Based on the decision without objection, the Human Resources Department evaluates every employee according to the distributive standard and personal job performance. The result is shown publicly for correction if mistakes exist. According to the distributive arrangement and personal job performance, ZhangSan got the lowest score, while did not obtain the minimum bonus.

(2) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we would also feel it is fair and do our work actively. 1 2 3 4 5

Scene 4: A2B2 (distributive injustice × procedural injustice)

Senior managers of a company intend to give a large amount of bonus for employees. Not only the distributive standard is not known by employees, but also the evaluation process is not transparent. Even they don't know how their evaluation score is calculated by company. The results of bonus distribution are not shown publicly. Even if the results are wrong, the senior managers don't allow you to appeal freely. Finally, zhangsan obtained a bonus. Later he learned that his bonus did not consistent with his income. Compared with him, those who did less job, created lower performance, and contributed less, eventually obtained more bonuses.

Keywords: organizational justice, positive organizational behavior, procedural justice, distributive justice, organizational performance

Citation: Pan X, Chen M, Hao Z and Bi W (2018) The Effects of Organizational Justice on Positive Organizational Behavior: Evidence from a Large-Sample Survey and a Situational Experiment. Front. Psychol . 8:2315. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02315

Received: 08 April 2017; Accepted: 20 December 2017; Published: 10 January 2018.

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Copyright © 2018 Pan, Chen, Hao and Bi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Xiaofu Pan, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Organizational justice.

• Dirk D. Steiner Dirk D. Steiner Université Côte d'Azur
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.555
• Published online: 30 July 2020

Organizational justice refers to people’s perceptions of the fairness or unfairness of the treatment they receive in the organizations where they work. The ways authorities, such as supervisors and managers, make decisions and implement them are evaluated by employees in terms of their fairness. Other agents, such as coworkers and customers who interact with employees, also can generate judgments of fairness or unfairness at work. These fairness perceptions can be conceived according to four dimensions of organizational justice as well as in general terms. The four dimensions are distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational. Typically, distributive justice evaluates the equity of treatment, where people expect outcomes proportionate to their contributions. Workers also evaluate the fairness of procedures used to make decisions and the quality of their interpersonal relations with the various actors of the organization, including the information the actors communicate regarding decisions and the procedures followed to make them. When people perceive that they are treated fairly, positive consequences result for them and for their organizations. Thus, they tend to be more satisfied, evaluate their management more favorably, engage in more prosocial behaviors within their organizations, perform at higher levels, and remain in their employing organizations for longer periods. When people experience unfair treatment, negative consequences include stress and health-related concerns for employees, negative attitudes toward the organization, and counterproductive behaviors, such as theft, vandalism, or absenteeism. People react strongly to fair or unfair treatment for different reasons. They may believe that fair treatment will allow them to receive the rewards that they deserve, it may communicate that they are valued in a group, or fair treatment may be valued as an important and basic principle of human functioning. Research on organizational justice in 2020 focuses on understanding the mechanisms producing fairness judgments and their consequences and on the boundary conditions limiting the observed relations with their antecedents and outcomes.

• organizational justice
• work attitudes
• uncertainty

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• Published: 22 February 2020

Perceived organizational justice and turnover intention among hospital healthcare workers

• Missaye Mulatie Mengstie 1  

BMC Psychology volume  8 , Article number:  19 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Organizational justice is the first virtue in social institutions (J Manage 16:399-432, 1990). It is one of the most determinant factors for an effective utilization of human resources and an essential predictor of organizational success (J Manag Dev 28:457-477, 2009). Employees who perceive fairness are more likely happy with their job and less likely leave their organization (Int J Bus Manage 4:145-154, 2009). Perceived injustice, on the other hand, diminishes motivation of workers to accomplish their duties (Int J Bus Manage 4:145-154, 2009; J Educ Sci Univ Tabriz 2:27-34, 2009). Ethiopia has given emphasis to the expansion of health institutions and increasing the number of health professionals. Despite this, little emphasis has been given the human resource aspect of the health sector. Therefore, this study aims to investigate organizational justice perceptions and turnover intentions among healthcare workers in Amhara region.

One hundred ninety seven healthcare workers participated in the study. Data were collected through self- report questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The quantitative data were analyzed through MANOVA, multiple regression, and independent samples t-test. The qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis.

The results of this study revealed that healthcare workers in the public hospitals held low perceived distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice. Similarly, private hospitals healthcare workers had low perceptions on distributive and procedural justice. On the contrary, healthcare workers in private hospitals reported high perception of fairness on interpersonal and informational justice aspects. Both public and private hospital healthcare workers had high turnover intention. The result revealed significant difference in organizational justice perceptions between private and public hospital healthcare workers (F (4, 182) = 9.17; p  < .05; partial η2 =. 168). Organizational justice dimensions (distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice) significantly contributed an additional 9.9% variation in turnover intention (R 2 change = .099, F (4,170) = 4.86, p  < .05). Distributive justice was the most important predictor of turnover intention (β = −.23, p  < .05).

Organizational justice perceptions of healthcare workers significantly predicted turnover intention. Hence, organizational justice should be given due emphasis in designing and implementing policies and strategies of human resource management.

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Justice has a long history which attracted the interest of ancient philosophers like Plato and Socrates [ 1 ]. Though the inception of justice dates back to ancient years, the concept of organizational justice is a recent phenomenon. Scholarly interest in the area of organizational justice started in the 1970s [ 2 ]. Since then, organizational justice has received attention from various disciplines like Management and Social Psychology [ 3 ].

Organizational justice is a multidimensional construct which deals with everything from payment to treatment by one’s supervisor [ 1 ]. It is a judgment made by an employee about fairness of outcome distribution, processes in allocating outcomes and interpersonal relationships at the workplace (Greenberg, 1990). However, many of the organizational justice research were conducted in the USA, with particular emphasis to the business area [ 3 ]. Quite recently, scholars [ 4 , 5 , 6 ] have given considerable attention to workplace fairness in European and Asian countries.

Organizational justice has four dimensions including distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice [ 1 ]. Distributive justice is concerned with fairness of outcomes like pay and promotion [ 7 , 8 ]. It exists when there is a fair distribution of outcomes based on employees’ skills and contributions [ 9 ]. Employees perceive fairness of distribution of an outcome by comparing their own input-output ratio with that of others’ input- output ratio [ 2 ] Procedural justice concerns with the extent of fairness of procedures which are practiced in allocating outcomes to employees [ 2 , 7 ]. It is all about fairness of processes that are used to decide how outcomes are distributed and to whom the outcomes are offered [ 2 ]. Interpersonal justice is the degree to which authority figures treat subordinates in respectful manner [ 2 ]. Informational justice concerns with the amount, authenticity and clarity of information regarding outcome distributions and the procedures used to determine outcomes [ 2 , 7 ].

Organizational justice is the first virtue in social institutions [ 2 ]. People are concerned to issues of justice [ 10 ] and the question of workplace fairness is virtually the interest of employees regardless of size and setting of organizations [ 11 ]. Perceived injustice often diminishes motivation of workers to accomplish their duties [ 12 , 13 ]. A large number of studies [ 7 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ] revealed that organizational justice is a consistent and significant predictor of employees’ organizational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention across various settings.

Effectiveness of an organization largely depends on its human and non-human resources [ 12 ]. Qualified human resources help an organization to succeed and survive in the competitive global market [ 10 , 20 ]. However, qualified human resource in itself may not warrant productivity with little or no practice of justice at the workplace [ 12 ].

Ethiopia has made remarkable progress in health facility constructions and health professionals training [ 21 ]. In spite of this achievement, the overall proportion of health workers to the total population was only 2.30 per 10,000 [ 22 ]. More specifically, the proportion of health professionals to the total population was estimated to be 0.30 physicians, 2.30 clinical nurses and 0.20 midwifes per 10, 000 people [ 23 ]. Coming to the Amhara region, the ratio of physicians, health officers, nurses, midwives and health extension workers to the total population was estimated to be 1:58,567, 1:41,024, 1:4698 1:83,983 and 1:2383, respectively [ 22 ]. These show that Ethiopia did not meet World Health Organization’s minimum key indicators of health interventions which require 80% coverage of birth deliveries by skilled health attendants [ 24 ]. Covering 80% of birth deliveries by skilled health attendants requires 2.30 physicians, nurses and midwives per 10,000 people [ 24 ]. Thus, Ethiopia was listed among the 57 countries with a serious shortage of health workers. This was stated with the fact that it could not fulfill the health threshold of 80% coverage rate for deliveries by health attendants [ 24 ].

The shortage of medical doctors appears to be the most serious problem in the health sector of Ethiopia. The proportion of medical doctors to the total population in Ethiopia was 0.3 per 10, 000 people [ 25 ]. This is not only a concern in Ethiopia but countries around the world are also experiencing a shortage of healthcare workers [ 26 ]. Turnover of healthcare workers has been mentioned as one of the major factors for shortage of healthcare workers, especially medical doctors. One time it was reported that more Ethiopian doctors were working in the city of Chicago than in Ethiopia [ 27 ]. The number of Ethiopian doctors who migrated to foreign countries within a year was greater than the number of new medical graduates during the same year [ 28 ]. The public health sector has lost a large number of its employees due to turnover [ 28 ]. For instance, between 1987 and 2006, 73% of medical doctors left the public health centers and more than 80% of the public hospitals faced a serious shortage of medical doctors [ 28 ].

The Amhara regional is the second largest region in Ethiopia with a total population size of 20,558,851 [ 29 ]. The region was one of the most affected regions in the turnover of physicians. Taking into account its population size, the Amhara region had the lowest number of physicians [ 28 ]. There were 133 physicians in the region in 2005 and number drastically dropped to 68 in 2006 [ 28 ]. A survey study in the public health centers at Bahir Dar unveiled that the attrition rate of health professionals is 39.6% [ 30 ]. In addition, a study conducted among nurses in referral hospitals of the Amhara regional indicated that 60.2% of participants reported intention to leave their job [ 31 ]. Another survey among health professionals in the University of Gondar Referral Hospital indicated that more than half of the respondents (52.2%) reported turnover intention [ 32 ]. Another survey study among nurses in governmental health institutions of East Gojjam indicated that more than half of the respondents (59.4%) had turnover intention [ 33 ]. These imply high turnover intention among healthcare workers in the Amhara region. Eventually, losing a large number of healthcare workers at national and regional levels may result in a fragile health system that hampers delivery of services.

Many studies in Ethiopia revealed high turnover of health professionals [ 28 , 34 , 35 ]. The problem was the worst in public hospitals located outside Addis Ababa [ 28 ]. For instance, 50% of nurses in the Sidama Zone expressed intention to leave their organization [ 36 ]. Nevertheless, the Health Policy, the Health Sector Development Program IV (2010/11–2014/15) and the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) have not given specific mechanisms to retain the health work force. The main focus of these documents is expansion of health institutions and increasing the number of health professionals, giving little emphasis to human resource. There is lack of interest to examine whether or not organizational justice perceptions influence turnover intentions of healthcare workers. To date, there is one published study that indicated the role of distributive and procedural justice in explaining vulnerability to brain-drain among employees in higher learning institutions of Ethiopia [ 37 ]. Hence, the current study aimed to answer the following research questions.

What is the organizational justice perception of healthcare workers in public and private hospitals?

What is the level of turnover intention among healthcare workers in public and private hospitals?

Do organizational justice dimensions significantly predict turnover intention among public and private hospital healthcare workers?

This study aims to investigate perceived organizational justice and turnover intention among healthcare workers in public and private hospitals at Bahir-Dar and Gondar cities, Ethiopia.

This study follows a mixed research method with convergent parallel (QUAN + qual) design. The convergent parallel design combines qualitative and quantitative methods. T he quantitative-qualitative interaction has become the most useful and popular method to investigate a research problem in multiple ways [ 38 ].

This study was conducted in public and private hospitals in Bahir- Dar and Gondar cities, Amhara Region. Public hospitals are owned by the government to deliver healthcare services with relatively lower prices. Private hospitals, on the other hand, are business enterprises established and owned by individuals to make profit. To date, there are four hospitals in Bahir Dar and Gondar cities. Felege-Hiwot Referral Hospital and Gondar University Referral Hospital are public hospitals whereas GAMBY Teaching General Hospital and IBEX General Hospital are privately owned hospitals. These hospitals were selected for three main reasons. First, it is easy to find heterogeneous health professionals. But, it is difficult to find all health professionals in other small healthcare centers like clinics and drug stores. Hence, a hospital setting is better in terms of exploring the views of different health professionals. Secondly, it was convenient to access these cities that reduce research expenses. Thirdly and most importantly, as mentioned earlier, the Amhara region is one of the most affected regions in turnover of health professionals which needs emprical evidence that inform policy and practice.

Participants and sampling techniques

According to the Human Resource Departments of the hospitals, there were 740 healthcare workers in public hospitals (361 healthcare workers in Felege-Hiwot Referral Hospital and 379 in Gondar University Referral Hospital). There were also 158 healthcare workers in the private hospitals (98 in GAMBY Teaching General Hospital and 60 in IBEX General Hospital). Overall, the total number of healthcare workers in the four hospitals was 898.

Respondents of the quantitative data were selected through disproportionate stratified random sampling technique. This sampling technique was used for two main reasons. First, selecting participants through disproportionate stratified random sampling helps to represent healthcare workers from each hospital. Secondly, since private hospitals have a smaller number of health workers compared to public hospitals, disproportionally selecting participants enables to avoid under representation of the private hospitals.

Stratification of the target population (healthcare workers) was made by hospitals. After forming four stratum (stratum 1 = Felege-Hiwot Referral Hospital, stratum 2 = Gondar University Referral Hospital, stratum 3 = GAMBY Teaching General Hospital, and stratum 4 = IBEX General Hospital), representative sample of participants were randomly selected from each stratum. Most participants were accessed in the medical wards of the hospitals (large rooms where a mix of health professionals treat patients) while other participants (e.g., pharmacists and psychiatrists) were accessed in their private office.

Two hundred ten participants were selected from the total eight hundred ninety eight healthcare workers. One hundred forty five participants were randomly selected from public hospitals and the remaining sixty five participants were randomly taken from private hospitals. Nevertheless, seven participants did not to return the questionnaires and eight participants failed to complete all the items. Besides, the Cook’s Distance test revealed outlier scores for eight participants and hence were discarded from the analysis. Given this, the responses of 187 participants (127 participants from public hospitals and 60 participants from private hospitals) were used for the analysis. It needs to take a minimum of 105 samples to represent a population size of 900 [ 39 ]. Based on this calculation, a sample size of 187 participants is believed to be representative of the total 898 health staff. In addition, power analysis was conducted through G* power software to estimate the sample size. Using alpha = 0.05 and power = 0.80, a sample size of 187 participants was found to be adequate to compute the statistical techniques (one way MANOVA, multiple regression and independent samples t-test).

In the case of the qualitative data, participants were selected through purposive sampling technique. Ten informants were purposely selected from four hospitals. Of these, six interviewees (2 doctors, 2 nurses, 1 health officer and 1 pharmacist) were selected from public hospitals. The remaining four interviewees (1 nurse, 1 laboratory technician and 2 pharmacists) were selected from private hospitals. From the total ten interviewees, 6 of them were females and the remaining 4 were males.

The criteria for selecting interviewees were work experience and department were considered to select interviewees. It is believed that employees who have worked a longer time in would have detail information about their organization. Hence, healthcare workers who had at least 2 years of job experience in their respective hospitals were purposely selected for interview. Besides, interviewees were purposely selected from different departments so as to consider a variety of perceptions. But, medical doctors from the private hospitals were only willing to give their response for items in the self- reported questionnaire.

All the quantitative data scales were adapted from the original sources. The instruments were translated from English to the local language (Amharic) by three Social Psychologists and one Clinical Psychologist. Again, the Amharic version was translated back into English by the researcher. The language equivalence of the Amharic and the English versions of the instrument were checked by English language expert.

The clarity, wording and ordering of the final items were also checked by the three Social Psychologists who were involved in translation. They agreed upon the appropriateness and clarity of most of the items in the scales. They also forwarded suggestions to modify the wordings of some items. Based on their suggestions, some items were re-phrased and incorporated into the final instruments (Additional file 1 ).

Organizational justice measure

Organizational justice perception of participants was measured by justice scale [ 40 ]. The items were rated on a scale ranging from 1(strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The justice scale consists of 20 items (4-item measure of distributive justice that focuses on employees’ perception of fairness in outcome distribution, 7- items procedural justice scale that measures fairness perception in the processes and methods used to determine outcome distributions, 4-items scale of interpersonal justice that measures the extent to which authority figures treat employees with respect and 5- item scale of informational justice that measures the extent to which adequate information are provided to employees. Sample items include “To what extent do your pay and rewards reflect the effort you have put into your work? To what extent have you been able to express your views and feelings during those procedures used to determine your pay and rewards? To what extent has your supervisor treated you in a polite manner? To what extent has your supervisor communicated details in a timely manner?”

Turnover intention measure

This scale measures voluntary readiness of healthcare workers to quit working in their organization [ 41 ]. Turnover intention of participants was measured by a 5-item turnover intention measure on a scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). A sample item is “I am very interested in job announcements or job opportunities outside of this hospital.”

Semi- structured interview

A face -to- face interview was conducted with key informants. The interview sessions took between 45 min and 1 h. Interviews were conducted at the offices of the informants. During the interview, notes were taken and conversations were recorded. Sample items include “ How do you evaluate the fairness of procedures (methods) to decide distribution of outcomes? Do you have intention to quit working in this hospital? If so why and in what type of organization do you plan to work?”

Pilot study

A pilot study was conducted to check the reliability and validity of the instruments. To this end, 70 participants (20 from private and 50 from public hospitals) were randomly selected and their responses were used to analyze the reliability and construct validity of the quantitative data measures.

Reliability of the instruments

The reliability of the sub-scales was checked by Cronbach alpha. Table  1 shows the original, pilot study and main study reliability coefficients of the instruments. Both the pilot and the main studies indicated acceptable Cronbach alpha coefficients.

Content validity

The content validity of the scales was examined by a group of panelists consisting of eight members. The panelists evaluated the essentiality of each item based on three options (essential, useful but not essential and not necessary). The calculated values indicated that the content validity ratio of all items was greater than the minimum value (.75).

Construct validity

This was conducted to check the construct validity of the instruments. The rotated matrics factor loadings indicated adequate construct validity for all the instruments.

Data collection procedures

Initially, assistant data collectors were given brief orientation about the procedures of collecting the quantitative data. Participants were asked about their willingness to give response. They were assured of the confidentiality and anonymity of their responses. After assuring this, a brief orientation was given to the participants about the purpose the study. Then, the assistant data collectors and the researcher distributed questionnaires in the workplace (medical wards and private offices) of participants. In the case of the qualitative data, the researcher conducted all the interview sessions in their office.

Data analysis techniques

Inferential and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data. Predictions of the independent variables on the dependent variables were computed using multiple regression. Independent samples t-test was used to check if there is a significant difference in turnover intention between public and private healthcare workers. One way MANOVA was computed to check if a significant difference exists in organizational justice perceptions between public and private healthcare workers.

In the case of the qualitative data analysis, interviewees narrated an account of their experiences regarding organizational justice perceptions and turnover intention. The researcher took notes in parallel with recording conversations. The researcher translated the recorded Amharic conversation into English. The translated English versions were again transcribed into text. The transcripts and the written notes were analyzed through thematic analysis. In doing the analysis, the tape recorded interview data were listened repeatedly. After exhaustive reading of the transcripts, the researcher generated codes from the entire data. The coding processes were manually performed. After generating codes, the relevant data were organized under each code whereas the marginal data were discarded. This led to establishment of patterns. Eventually, themes were emerged by organizing similar issues into categories. The themes were described and narrated.

Ethical considerations

First of all, a letter of permission was collected from the School of Psychology, Addis Ababa University. In order to confirm acceptance, the letters were submitted to the medical directors of each hospital. After receiving permission from the medical directors, participants were also asked their willingness to participate in the study. Besides, approval was obtained from the Ethical Clearance Review Committee of College of Social Sciences and the Humanities, University of Gondar. Besides, written informed consent was obtained from participants before the commencement of data collection.

Demographic information

Table  2 shows demographic information of participants. Proportional number of male (51.18%) and female (48.82%) public hospital healthcare workers participated in the study. The average age of participants was 29 year with a standard deviation of 6 year. The Largest proportions of participants in the public (65.4%) and private (65%) hospitals were nurses. Coming to educational level, most participants (74.02%) in the public hospitals were a first degree holder whereas most participants (71.67%) in the private hospitals were diploma holders. With respect to work experience, the average was 5.8 years, with the minimum and maximum ranges between 1 and 34 years. Finally, the maximum and minimum monthly salary of healthcare workers in private hospitals were 1000 and 45, 000 Ethiopian birr, respectively. In public hospitals, the maximum salary was 8500 Ethiopian birr and the minimum was 1123 Ethiopian birr. This shows a very large disparity in the amount of monthly salary especially in private hospitals.

Organizational justice perception among participants

The mean and standard deviation scores of participants on organizational justice perception dimensions are presented in Table  3 . The results demonstrated that participants from public hospitals had mean scores of 7.36 on distributive justice, 13.25 on procedural justice, 10.25 on interpersonal justice and 13.59 on informational justice. The mean scores indicated that participants working in a public hospital had low perception of fairness across all dimensions of organizational justice and all the results were statistically significant ( p  < .05).

Similarly, two interviewees (a nurse and a medical doctor) who were working in public hospitals emphasized on the absence of transparency and impartiality in the administrative procedures of the hospitals. For instance, an interviewee (medical doctor) from a public hospital (X2) said that the procedures used to make decisions are not clear and there is no room for employees to express their views and objections. He reported “when we ask about criteria and procedures on certain decision making processes, they [the administrators] associate our question to politics.” By the same token, the other interviewee (a nurse) from the same hospital described problems related to administrative procedures of the hospital. She said:

There are a lot of problems in the administration of public healthcare centers. Before joining this hospital, I worked in another public clinic for some years. I left the clinic due to problems related to the administration. I joined this hospital in search of a better working environment. But I have faced similar obstacles in this hospital. I have not seen better administration in this hospital .

An interviewee (a Health Officer) who was working in another public hospital (X1) expressed similar and more specific views with respect to procedural justice as follows:

There is bias in treating staff. Those workers who are party members [the present ruling party of the country] are favored. Most of the time, decisions are based on their [the administrators] personal feelings and interests. Besides, they [the administrators] only take care of those who have high academic qualification [doctors]. Because, they [administrators] think that the rest of the staff will go nowhere. Hence, they do not give attention to other staff members .

In support of the above interviewee (Health officer) a medical doctor from public hospital X1 reflected similar view on procedural justice. He stated that as far as the medical staff is concerned, he did not observe serious problems in implementing procedures. Of course, he disclosed the presence of some problems; but the problems were not much discouraging to the medical staff.

With respect to distributive justice, all interviewees in the public hospitals expressed that the inputs they invest are not comparable to the outcomes they receive. They said that their outcomes (pay and other benefits) are very low, considering their educational level, efforts, abilities and the time they invest. All of them agreed that they do not receive a deserved outcome.

Regarding informational justice, all interviewees from public hospitals reflected the same idea. They said that the information released from higher officials is not clear, adequate and timely. For instance, an interviewee (a nurse) from public hospital (X2) expressed her observation as follows:

Sometimes, messages from the administration office do not have the full information. At times, new information does not reach all employees. An employee may miss an opportunity for further education or training due to delay of information. Surprisingly, there are times we access information from somebody else outside the hospital .

With respect to interpersonal justice, a health officer from public hospital (X1) and a nurse from public hospital (X2) seriously emphasized the disrespecting manner of supervisors in treating employees. Though the remaining four interviewees in public hospital X1 & X2 had objections on the partiality of staff treatment by supervisors, they did not consider it as a very severe problem.

Coming to private hospitals, participants scored mean values of 8.35, 17.33, 13.60 and 16.65 on distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice, respectively (See Table 3 ). These mean values indicated low perception of fairness on distributive and procedural justice whereas high perceptions of fairness on interpersonal and informational justice. The results were statistically significant ( p  < .05).

The qualitative and quantitative data yield similar results. All private hospital interviewees agreed that the outcomes they receive are not comparable to the inputs they invest (time, experience and expertise). All of the interviewees from private hospitals agreed that they do not have voice to influence decisions made by supervisors though they witnessed the presence of clear, unbiased and consistent procedures. Concerning informational justice, all of the interviewees from private hospitals witnessed that top officials passed clear and adequate information to employees. For instance, one interviewee (a pharmacist) from private hospital (Y2) said:

Clear and adequate information have been given from administrators via different ways of communication like letters, posters and e-mail. In case of vague information there is a room to ask clarification. Some employees may access information after some days. It is the responsibility of each employee to see information from the hospital’s website.

Finally, all interviewees from private hospitals appreciated the way they are treated by their supervisors and stated that their interaction with supervisors was friendly and smooth.

Gender difference in organizational justice and turnover intention

As displayed in Table  4 , there was no significant difference between male and female participants in distributive justice (t = 1.17, p  > .05 ), procedural justice(t = .47, p  > .05, interpersonal justice(t = .79, p  > .05 ) and informational justice(t = .17, p  > .05 ). Similarly, there was no significant difference in turnover intention(t = .65, p  > .05) between male and female participants.

Comparing organizational justice perceptions of public and private hospital participants

A one-way MANOVA result in Table  5 revealed a significant difference in organizational justice perceptions between participants working in public and private hospitals (F (4, 182) = 9.17; p  < .05; partial η 2 =. 168). The multivariate effect size was 0.168 which implies that 16.8% of variance in organizational justice perceptions was accounted for by hospital type.

A test of between subjects’ effects was further examined and presented in Table  6 . Considering Bonferroni adjusted alpha value of .01, there were significant differences between public and private hospital participants on procedural justice (F (1, 185) = 24.15; p  < .01), interpersonal justice (F (1, 185) =16.44; p  < .01) and informational justice(F (1, 185) = 16.69; p  < .01). However, public and private hospital participants did not significantly differ in perceived distributive justice (F (1, 185) = 3.95; p  > .01). The mean scores in Table 3 demonstrated that private hospital personnel held significantly higher perception of procedural justice (M = 17.33, SD = 5.78) than public hospital participants (M = 13.25, SD =5.05). Moreover, private hospital participants had significantly higher perception of fairness on interpersonal justice (M = 13.60, SD = 3.31) vis -a-vis public hospital participants (M = 10.97, SD = 4.46). Finally, participants working in private hospitals reported significantly higher perception of fairness on informational justice (M = 16.65, SD = 4.30) compared to those who were working in public hospitals (M = 13.59, SD = 5.42).

Turnover intention among participants

Table  7 shows that both public hospital participants (M = 16.66, SD = 4.71) and private hospital participants (M = 15.81, SD = 4.89) had high turnover intention and did not significantly differ (t (185) = 1.25, p  > .05). The magnitude of the difference in the means was also very small (partial η 2  = .008). Though the difference was not significant and large, the turnover intention score of public hospital participants (M = 16.66) was slightly higher than private hospital participants (M = 15.88).

In support of the quantitative results, the qualitative results revealed that nine out of ten interviewees had intention to quit working in the hospitals. For instance, one interviewee (a medical doctor) in a public hospital (X1) stated:

Most medical doctors work until they finish their duty [obligation period of healthcare workers who graduated from a government university]. As a human being, I seek good opportunities. If I get the opportunity, I will leave this hospital. For instance, our medical director went to America to participate in a conference and he did not come back to Ethiopia.

Similarly another interviewee (a medical doctor in a public hospital X2) described his intention as follows:

My relatives have advised me to go abroad for better opportunities. But I resisted the pressure and became committed to serve society. At present, I am tired of issues related to the administration of the hospital. As a result, I have changed my mind and start thinking to leave working here [public hospital X 2]. There is a high turnover of doctors in this hospital. Though, this hospital was established earlier, it could not have attracted and maintained health professionals. Even, newly established hospitals are better in treating the medical staff than this hospital. Indeed, no one in the hospital stays if he or she finds alternatives. Some workers are counting down termination of their duty period .

Coming to private hospitals, three out of the four interviewees reported their plan to look for vacant post in other organizations. For instance, one interviewee (a pharmacist) in a private hospital (Y1) stated that she will never hesitate to quit working in the employing hospital if she finds a job in other organizations. She says “I work in this hospital so as to acquire better work experiences that will help me to join a better organization.” Overall, almost all interviewees in both private and public hospitals revealed turnover intention.

Predicting participants’ turnover intention

Table  8 shows that demographic variables did not significantly explain turnover intention (R 2  = .036, F (4,174) = 1.61, p  > .05). Taken together, demographic variables and organizational justice dimensions in Model 2 significantly predicted 13.5% of the variance in turnover intention (R 2  = .135, F (8,170) = 3.31, p  < .05). After controlling the possible effects of demographic variables on turnover intention, organizational justice dimensions significantly contributed additional 9.9% variation in turnover intention (R 2 change = .099, F (4,170) = 4.86, p  < .05). Among the four organizational justice dimensions, distributive justice was found to be the strongest predictor of turnover intention (β = −.23, p  < .05).

The present study revealed low perceived fairness of distributive and procedural justice among public and private hospital healthcare workers. This shows that the outcomes they receive from their employing hospital were inadequate as compared to their experiences, expertise and the amount of work they accomplish. This implies that the outcomes they received are not appropriate and do not reflect their contributions and performances. Similarly, [ 42 ] explained that when individuals’ outputs are lower than inputs, they feel distributive injustice and a fair distribution of outcomes leads to existence of distributive justice [ 9 ].

The present study indicated that organizational justice perception and turnover intention did not significantly differ by sex of participants. On the contrary, a study conducted by [ 43 ] demonstrated that females scored significantly higher on distributive, procedural and interactional justice perception than males.

The results of the present study indicated that decision making processes favored some employees, implying bias and inconsistency over individuals. The control model of procedural justice states that employees find opportunities to present their voice as indirect means of influencing decision- making processes [ 44 ]. If they are not allowed to have a voice and express their views, they are more likely to perceive procedural injustice [ 44 ].

The mean scores indicated high level of turnover intention among public and private hospital healthcare workers and organizational justice dimensions significantly contributed to turnover intention. Among the four organizational justice dimensions, distributive justice was the most important predictor of turnover intention. Similarly, other studies [ 45 , 46 ] revealed that distributive justice has substantial unique variance associated to turnover intention than procedural, information and interpersonal justice dimensions.

Conclusions

Both public and private hospital healthcare workers in Gondar and Bahir-Dar cities had low perception of distributive justice. The outcomes (pay and other benefits) they received from their employing hospitals were not fair compared to the inputs (experiences, expertise and the amount of work). The procedures and methods of decision-making in public were not also clear, consistent and free from bias. In addition, healthcare workers had no voice on the procedures of the hospitals and were not able to influence decision-making processes. Overall, the practices of distributive and procedural justice in both public and private hospitals were poor. Besides, healthcare workers in public hospitals did not receive clear and adequate information from supervisors. Besides, supervisors in public hospitals did not treat healthcare workers in respectful manner. Unlike public hospitals, supervisors in private hospitals treated employees with respect. Hence, private hospitals were performing better than public hospitals in practicing interpersonal and informational justice. Both public and private hospital healthcare workers had high turnover intention. Distributive justice (unfair distribution of outcomes) was the most determinant factor for high turnover intention of healthcare workers in the hospitals.

Recommendation

The present study shows that most aspects of organizational justice were lacking in the hospitals, especially in the public ones. On the other hand, turnover intention of healthcare workers was high in both public and private hospitals. Hence, policy makers should also consider organizational justice perceptions and turnover intention of healthcare workers in planning health and health related policies. It is high time and paramount important for Federal Ministry of Health to give due emphasis to maintain the health professionals. This requires creating conducive working conditions (fairness or justice at workplace) and planning affordable salary and promotion opportunities.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the Open Science Framework, https://osf.io/tpz4k/ .

Abbreviations

Degrees of freedom

Multivariate analysis of variance

Standard deviation

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Mengstie, M.M. Perceived organizational justice and turnover intention among hospital healthcare workers. BMC Psychol 8 , 19 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-0387-8

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The Effects of Organizational Justice on Positive Organizational Behavior: Evidence from a Large-Sample Survey and a Situational Experiment

1 School of Culture and Social Development Studies, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

Mengyan Chen

Zhichao hao.

2 School of Social Work, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, United States

3 Department of Sociology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Employees' positive organizational behavior (POB) is not only to promote organizational function but also improve individual and organizational performance. As an important concept in organizational research, organizational justice is thought to be a universal predictor of employee and organizational outcomes. The current set of two studies examined the effects of organizational justice (OJ) on POB of employees with two different studies, a large-sample survey and a situational experiment. In study 1, a total of 2,566 employees from 45 manufacturing enterprises completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires assessing organizational justice (OJ) and positive organizational behavior (POB) of employees. In study 2, 747 employees were randomly sampled to participate in the situational experiment with 2 × 2 between-subjects design. They were asked to read one of the four situational stories and to image that this situation happen to the person in the story or them, and then they were asked to imagine how the person in the story or they would have felt and what the person or they subsequently would have done. The results of study 1 suggested that OJ was correlated with POB of employees and OJ is a positive predictor of POB. The results of study 2 suggested that OJ had significant effects on POB and negative organizational behavior (NOB). Procedural justice accounted for significantly more variance than distributive justice in POB of employees. Distributive justice and procedural justice have different influences on POB and NOB in terms of effectiveness and direction. The effect of OJ on POB was greater than that of NOB. In addition, path analysis indicated that the direct effect of OJ on POB was smaller than its indirect effect. Thus, many intermediary effects could possibly be between them.

Introduction

Employee motivation and organizational effectiveness are the eternal topics of enterprise human resource management. The human resource management in an enterprise is finding ways to achieve the ultimate goal of inspiring employee motivation. Therefore, the study of employees' positive organizational behavior (POB) is attracting more and more attention. Luthans ( 2002a , b ) introduced the theory of positive psychology to the field of organizational behavior, and defined POB as “the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace” (2003, p. 179). Based on the Chinese cultural background, (Pan, 2008 ), and Pan and Qin ( 2009 ) defined POB as organizational behavior of employees which are beneficial to organizations. It can promote organizational function as well as improve individual and organizational performance. They also identified six dimensions of POB: devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behaviors.

Several studies have been conducted in order to find the reasons behind the employees' willingness to show their POB. There are several factors including personal traits (Youssef and Luthans, 2007 ; Uymaz, 2014 ; Leephaijaroen, 2016 ), job characteristic (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008 ), work stressors (Munir, 2013 ), and economic situation (Giorgi et al., 2015 ; Mucci et al., 2016 ; Lopez-Valcarcel and Barber, 2017 ). Giorgi et al. ( 2015 ) suggested that during the economic crisis, employees are more likely to have an ambiguous view of their role in organizations or a perception that hard work is more stressful as they would not get fruitful benefits. These thoughts may negatively affect their emotional and behavioral outcomes for organizations, such as less cooperative. However, what worth mentioning are these aspects described above should not be viewed as a comprehensive, exhaustive explanation of what influences POB of employees. The study of POB needs further discussion as there may have better explanatory factors affecting POB of employees.

According to Organs view (Organ, 1990 ), an organizational member's decision to behave may be a function of the degree to which an employee believes that he or she has been treated fairly by the organization. Previous researches showed that organizational justice is associated with different positive organizational outcomes. For example, Wang et al. ( 2010 ) suggested that organizational justice can help improve the employees' work performance. Demirkiran et al. ( 2016 ) showed that if employees perceive that actions and practices in the organization are fair and honest, they will show more extra-role behavior, which is beneficial to the development of organizations. Saifi and Shahzad ( 2017 ) found that positive perception of employees in relation to organizational justice is an important antecedent to employees' job satisfaction, which in turn promote positive behavior of employees. On the other hand, researches suggested that employees may respond to perception of unfair treatment with a range of negative behavioral responses (e.g., theft, withdrawal, resistance, vandalism, sabotage, and reduction of positive behavior; Fox et al., 2001 ; Lilly, 2017 ).

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between organizational justice and POB of employees, and whether different dimensions of organizational justice can have different impacts on POB and NOB of employees.

The theoretical background and hypothesis

Organizational justice.

Justice is recognized as an action or decision that is understood to be morally right on the basis of ethics, religious, fairness, equity, or law (Pekurinen et al., 2017 ). It is a major area of concern for both organizations and employees (Swalhi et al., 2017 ). Organizational justice refers to employee's perception of fairness within an organization (Greenberg, 1990 ; Asadullah et al., 2017 ).

The earliest idea of organizational justice was derived from equity theory (Adams, 1963 , 1965 ). It suggested that people compare the ratios of their own perceived work outcomes to their own perceived work inputs with the corresponding ratios of their counterparts. So, their organizational participation can be changed (Colquitt et al., 2001 ). Input here refers to time and effort and output refers to rewards, such as promotion, pay, recognition, equipment, or any other job-related resources that assist employees in job tasks or maintain overall well-being (Ghosh et al., 2017 ). If the ratios are equal, people in the organizational contexts are expected to have equitable and satisfied feelings. However, if the ratios are unequal, employees may have the feeling of injustice, they would try to change the situation to create new balance. For example, they may choose to reduce their input-output comparison (Shkoler and Tziner, 2017 ). Furthermore, organizational justice is also rooted in social exchange theory, which treats social life as a series of sequential transactions between two or more parties (Blau, 1964 ). In these transactions, resources are exchanged through a process of reciprocity. Therefore, one party tends to repay the good (or sometimes bad) deeds of another party (Cropanzano et al., 2017 ). Work relationship can be seen as a form of transaction. For example, someone exchanges work for income (Cropanzano et al., 2002 ). Employee's perception of justice determines the quality of exchanging relationship with organization (Swalhi et al., 2017 ). When employees perceive fair treatment from the organization and its authorities, they may feel a sense of obligation to create a good act in return (Ghosh et al., 2017 ).

A number of studies suggested that organizational justice is a key cause of many factors which affect employees' attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment) and behaviors, such as innovative work behavior, organizational citizenship behavior as well as work performance. For example, Usmani and Jamal ( 2013 ) examined the relationship between organizational justice and job satisfaction and found that distributive justice, interactional justice and personal time are positively related to job satisfaction. Employees are willing to do more work and exhibit higher levels of performance when they believe they are treated fairly (Köse, 2014 ). Akram et al. ( 2016b ) suggested that organizational justice has a strong and positive impact on the innovative work behavior of the Chinese employees. Swalhi et al. ( 2017 ) demonstrate that organizational justice affects the behavior and performance of employees in the some small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Studies also showed that justice perceptions have a robust link with organizational citizenship behavior (Karriker and Williams, 2009 ; Tziner and Sharoni, 2014 ; Gurbuz et al., 2016 ). When perception of organizational justice is high, it can enhance employees' positive attitudes toward their organizations and OCB (Özbek et al., 2016 ). Nevertheless, low level of organizational justice would lead to dissatisfaction and negative feelings of employees, which, in turns, lead to some negative consequences. For example, Pekurinen et al. ( 2017 ) stated that low organizational justice may has an adverse effect on nurses' behavior toward colleagues (e.g., collaboration) and may lead to poor employee-patient interactions and change nurses' behavior toward patients. Shkoler and Tziner ( 2017 ) shown that the perception of injustice can pose a threat to employees' resources and give them a feeling of inappropriate resources. It makes them feel frustrated and even wear them out, which, in turn, evolve into burnout and destructive organizational behaviors, such as theft, sabotage, withdrawal, harassment.

In developing the theory of organizational justice, researchers have identified three main models including (a) two-factor model, namely distributive and procedural justice; (b) three-factor model, namely distributive, procedural and interaction justice; (c) four-factor model, namely distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice. Although many existing researches studied organizational justice by using the three-factor or four-factor model (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ; Colquitt et al., 2001 ; Tessema et al., 2014 ; Akram et al., 2016a , b ), there is less agreement about the distinction between the interactional justice and procedural justice, informational justice and interactional justice due to the high inter-correlation (Colquitt et al., 2001 ). Hence, it is currently unclear that whether organizational justice should be divided by the three or four factors. Nevertheless, it must be noted that researchers have reached an agreement regarding the distinction between the procedural and distributive justice (Tessema et al., 2014 ). The two-factor model is the most common model used to analyze organizational justice (Alexander and Ruderman, 1987 ; Moorman, 1991 ; McFarlin and Sweeney, 1992 ; Karriker and Williams, 2009 ; Strom et al., 2014 ; Ghosh et al., 2017 ) and also serves as a baseline for the following three-, four-factor models. Each of the justice factors is briefly discussed as below.

Distributive justice

Distributive justice denotes the perceived fairness of the outcomes received by an employee (Moorman, 1991 ). Lawler suggested that these outcomes, such as pay, promotion, status, performance evaluations, and job tenure would have great influences on job satisfaction, quality of work life, and organizational effectiveness (Alexander and Ruderman, 1987 ). It is the equity theory that guides the outcome-oriented viewpoint. Adams conceptualized distributive justice (Tessema et al., 2014 ) and claimed that people are concerned about whether the outcomes are fair instead of the absolute level of the outcomes (Colquitt et al., 2001 ). When an outcome is perceived to be unfair, it can affect individual's emotion (e.g., anger, happiness, pride, or guilt) and cognitions (e.g., cognitively distort inputs and outcomes of himself/herself or of the other) as well as their behavior (e.g., performance and withdrawal; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ). Campbell et al. ( 2013 ) suggest that the perception of distributive justice is associated with the allocating resources. In other words, the feeling of fairness depends on such a way that employees perceived that resources have been shared equitably and replenished adequately. A number of studies suggested that distributive justice and procedural justice have different impacts on organizational outcomes. For example, McFarlin and Sweeney ( 1992 ) utilized a main effect approach to examine the predictive roles of distributive and procedural justice and found that distributive justice tends to be a stronger predictor of personal outcomes (e.g., pay level satisfaction, and job satisfaction). Fields et al. ( 2000 ) found that distributive justice has larger effects on Hong Kong employees' intent to stay and job satisfaction, but procedural justice plays a more important role in determining Hong Kong employees' evaluation of supervision. Cropanzano et al. ( 2002 ) suggested that distributive justice tends to strongly correlate with reactions to specific outcomes and less strongly correlate with reactions to the organization or to one's supervisor. Ghosh et al. ( 2017 ) found that distributive justice is a stronger predictor of the sacrifice dimension of organizational embeddedness than procedural justice.

Procedural justice

Procedural justice refers to “the individual's perception of fairness of procedural elements within a social system regulates allocation of resources” (Leventhal, 1980 ). It fits with the final outcomes that are equitably deal with methods, mechanisms, and processes (Swalhi et al., 2017 ). It is considered to exist when procedures embody certain types of normatively accepted principles. Specifically, the fairness of the procedures shall meet the following criteria: the extent to which they suppress bias, create consistent allocations, rely on accurate information, are correctable, represent the concerns of all the recipients, and are based on the prevailing moral and ethical standards (Leventhal, 1980 ).

In the setting of organizations, procedural justice is considered as the root of social exchange (Swalhi et al., 2017 ). It has a significant impact on employees' cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions toward the organization (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ). For example, Cropanzano et al. ( 2002 ) suggested that procedural justice is more likely associated with trust in upper management and organizational commitment. Kim and Park ( 2017 ) stated that procedural justice positively influences employee's work engagement, knowledge sharing and innovative work behavior. Lee et al. ( 2017 ) showed that procedural justice can facilitates employees to accept the change of values and objectives of organization and also adapt themselves to pressures of external change. Furthermore, certain findings suggested that the process of allocating rewards is more important than the result (Lind and Tyler, 1988 ; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ).

Positive organizational behavior

POB stems from positive psychology which was led primarily by Seligman and other well-known positive psychologists (Wright, 2003 ). Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi ( 2014 ) suggested that the purpose of positive psychology is “to begin to catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from repairing the worst things in life to building positive qualities.” Therefore, positive psychology primarily studies individuals' strengths and virtues that are beneficial to the development of individuals and communities (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008 ). Following the lead of positive psychology, Luthans ( 2002a ) perceived the need for a new theoretical and research-driven perspective and approach to the organizational research, which he termed POB, that is “the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace” (Youssef and Luthans, 2007 ). Specifically, a positive psychological capacity which can be included into the POB framework must be positive and must have theory and research back-up as well as valid measures. Furthermore, this capacity should make it open to any change and development (i.e., state-like) and have relation to performance improvement in the workplace (Luthans, 2002b ). The six positive psychological capacities, namely confidence (or self-efficacy), hope, optimism, resilience, subjective well-being (or happiness), and emotional intelligence specifically meet the definition of POB and inclusion criteria, and are viewed as a contribution to understand POB and have considerable impacts on organization performance (Luthans, 2002b ; Youssef and Luthans, 2007 ). However, Wright ( 2003 ) counterbalanced this utilitarian and management-driven view as well as the focus on organization instead of individuals, and argued that the objective of POB should also include the pursuit of employee happiness and health as viable goals in themselves. He introduced Fredrickson's broaden-and-build model which suggests the potentially adaptive and interactive nature of positive emotions (Wright, 2003 ). According to Fredrickson ( 2002 ), the adaptive or moderating nature of such positive emotions as happiness and joy is potentially more robust for those who are more joyous than for those who are less joyous. He suggested that such positive impetus can enable people to be more creative, resilient, socially connected, and physically and mentally healthy (Wright, 2003 ). Bakker and Schaufeli ( 2008 ) proposed that the organization-based perspective of Luthans and the employee-based perspective should be integrated; POB should emphasize on individual positive psychological conditions and human resource strengths that are relevant to both performance improvement and employees' well-being.

But it should be noted that these researches related to POB are normally concentrated on the implicit and psychological constructs of POB, has not yet attached with importance to the explicit form of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities. Accordingly, Pan ( 2008 ), based on the Chinese cultural background, proposed a new perspective of employees' POB, which could be defined as employees' positive behavior in organization. They proposed that employees' POB is mainly composed of devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behavior (Pan and Qin, 2009 ). Employees' POB can not only to promote organizational function but also improve individual and organizational performance. In this study, employees' POB consisting of devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behavior was considered as the dependent variable, while organizational justice was regarded as the independent variable.

Relationship between OJ and POB

Organizational justice is found to be a key factor of many organizational outcome variables, such as trust, commitment, job satisfaction, organizational citizen behavior, job performance, and POB (Alexander and Ruderman, 1987 ; Moorman, 1991 ; McFarlin and Sweeney, 1992 ; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ; Colquitt et al., 2001 ; Wong et al., 2006 ; Karriker and Williams, 2009 ; Zainalipour et al., 2010 ; Keyvanar et al., 2014 ; Khan et al., 2016 ; Nastiezaie and Jenaabadi, 2016 ). For instance, Alexander and Ruderman ( 1987 ) suggested that all fairness variables, as a group, are significantly associated with employees' work-related attitudes and behaviors and procedural fairness and distributive fairness have distinct effects on the organizational outcomes. Keyvanar et al. ( 2014 ) studied organizational justice and POB in the context of hospital and found that organizational justice is related to POB (hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resiliency) and work engagement through the attainment of personal career goals. Nastiezaie and Jenaabadi ( 2016 ) showed that organizational justice has a significant and positive correlation with POB A small number of researches explored how perceptions of fair treatment influence the employee's beneficial behavior. For example, Joseph et al. ( 2015 ) found that organizational justice had a significant effect on interpersonal helping behavior. Walumbwa et al. ( 2009 ) examined the relationship between organizational justice and voluntary learning behavior, and found that perceptions of employee distributive and procedural justice had an indirect impact on learning behavior. These studies all suggested that organizational justice and positive behavior in organization have certain correlation, and organizational justice would have a significant impact on employees' positive behavior. By contrast, employees treated with organizational injustice might perform negative behavior. For example, DeMore et al. ( 1988 ) found that low perceived equity (lack of fairness in one's social or environmental arrangements) can predict vandalism. Ambrose et al. ( 2002 ) examined the relationship between injustice and workplace sabotage, and found that injustice is the most common cause of sabotage. Min et al. ( 2014 ) suggested that perceived injustice during work is significantly associated with an increased risk of occupational disease and absenteeism for Korean employees. Mingzheng et al. ( 2014 ) suggested that organizational justice is negatively correlated with counterproductive work behavior among Chinese public servants. Finding from Michel and Hargis ( 2017 ) showed that procedural injustice motivates deviant behavior in the workplace.

Based on these considerations, we expect that organizational justice and POB of employees will have a significant relationship, and different dimensions of organizational justice will lead to different behavioral outcomes. Thus, we want to investigate the relationship between POB and OJ and how distributive justice and procedural justice will affect the POB of employee and negative organizational behavior (NOB).

In view of the above, four hypotheses are proposed as the following:

• H1: If OJ is positively related to POB, then employees with a high level of OJ will perform more POB.
• H2: If OJ is a positive predictor of POB, then higher level of OJ will predict higher level of POB.
• H3: OJ was expected to have a significant main effect on employees' POB.
• H4: If procedural justice differs from distributive justice in terms of influence effectiveness and direction, then procedural justice and distributive justice will have different influences on employees' POB and NOB.

Overview of studies

Justice theory states that the perception of the employees about fairness leads to certain reactions (positive or negative), and in turns leads to certain behavior (positive or negative; Akram et al., 2016b ). Specifically, the perceived justice can motivate employees to perform more beneficial and positive behavior for organizations, while, when experiencing injustice they might react negatively (Graso and Grover, 2017 ). A substantial body of empirical work demonstrates that organizational justice have significant impact on employees' behavior, and distributive justice and procedural justice can distinctly influence employees' work-related attitudes and behavioral outcomes (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001 ). Therefore, we employed a large-sample survey and a situational experiment to examine the effect of OJ in the form of distributive justice and procedural justice on POB and NOB among enterprise employees. In study 1, we attempted to analyze the relationship between OJ and POB among enterprise employees through a survey study in which participants were then asked to report their level of organizational justice (OJ) and positive organizational behavior (POB) with self-made valid scales. In study 2, we attempted to further findings from Study 1 through a situational experiment with 2 × 2 between-subjects design in which participants were asked to read one of the four situations stories and to imagine that this situation happen to either the person in the story (Evaluate by the situation) or them (Evaluated by self-experience), and then they were asked to imagine how the person in the story or they would have felt and what the person or they subsequently would have done. Specifically, in situational experiment organizational justice including distributive justice and procedural justice would be reflected in two aspects (justice and injustice), and the outcome variables include POB and NOB of employees. We examined whether procedural justice differs from distributive justice in terms of effectiveness and direction of effect on POB and NOB of employees.

Participants and procedure

From 13 cities in China, a total of 2,566 employees were randomly selected from 45 manufacturing-type enterprises. Male employees accounted for 44.7% and females accounted for 55.3%. Respondents aged under 25 accounted for 30.7%, 25–34 years old accounted for 35.9%, 35–44 years old accounted for 22.8%, 45–54 years old occupied 8.7%, and 55 years old and above took up for 1.9%. Respondents graduating from high school and below accounted for 62.4%, with junior college degree accounted for 24.9%, with bachelor degree accounted for 11.3%, and with master's and Ph.D. degree occupied 1.4%. In addition, ordinary employees accounted for 60.5%, first-line managers accounted for 24.2%, middle managers accounted for 10.4%, and senior managers occupied 4.8%. Respondents with < 1 year work experience accounted for 14.2%, with 1–2 years work experience took up for 32.8%, with 3–5 years work experience accounted for 22.6%, with 6–10 years work experience occupied 11.7%, and with over 10 years work experience accounted for 14.6%. Respondents who received a monthly salary of ¥2,000 accounted for 25.4%, received a monthly salary of ¥2,001 to ¥3,500 accounted for 51.1%, received a monthly salary of ¥3,501 to ¥5,000 accounted for 13.7%, and those who received ¥5,000and above accounted for 9.8%. This study received ethics approval from the University of Southwest's Human Research Ethics Committee'. All participants were informed that participation was purely voluntary. No payments were offered in exchange for participation. After providing the written informed consent, participants completed two self-made questionnaires. In order to minimize common method bias, we firstly assured the anonymity and confidentiality of all survey responses by tracking data with site coding rather than respondents names and having surveys returned directly to the researchers. Secondly, we designed the response questionnaire with A and B columns (column A—for any one company; column B—for your company), reflecting the combination of self-evaluation and other-rated method, to reduce potential social desirability. Subsequent analyses suggested that the difference between A and B was not significant ( t = 1.826, P > 0.05), the social desirability effects were deemed small. Thirdly, we utilized the pre-survey with a small sample of 368 employees from 12 companies, and 3 months later in the formal investigation these participants were again asked to complete the same questionnaire. Subsequent analysis suggested that there is no significant difference between these two survey outcomes ( t = 1.912, P > 0.05). Additionally, we adopted other ways to minimize the effect of non-related variables on the survey outcomes such as training investigators, using the unified instruction and trying to control the effect of the situational factors.

According to Joy and Witt's ( 1992 ) theory that organizational justice can be divided into distributive and procedural justice, we developed a 12-item scale as an instrument for measuring organizational justice. Because the set of 12 items tapped different aspects of organizational justice, we carried out EFA to identify any underlying dimensions. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) yielded two factors that explained 72.11% of the common variance. For the distributive justice factor, a measure consisting of 5 items (factor loading range from 0.672 to 0.836) was constructed. For the procedural justice factor, a measure consisting of three items (factor loading range from 0.818 to 0.843) was constructed.

Further, to take into consideration organizational justice in its entirety, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in which all the organizational justice items were loaded onto their respective factors. The results showed a good fit (χ 2 /df = 7.68, GFI = 0.97, NFI = 0.99, RFI = 0.98, IFI = 0.99, CFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.075 and SRMR = 0.024) and the coefficient alpha was 0.913.

Positive organizational behavior (POB)

Employees' POB was measured by using the scale developed and validated by Pan ( 2008 ), Pan and Qin ( 2009 ). This scale consists of 33 items loading on six distinct factors, which include devoted behavior (employees devote their time and energy to their work), responsible behavior (employees complete their work voluntarily), active behavior (employees can adapt to the external environment willingly), innovative behavior (employees are willing to embrace new technologies and apply or create new technology at work), helping behavior (employees help colleagues complete work willingly), and harmonious behavior (employees cooperate with others in a friend way). The EFA yielded six factors that explained ~70% of the common variance. The results of CFA showed a good fit (χ 2 /df = 3.96, RMSEA = 0.065, GFI = 0.86; NFI, NNFI, CFI, IFI, RFI, and TLI were above 0.95). The coefficient alpha was 0.97 and the retest reliability was 0.88 ( r = 0.88).

To verify the validity of the hypotheses proposed in the current study, we used SPSS 20.0 and LISREL8.7 to analyze the obtained data.

Correlation analysis

Table ​ Table1 1 reports the means, standard deviations and correlation coefficients between all the variables in the current study.

Correlation analysis ( n = 2566).

These tests are based on the scores from the scales previously mentioned. Overall POB and OJ were calculated according to the scores of its own dimensions. The results show that there are numerous significant positive correlations between all the variables. H1 was therefore accepted.

Multiple regression analysis

For testing the casual effect of distributive justice, procedural justice and overall OJ on employee devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, harmonious behavior, and overall POB, a number of models were developed by multiple linear regression analysis.

As shown in the Table ​ Table2, 2 , the results revealed that the regression equation established by the two factors of OJ and all factors of staff POB had significant statistical significance (each F- value's p < 0.001). Moreover, the procedural justice and distributive fairness had very significant positive effect on various factors of employees' POB. Procedural justice and distributive justice commonly explained investment, responsible, initiative, innovation behavior, helping, and harmonious behaviors by 14, 11, 17, and 18, 22, and 18% of variation, respectively. Moreover, the results show that overall OJ is a positive predictor (β = 0.51, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.26) of overall POB. H2 could be proved.

Regression analysis of OJ on POB ( n = 2566).

Path analysis

In Table ​ Table3 3 and Figure ​ Figure1, 1 , path analysis can allow us to examine the direct, indirect, and total effect between the analysis variables. The results show that the total effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on all dimensions of POB of employee were significant. Specifically, the total effects of distributive justice on devoted behavior and responsible behavior were strongest (β = 0.55, t = 37.35, p < 0.001 and β = 0.50, t = 31.99, p < 0.001, respectively), and procedural justice was the strongest predictor of active behavior of employee (β = 0.36, t = 21.72, p < 0.001). By contrast, the overall effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on helping behavior of employee were relatively low (β = 0.17, t = 8.59, p < 0.001 and β = 0.25, t = 12.53, p < 0.001, respectively).

Path analysis.

ξ1, Procedural justice; ξ2, Distributive justice; η1, Devoted behavior; η2, Responsible behavior; η3, Active behavior; η4, Innovative behavior; η5, Helping behavior; η6, Harmonious behavior;

Standardized path coefficients of the effect of OJ on POB. PJ, Procedural justice; DJ, Distributive justice; J1~J8, items of the scales of Organizational Justice.

Furthermore, the direct effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on all dimensions of POB of employee were quite low. Particularly, distributive justice failed to directly affect innovative behavior, and procedural justice failed to directly affect active, helping behavior. However, it should be noted that distributive justice and procedural justice have significant and positive indirect effects on all dimensions of POB of employee. Hence, we can conclude that the relationships among distributive justice and innovative, procedural justice and active behavior, and procedural justice and helping behavior were mediated by other variables. Thus, these results provide support for H3.

Materials and methods

Participants.

In the pre-test, we randomly selected 96 employees from three manufacturing-type enterprises located in Chenzhou, China. These subjects were equally divided into four groups with 24 subjects in each group. Each group was randomly assigned to a situation. The pool of subjects included 51 male and 45 female employees, and their average age was 36.31 years old. Thirty one were managers and 65 were ordinary employees. The number of people with the degree above junior college was 63.

In the formal experiment, a total of 800 employees were randomly selected from 16 manufacturing-type enterprises located in six cities of Hunan, Guangdong, and Zhejiang province, China. Similarly, these were equally divided into four groups with 200 subjects in each group. Each group was randomly assigned to a situation. Finally, a total of 747 effective samples were obtained. Among them, 191 were effective samples for situation 1 (A1B1), 177 for situation 2 (A1B2), 189 for situation 3 (A2B1), and 190 for situation 4 (A2B2). The pool of subjects included 418 men (56%) and 329 women (44%). In this sample, 25 years old and below accounted for 30.1%, 25–34 years old 37.7%, 35–44 years old 22.9%, 45–54 years old 6.9% and 55 years old and above 2.3%. In terms of level of education, 52.7% of respondents graduated from high schools and below, 26.8% of respondents held a junior college degree, 17.7% of respondents held an bachelor degree and 2.7% of respondents held a master's and Ph.D. degree. In addition, ordinary employees accounted for 64.4%, first-line managers 22.3%, middle managers 10.8% and senior managers 2.5%.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of “the University of Southwest's Human Research Ethics Committee” with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects were purely voluntary, and gave the written informed consent. No payments were offered in exchange for participation.

Experimental materials

Before the experiment, the research interviewed the participants about the bonus issues, and gathered the typical cases of distributive justice and injustice and procedural justice and injustice in the process of bonus distribution. After refining these typical cases, four situational stories on bonus distribution were designed as experimental materials. These four situational stories respectively represented four type of experimental treatments, which included A1B1 (distributive justice × procedural justice); A1B2 (distributive justice × procedural injustice); A2B1 (distributive injustice × procedural justice); and A2B2 (distributive injustice × procedural injustice). Each story was in accordance with the logic of the event development, which means that the bonus distribution was conformed to the order from the process to the outcomes.

This is an example of the situational story one. (A1B1: distributive justice × procedural justice). The situational stories of A1B2, A2B1, and A2B2 are shown in the Appendix.

(Story) Senior managers of a company intend to give a large amount of bonus for employees. They formulate the standards and organize managers of each layer and representative of the employees to have a discussion. After discussions, the distributive standard is determined preliminarily. Then, the document of the standard is shown publicly to collect opinions of ordinary employees until the document is approved by all staff. Based on the arrangement without objection, the Personnel Department evaluates every employee according to the distributive document and personal job performance. The result is shown publicly for correction of mistakes. According to the distributive arrangement and personal job performance, Zhangsan obtained the lowest score and the minimum bonus .

(Instructions)Please answer the following questions based on your real thoughts and physical truth according to the situational story. When answering the questions, mark directly on the selected option (5 = Absolutely agree, 4 = Partly agree, 3 = A little bit agree, 2 = Partly disagree, and 1 = Absolutely disagree).

• Absolutely disagree—Absolutely agree
• (1) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, Zhangsan will think it is fair and he will do his work actively .
• (2) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we will also feel it is fair and do our work actively .
• (3) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, Zhangsan will feel it is unfair. He will slow down, be absent, not obey the arrangement in his work, or even resign .
• (4) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we will also feel it is unfair. We will slow down, be absent, not obey the arrangement in our work, or even resign .

The situational experiment used a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. The independent variables were organizational justice in form of distributive justice and injustice and procedural justice and injustice. The specific operational definition of these independent variables as follows: (1) Distributive justice: More labor efforts, higher production rate, and more contributions result in higher bonus. By contrast, less labor effort, lower production rate, and less contribution resulted in lower bonus; (2) Distributive injustice: More labor effort, higher production rate, and more contributions result in lower bonus. By contrast, less labor effort, lower production rate, and less contribution led to higher bonus. (3) Procedural justice: Bonus distribution standard justice, process-transparent, accurate information, publicly showed result, and correctable mistakes; (4) Procedural injustice: Injustice bonus distribution standard, closed procedure, inaccurate information, and closed results. The response variables are POB and NOB of employees. POB here refers to the devoted, active, helping, responsible, innovative and harmonious behavior. NOB refers to inimical, aggressive, and backward-looking behavior, and mainly performs as discontentment, hostility, sabotage, absence, and retirement. The response variables were measured by two types of indexes: (1) Evaluated by the situation (The subject was asked to give a response to the experience of hero in the story) and (2) Evaluated by self-experience (the subject was asked to read the situational story carefully and then answer the following questions according to his real thoughts assuming that he is the hero in the story). The scores of these two types of indexes both adopted a five-point Likert scale, where 1 indicates disagree absolutely and 5 indicates agree absolutely. Additionally, we controlled for age, gender, level of education, and organizational position to rule out possible alternative explanations for our findings.

At the beginning of this study, the examiners explained to each subject about the nature and the aim of the manipulation and ensured all responses would be kept confidential and anonymous with the same instruction and same situational condition. Subsequently, examiners randomly assigned one certain situational story to each group and asked the subjects to read the story carefully and then make judgment: (a) choosing the best answers to the following questions according to the feelings of the person in the story—Evaluated by the situation; (b) choosing the best answers to the following questions according to their own feeling supposing themselves as the person in the story—Evaluated by self-experience.

Correlation analyses

The means, standard deviations, and correlations among the study variables are displayed in Table ​ Table4. 4 . The results show that distributive justice and procedural justice were correlated with POB, and further the correlation between procedural justice and POB ( r = 0.319, p < 0.01) was greater than between distributive justice and POB ( r = 0.079, p < 0.05). Additionally, age, level of education, and organizational position were correlated with distributive justice and procedural justice. Therefore, we decided to examine the effects of these demographic variables in the subsequent analyses.

Correlation analysis ( n = 747).

Hierarchical regression analyses

We preformed a hierarchical regression analysis for the effect of each predictor on the outcome variable POB of employees. Our goal was to determine if the hypothesized variables added a unique contribution in the prediction of the criterion above and beyond the control variables. As such, we first entered the control variables. Second, we entered the distributive justice. Next, we entered the procedural justice. To control for potential demographic effects, we included age, gender, highest level of education and organizational position as control variables.

As shown in Table ​ Table5, 5 , the individual characteristics did not account for the variance in POB, and distributive and procedural justice predicted 10% of the variance in POB of employees. Excluding the effects of distributive justice, the strongest predictor of POB was procedural justice which means that the higher the perceptions of procedural justice, the more POB employees performed.

Hierarchical regression analyses ( N = 747).

Examining the effectiveness of experimental operation

Before verification of the research hypothesis, the discriminability of dependent variable was examined through the pretest. As shown in the Figure ​ Figure2, 2 , the results of t -test indicated that the experience of distributive justice was more frequent than the experience of distributive injustice to the subject under the situation of distributive justice (M distributive justice = 3.08, M distributive injustice = 1.92, t = 97.10, P < 0.001). The experience of procedural justice was also more frequent than the experience of procedural injustice to the subject under the situation of procedural justice (M procedural justice = 2.91, M procedural injustice = 1.97, t = 32.87, P < 0.001). Hence, OJ experienced by the subjects was equal to the experimental orientation, and the experiment had obvious discriminability.

Experimental operational effectiveness of dependent variable.

The effectiveness of evaluation by situation and evaluation by self-experience were also examined. As shown in the Figure ​ Figure3, 3 , the results of the t -test indicated that the difference in OJ evaluation between others in the situation and themselves in the situation was obvious. Thus, (Situation 1: M peer assessment = 3.17, M self−evaluation = 3.62, t = 3.20, P < 0.01; Situation 2: M peer assessment = 2.56, M self−evaluation = 1.97, t = 2.58, P < 0.01; Situation 3: M peer assessment = 2.95, M self−evaluation = 2.55, t = 3.55, P < 0.001; Situation 4: M peer assessment = 1.98, M self−evaluation = 1.61, t = 3.12, P < 0.01). The results indicated a subject effect. Therefore, the effect of the independent variable on two response variables should be further examined.

The effectiveness of evaluation by situation and evaluation by self-experience.

Full model analysis

As presented in Table ​ Table6, 6 , we used multivariable variance analysis to examine the hypothesis proposed in this study. The results showed that distributive justice and procedural justice had a significant effect on employee POB, both in situational or self-experienced behavior. Furthermore, the interactions between distributive justice and procedural justice are significant ( p < 0.001).

Full model analysis.

Analysis of the effect of distributive justice and procedural justice on POB and negative organizational behavior

The full model test to experimental hypothesis was general, which made the analysis of the effects of independent variable on dependent variables difficult to conduct. Hence, a one-way ANOVA was adopted in this study to verify H4.

As shown in Table ​ Table7 7 and Figure ​ Figure4, 4 , employee positive behavior under the situation of distributive justice was more common than under the situation of distributive injustice (M distributive justice = 3.28, M distributive injustice = 2.93, F = 9.67, P < 0.001). Employee negative behavior under the situation of distributive justice was less than the behavior under the situation of distributive injustice (M distributivejustice = 2.41, M distributiveinjustice = 2.75, F = 7.87, P < 0.001). Employee positive behavior under the situation of procedural justice was more common than that under the situation of procedural injustice (M proceduraljustice = 3.47, M procedural injustice = 2.71, F = 127.35, P < 0.001). Employee negative behavior under the situation of procedural justice was also less than that in the situation of procedural injustice (M procedural justice = 2.35, M procedural injustice = 2.77, F = 19.17, P < 0.001). This outcome further confirmed that the distributive justice and procedural justice had significant effects on the pros and cons of employees' POB. The difference of interaction level between the distributive justice and procedural justice was significant ( P < 0.05). In terms of the positive behavior, the diversity among A1B1, A2B1, and A1B2 showed that A2B2 was more obvious. In terms of the negative behavior, the diversity among A1B1, A2B1, and A1B2, A2B2 was less obvious. The difference between these situations was also obvious. Hence, procedural justice had a significant effect on POB, while distributive justice had a significant effect on NOB. In addition, from R 2 in Table ​ Table7, 7 , the explanation of distributive justice and procedural justice effects on POB was 13.8% and for the NOB, the rate was only 3.6%. Therefore, OJ had greater effect on POB than that on the NOB. Therefore, H4 could be verified.

Effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on positive/negative organizational behavior.

A1, Distributive justice; A2, Distributive injustice; B1, Procedural justice; B2, Procedural injustice .

Effects of Distributive Justice and Procedural Justice to Positive/Negative Organizational Behavior.

In addition, the results also showed that distributive justice and procedural justice explained 13% variation of POB of employee, and explained only 3.6% variation of NOB. Therefore, OJ had greater effect on POB than NOB.

General discussion

The correlation analysis showed that overall POB of employee has a significant correlation with organizational justice in manufacturing-type enterprises. The results also suggested that all dimensions of POB of employee were significantly related to distributive justice and procedural justice ( r > 0.3, P < 0.001). Multiple regression analysis showed that OJ has a significant effect on POB of employees, and procedural justice and distributive fairness had significant positive effects on all dimensions of POB of employees. In other words, OJ is a positive predictor of POB of employee.

The situational experiment also confirmed the significant effects of procedural and distributive justice on positive and negative justice, as well as their interaction. The results confirmed that distributive and procedural justice had a significant effect on POB from the pros and cons of employee's POB. Many researches demonstrated that OJ had the remarkable two-way effect on employees' behavior. Specifically, organizational justice would boost employees' positive attitudes and behavior related to organizations such as improving employee job satisfaction (Tammy et al., 2010 ; Yijuan et al., 2011 ; Khan et al., 2015 ), organizational commitment (Ölçer, 2015 ; Sökmen and Ekmekçioglu, 2016 ), organizational productivity (Imran et al., 2015 ), organizational citizenship behavior (Karriker and Williams, 2009 ; Tziner and Sharoni, 2014 ; Gurbuz et al., 2016 ) and job performance (Walumbwa et al., 2009 ).

But if employees feel organizational injustice, they will display negative attitudes and behavior outcomes (Adams, 1965 ; Greenberg, 1990 , 1993 , 2001 ; Li and Shi, 2003 ; Pi, 2006 ; Ceylan and Sulu, 2011 ; Mingzheng et al., 2014 ; Chih et al., 2016 ). These results were in line with previous studies. Further, this research examined different directions of procedural and distributive justice on POB. Procedural justice is more likely to trigger POB of employees, whereas distributive injustice tended to result NOB. OJ also had greater effects on the POB of employees than NOB.

Further, this research examined different direction of procedural and distributive justice on POB. Procedural justice is more likely to trigger POB of employees, whereas distributive injustice tended to trigger NOB. OJ also had greater effects on the POB of employees than NOB. Therefore, future researchers should further analyze the relationship of these related factors with OJ or the POB of employees.

In addition, the findings revealed the remarkable result that the explanatory power of OJ theory to employees' POB was weak, which may have something to do with the effects of the Chinese traditional culture. In China, people pay attention to humanity, face, and euphemistical interpersonal association. In addition, people think highly of collectivity, collective honor, connotation, and great harmony. Under the cultural background of harmony (Yang, 1988 ; Wang and Zheng, 2005 ), the consciousness of dealing with affairs according to justice, procedure, social contract, and regulation is weaker than among Western people. In China, social relation network, implicit rules, and the way of saving the nation by curve may be more effective in social and enterprise management. Thereby, the consciousness of justice is weak in the mind of enterprise employees. The relationship comes down in one continuous line with the discovery that Chinese enterprise employees attach considerable attention to seeking harmonious interpersonal relations. Given the special cultural background in China, employee ownership of organizational achievement and reputation, organizational belongingness, sense of worth and pride based on the organization, sense of cohesiveness formed by organizational ideals and organizational support have far more significant effect on employees' POB than OJ. Hence, future replication studies in other contexts are needed to verify the findings of this study and consider the relationship between these factors described above and POB of employees.

Strengths and limitations

A key strength of the present research is that we used a newly explicit definition of POB: an organizational behavior of employees would be beneficial to organization. The POB of employee is mainly composed of devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behavior. It is important to emphasize that this framework of POB can be measureable, assessable, controllable and changeable and it was conformed to the Chinese cultural background. Future research should investigate whether this definition of POB can conduct on other specific cultural, industrial and regional group.

The study has several limitations. First, all the measures in this study draw on self-reported data of individuals' attitudes and perceptions. Although we have used the pre-control method, such as ensuring the anonymity of respondents, designing the response questionnaire as a combination of self and peer evaluation and conducting the investigation in different periods, it may lead to common method variance that would has a negative impact on the reliability of the obtained results. We would encourage future researches to use longitudinal design to make causal statement address any concerns related to causal relationships, and also collect multiple data to measure the behavioral outcomes of POB. This would strengthen the research design and enhance the reliability of the results.

Second, the present study adopted two-factor models to analyze organizational justice because it was regarded as the most common model. However, it is suggested that for better understanding of OJ, interactional justice and informational justice can be included into the framework of OJ. Future researchers can analyze the effect of four dimensions of OJ on the POB of employees in detail.

Third, the experimental study used four different stimulus stories as materials to analyze the relationship between OJ and POB of employees, including devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping and harmonious behavior. Although these stimulus stories were considered to be effective and reliable because of the connotation of these stories contains every facet of POB of employees (e.g., “striving for the best,” “working hard,” and “helping others”), we did not adequately measure other facets of POB of employees except for “active behavior”. Therefore, future research should address this issue by using diverse and complete materials and devising more elaborate procedures to examine the effect of OJ on POB of employees.

Theoretical and practical implications

The findings of this study have many theoretical and practical implications for researchers and managers. From the theoretical perspective, firstly, the current research contributes to the existing literature by empirically investigating and validating relationships between organizational justice and POB. The obtained results of research demonstrate that the direct and positive relationships between organizational justice and POB are all statistically significant. And it reveals that procedural justice has a more powerful effect on POB of employees, whereas employees' NOB is more strongly influenced by distributive injustice. Moreover, the results of the path analysis show that organizational justice has stronger indirect impact on POB of employees than direct effects. Based on the findings of current research, researchers could extend the results of this study by considering other variables, in order to better comprehend and generalize the results of this study. Furthermore, researchers could consider the effect of economic situation on organizational outcomes. Specifically, whether people have stronger feelings of injustice during economic downturn and to what extent the economic crisis negatively affect employees' emotional and behavioral outcomes for organizations.

In addition, the current study distinguished that two dimensions (distributive and procedural justice) of OJ have distinct influence to employees' organizational behavior. It suggested that distributive justice and procedural justice would trigger different behavioral aspects of employees, which may make a contribution to the previous knowledge about the theory of organizational justice.

From the practical perspective, employees of an organization will reflect positive behavior and productivity if they perceive their organization as fair and just in its procedures and distribution systems. Enhancing organizational justice results in improved outcomes from employees. Therefore, managers should make efforts to enhance the perceived organizational justice of employees to improve their POB. Furthermore, the findings suggest that procedural justice differ from distributive justice in effectiveness and direction of effect. It is important for organizational managers to consider when they formulate and implement justice strategies to influence employees' related attitudes and behaviors. They should ensure both processes are fair, transparent and just and distributions are equitable and reasonable. Therefore, managers are encouraged to have a comprehensive consideration to increase the POB of employees and to decrease the NOB of employees, due to the employees' negative perception about distributive injustice.

To conclude, this current study contributes to the literature in the following ways. First, the current study offers a new perspective about POB of employees, including devoted, responsible, active, innovative, helping, and harmonious behavior. Second, this study confirms past findings by showing organizational justice has a significant impact on POB of employees. Finally, the study contributes to our understanding that two forms of organizational justice have different influences on employees' organizational behavior. In other words, procedural justice significantly influenced POB of employees, and distribution injustice significantly influenced NOB.

Employees' POB has an obviously positive relation with OJ in the manufacturing-type enterprises. OJ clearly indicates the positive prediction on POB. Situational experiments have further confirmed that the main effect of procedural and distributive justice on POB and NOB is obvious, and there is frequent interaction between them. In addition, the influence orientation and the effectiveness between procedural and distributive justice also differ. In other words, procedural justice is prone to result in POB and distributive justice has a significant effect on negative organizational behavior. Furthermore, path analysis suggested that OJ has more indirect effects on POB than direct effects, which could probably because the effects of other mediating variables.

Ethics statement

The study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of “the University of Southwest's Human Research Ethics Committee” with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the “the University of Southwest's Human Research Ethics Committee.”

Author contributions

The current research was carried out in collaboration between all authors. XP designed the study, analyzed the data and wrote the framework of the manuscript. MC analyzed the literature and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. ZH and WB conducted the literature research and carried out experimental process. Finally, XP and MC revised and perfected the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Scene 2: A1B2 (distributive justice × procedural injustice)

Senior managers of a company intend to give a large amount of bonus for employees. Not only the distributive standard is not known by employees, but also the evaluation process is not transparent. Even they don't know how their evaluation score is calculated by company. The result is not shown publicly. No reason for complaint if mistakes exist. Finally, zhangsan obtained a bonus. Later he learned that his bonus roughly consistent with his income .

(Instructions) Please answer the following questions based on your real thoughts and physical truth according to the situational story. When answering the questions, mark directly on the selected option (5 = Absolutely agree, 4 = Partly agree, 3 = A little bit agree, 2 = Partly disagree, and 1 = Absolutely disagree).

• (1) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, Zhangsan will think it is fair and he will do his work actively.1 2 3 4 5

(2) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we would also feel it is fair and do our work actively.1 2 3 4 5

• (3) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, Zhangsan will feel it is unfair. He will slow down, be absent, not obey the arrangement in his work, or even resign. 1 2 3 4 5
• (4) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we would also feel it is unfair. We would slow down, be absent, not obey the arrangement in our work, or even resign. 1 2 3 4 5

Scene 3: A2B1 (distributive injustice × procedural justice) (Story)

Senior managers of a company intend to give a large amount of bonus for employees. They formulate the standards and organize multi-level managers and representatives of employees to have a discussion. After discussion, the distributive standard is determined preliminarily. Then, the standard is shown publicly to collect opinions from ordinary employees until all staves approve the standard. Based on the decision without objection, the Human Resources Department evaluates every employee according to the distributive standard and personal job performance. The result is shown publicly for correction if mistakes exist. According to the distributive arrangement and personal job performance, ZhangSan got the lowest score, while did not obtain the minimum bonus.

• (2) Based on the bonus distributive procedure mentioned above, if we were employees in the company, we would also feel it is fair and do our work actively. 1 2 3 4 5

Scene 4: A2B2 (distributive injustice × procedural injustice)

Senior managers of a company intend to give a large amount of bonus for employees. Not only the distributive standard is not known by employees, but also the evaluation process is not transparent. Even they don't know how their evaluation score is calculated by company. The results of bonus distribution are not shown publicly. Even if the results are wrong, the senior managers don't allow you to appeal freely. Finally, zhangsan obtained a bonus. Later he learned that his bonus did not consistent with his income. Compared with him, those who did less job, created lower performance, and contributed less, eventually obtained more bonuses.

Funding. The study is supported by “Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU 1709740)”.

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Organizational Justice Research Paper

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What is perceived as fair in organizations has been a topic that has received an enormous amount of research attention as it has the potential to impact individual, group, and organizational outcomes. Due to increased intercultural interaction in recent years, cultural differences in perceptions of justice have gained an increased practical importance as well. This research paper reviews relevant findings of organizational justice research in various fields such as industrial/organizational psychology, organizational behavior, human resource management, cross-cultural psychology, and international management in an attempt to identify and understand the influence of culture on human perceptions and behavior. The research paper presents representative results of cross-cultural comparisons of the processes that mediate perceptions of justice and behavior in various cultures. Further, the theoretical and practical implications of these results for human resource management in organizations are discussed.

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All the people like us are WE And everyone else is THEY And THEY live over the sea, While WE live over the way. But—would you believe it?— They look upon WE As only a sort of THEY. —Rudyard Kipling (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Within the past 3 decades, social and organizational scientists have paid an enormous amount of attention on the topic of organizational justice (for a review, see Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). Research on organizational justice examines fairness perceptions of employees in terms of how they are treated in the workplace. Psychologists are concerned with the behavioral and social consequences of fairness perceptions. The growth in this area of research is grounded on the notion that employee productivity is obtained at the cost of employee satisfaction. This assumption reflects underlying reciprocity principle: perceived fair treatment — job satisfaction — decision to reciprocate by the employee.

Let us first consider the process of perception in human beings before moving on to the topic of organizational perceptions. Perception is the process of receiving and interpreting information about the world through our senses. In the first place, employees are individuals who first learned to process information through the cultural lens to interpret the outside world. In doing so, individuals learn a certain way of perceiving and interpreting the behaviors of others around. Individuals in a given culture learn to behave (think, feel, and act) according to the norms established in that culture. This tendency to use the cultural lens to interpret the world, learned patterns of behaving and expecting others to behave in a particular manner is what cross-cultural researchers refer to as ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is a natural and inevitable consequence of socialization in a given culture. Individuals, because of socialization, learn many rules about how to behave. These rules form the foundation of culture. By the time an individual enters adulthood and enters the workplace, he or she has internalized the rules of behavior. Another related definition of ethnocentrism suggests a tendency to judge people of other groups according to the standards of one’s own in-group or culture. Scholars have identified two forms of ethnocentrism: (a) Flexible ethnocentrism lends one to add on to one’s cultural filters and helps one to see things from different perspectives, and (b) inflexible ethnocentrism, on the other hand, refers to the inability to go beyond one’s own cultural filters while interpreting the behavior of others. Ethnocentrism is often referred to in negative terms and not as a normal aspect of everyday psychological functioning. Some degree of ethnocentrism is necessary for maintaining social order and cohesion. There would not be any reason to observe norms, to obey laws of society, or to work harmoniously with others if not for the implicit positive evaluation of ways of one’s own culture. If ethnocentrism is inevitable and a natural consequence of enculturation, it could be a potential source of intercultural conflicts as well. Ethnocentrism has also been reported to lead to stereotypes and prejudices. The role of emotion, self, and values in the formation of ethnocentrism has also been well attested. When there is a discrepancy between reality and one’s expectations based on culture the result may likely be negative emotions. Whereas what is being perceived matches one’s expectations positive emotions and attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction) follow.

In organizational contexts, managers make several decisions that directly or indirectly impact the employees—hiring, promotion, budget allocation, and so forth. Research on organizational justice or fairness perceptions support that positive fairness perception is related to several outcomes including employee loyalty and events or decisions perceived as unfair will have a negative impact on employee behavior including retaliatory behavior, theft, and rule breaking (Skarlicki, 2001). Further, research findings point out that the individual perceptions of fairness and their behavioral consequences in turn affect group or division level performance, which in turn casts an influence upon the overall organization as measured by organizational performance and competitive advantage. Social and behavioral scientists have begun to investigate whether these concepts have international implications. Multinational corporations continue to seek competitive advantage through global diversity and this trend calls for cross-cultural research with the hope that it can help businesses generate new competitive advantages. Examining fairness perceptions and investigating the cross-cultural differences and similarities in how people respond to perceived fair/unfair treatment is a timely and important topic for 21st-century management.

Organizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers to the perception of fairness of the past treatment of the employees. . . . It is a subjective personal view of justice, based upon experience, rather than an objective moral determination of justice based upon principle. (Hosmer & Kiewitz, 2005, p. 67)

Justice analysis generally centers around four central questions:

(1) What do individuals and collectivities think is just and why? (2) How do ideas of justice shape determination of actual situation? (3) What is the magnitude of the perceived injustice associated with given departures from perfect justice? (4) What are the behavioral and social consequences of perceived justice/injustice? (Jasso, 2005, p. 15)

Western justice theorists have held that justice indicates whether employees are valued and respected members of an organization. Management by rewarding employees consistent with their performance acknowledges that employees are valued and recognized (Fischer & Smith, 2004). Social scientists have shown less interest in knowing what justice “really is” and more interest in describing individual perceptions of fairness attempting to assess what people perceive as fair and how they respond to perceived unfairness. For this reason, a vast majority of research studies on organizational justice or perceived fairness have examined either the direct effects of individual differences (e.g., personality) or other contextual factors (e.g., organizational structure). Please note that throughout the rest of the research paper the terms fairness and justice are used synonymously.

Perceptions of organizational fairness have been found to influence several important outcomes at individual, group, and organizational levels. At the individual level, it affects attitudes like employee job satisfaction, commitment, and behaviors that include in-role performance and extrarole behavior. At the group level, fair perceptions can indirectly influence the morale of the group and its performance. Studies have repeatedly shown that there is a relationship between perceived injustice and counterproductive behavior and negative organizational outcomes. However, there are still several unanswered questions regarding the antecedents and consequences of justice perceptions.

Although human perception is influenced by (a) the characteristics of (b) the perceived, (c) the characteristics of the perceiver, and (d) the characteristics of the situation, much research attention has been directed at the characteristics of the perceiver and the situation in organizational justice research due to the potential interaction effects and consequences at various levels. This research paper presents key and representative findings in organizational justice research as outlined in the conceptual model presented in Figure 1. This model depicts the relationship of perceived fairness to various individual, group, and organizational outcomes.

This research paper reviews relevant findings of organizational justice research in various fields of research including industrial/organizational psychology, human resource management, organizational behavior, cross-cultural psychology, and international management in an attempt to identify and understand the influence of culture on human perceptions and behavior in organizational contexts.

Figure 1 Conceptual Model of the Relationship of Perceived Fairness to Its Antecedents and Consequences

Organizational Justice Research

The genesis of fairness perceptions construct lies in the tenets of Adams’s (1965) equity theory. Organizational justice is the overarching theoretical concept that deals with fair treatment of people in organizations. Most current research and thinking on this topic follows the theoretical framework suggested by Colquitt et al. (2001). Current research acknowledges the existence of three types of fairness perceptions or organizational justice: (a) distributive justice, which deals with the fairness regarding how outcomes are distributed; (b) procedural justice, which deals with the fairness regarding the procedure(s) adopted to distribute outcomes; and (c) interactional justice, which deals with how individual employees are treated in an organization.

Interactional justice, further, has been found to have two components: (1) interpersonal and (2) informational. Interpersonal justice refers to perceptions of treating people with respect and dignity. Informational justice refers to the fairness in timely, complete, and accurate information distribution.

As what is perceived as fair or just is inherently norm-based, culture and internalized values play a significant role in shaping expectations and fairness perceptions. As cultures prescribe norms and values for its members, it would be interesting to see cross-cultural differences in perceived fairness at all three justice levels.

Role Of Culture In Shaping Fairness Perceptions And Behavior

One’s culture may influence or mediate the relationship between events occurring in work life and its perceived fairness. Some theorists have recently advocated the importance of using organizational justice as a lens through

which to examine different national cultures (Greenberg, 2001). An important question that needs to be addressed is the generalizability of the findings about organizational justice that are based on one culture. From a theoretical point of view, exploring cultural similarity and differences in justice constructs will contribute to the comprehensiveness and universality of justice theories. “From a practical perspective, cross-cultural research can assist managers of multicultural organizations, as well as managers of a culturally diverse workforce within one country, to understand how organizational policies and their implementation impact employees’ perceptions of fairness” (Skarlicki, 2001, p. 292). The study of justice perceptions will be incomplete without understanding the differences in national culture. The notion that nations have identifiable cultures that can influence how business is conducted in that nation became a topic of interest through the research work of Hofstede (2001). His approach in studying employees’ work-related values represents an evolution in the field’s understanding of organizational culture. Much of what we understand about corporate culture and work-related values today is based on the results of his seminal work studying employees at International Business Machines (IBM). He conducted a series of research studies and compiled altogether the data collected from 50 different countries using 20 different languages and more than 116,000 employees ranging seven different occupational levels. The results indicated reliable and meaningful differences among nations as measured through the responses to the attitude and opinion surveys. Hofstede identified four major cultural dimensions that can be used to explain cross-cultural differences. They include the following:

Power Distance

Power distance is the extent to which less powerful members expect and accept unequal distribution of power. In other words, it is the degree to which a culture encourages and maintains power and status differentials. The United States scored relatively low on power distance, and Malaysia scored highest on power distance. In Hofstede’s (2001) original study, Philippines, Mexico, Venezuela, and India scored high on this dimension. New Zealand, Denmark, Israel, and Austria scored lowest, suggesting that these countries work at minimizing status and power differentials. This key factor may affect justice perceptions as managers in high power distance cultures are seen as making decisions autocratically and paternalistically, whereas managers in low power distance cultures are indulging extensively in adopting participative management on important decisions they take.

Cultures high on power distance foster organizations with greater centralization of organization and process, taller organizational pyramids, larger proportions of supervisory personnel, larger wage differentials, lower qualifications for lower strata of employees, and greater valuation of white-collar as opposed to blue-collar jobs. (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004, p. 435)

Individualism-Collectivism

Individualism-collectivism is a philosophy that expresses how individuals are related to a group. Individualism refers to the belief that individuals in a society take care of themselves and their family members. Collectivism is the belief that individuals an integral part of the society whose primary concern is the collective group. As a result, individuals form perceptions of independent self (in individualistic cultures) or interdependent self (in collectivistic cultures). The United States scores high on individualism compared to all other nations. This is a very important dimension in organizational contexts, as collectivistic cultures value and foster compliance with organizational policies and expect conformity to the group/unit. In Hofstede’s (2001) study, the United States, Australia, Great Britain, and Canada scored high on individualism. Peru, Pakistan, Colombia, and Venezuela were found to score high on collectivism. People from individualistic cultures tend to make clear distinctions between their personal time and company/work time. Members in individualistic cultures value freedom and autonomy in structuring their work, they seek challenge, and initiative is encouraged at work. On the contrary, desiring to be independent, seeking freedom, and seeking initiative are frowned upon in collectivistic cultures.

Masculinity-Femininity

Masculinity-femininity refers to how far gender roles are distinct in a society. Countries scoring high on masculinity expect individuals to be instrumental and goal oriented, whereas countries high on femininity stand for a society in which social gender roles overlap. Japan, Austria, Venezuela, and Italy scored highest on masculinity. The United States is more masculine than feminine. Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden scored lowest and had the fewest differences between gender roles. Gender equity at workplace is a concern for more feminine cultures. Many American work organizations are still in transition toward achieving this challenge. Masculine cultures expect managers to value leadership, independence, and self-realization, whereas feminine cultures places less importance on these aspects. They also regard earnings, recognition, and achievement as more important when compared to feminine cultures. Job stress is found to be high in organizations that operate in highly masculine cultures.

Uncertainty Avoidance

Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which individuals in one culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown events and situations. Cultures high on uncertainty avoidance develop highly refined rules and rituals to cope with or avoid uncertainty. In Hofstede’s (2001) research, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, and Japan scored high on this dimension. Those cultures high on uncertainty avoidance are found to be associated with higher degree of job stress

than cultures that are low on this dimension are. Countries scoring low on this dimension are less concerned with rules and rituals. The United States scored very low in uncertainty avoidance. Sweden, Denmark, and Singapore scored lowest on this dimension. These cultures are found to encourage individuals to be risk takers and to be entrepreneurial.

Hofstede’s (2001) research has influenced how we think about culture and its consequences on conducting business in different nations. However, critics of Hofstede’s work argue that national culture differences need not necessarily manifest in organizational culture. Another concern is that focusing on national averages can downplay the variability among individuals in a nation. Nevertheless, Hofstede’s work has had a major impact on subsequent research and practice in the field. Organizations, in order to be successful, take into consideration these differences while structuring work, rules, and their policies.

Cross-Cultural Justice Research

Cross-cultural researchers have studied people’s reactions to resource allocation outcomes (distributive justice), processes through which allocation decisions are made (procedural justice), and perceptions of fairness in interpersonal treatment they received (interactional justice). In most of the early work in cross-cultural justice research, culture was equated to country differences. In other words, most of the early studies were essentially cross-country studies. The major assumption adopted being people in one country share similar culture. Culture has also been captured through dimensions of values (e.g., individualism-collectivism). Scientists have also tried to adopt a more functional approach to understand organizational culture by studying employees’ work-related values. People from different cultural backgrounds bring to work different values. These similarities and differences in value orientations related to work can be a source of growth or conflict. There has been a recent trend to focus more on specific value dimensions and other contextual factors. The following section provides a review of research conducted on justice perceptions with a cross-cultural or cross-national focus. Please note that an attempt has been made to present representative and key findings and, by no means, is this review comprehensive or exhaustive.

Perceived Fairness: Distributive Justice

Organizations make several decisions on distributing rewards and allocating resources using one of three distribution rules—equity, equality, or need based. Research findings support certain national preferences to use one distribution rule over others. It has been generally supported that while Americans prefer equity, people from Japan and Netherlands prefer equality, and people from India perceive need based distribution as more favorable. Cross-cultural researchers have attempted to identify variables that could help explain these differences and value differences have emerged as one of the leading factors in providing such explanations.

Fischer and Smith (2004) using Schwartz’s value survey studied reactions of full-time employees to performance versus seniority-based reward allocation in the United Kingdom and Germany. Two bipolar value dimensions of Schwartz’s value survey include openness to change versus conservation and self-enhancement versus self-transcendence. Openness to change comprises of motivational types of self-direction, stimulation, and hedonism; conservation comprises of security, conformity, and tradition value types. Employees valuing conservation over openness to change are motivated by their belief in social order, obedience to authorities, and acceptance of their position in the organizational hierarchy. On the other hand, employees valuing openness to change are more likely to focus on justice. Self-enhancement values include power and achievement (even at others expense), and self-transcendence values include a motivation to transcend selfish concerns. Those sampled valuing self-enhancement reacted more positively to decisions based on work performance and seniority. The study results also indicate that employees endorsing openness to change values reported a stronger relationship between perceived fairness and organizational commitment. They also reported more compliant behavior, which goes above and beyond formal role descriptions (also known as extrarole behavior or organizational citizenship behavior).

There is also growing evidence that values measured with the Schwartz’s value survey do predict individual behaviors. Managers with conservation values are more likely to use avoiding-conflict management style whereas self-enhancement values are related to forcing, competing, and dominating behavioral tendencies. Most research work on distributive justice explores individual response to a resource allocation decisions. However, some researchers have inquired into what factors decision makers consider while making an allocation decision. A study by Johansson, Gustafsson, Olsson, Gârling (2007) on allocation decisions identified three salient factors: self-interest, third-party fairness, and efficiency of resource allocation. The study concluded that decision makers overuse resources when fairness was a concern. Ramamoorthy and Flood (2004) researched gender-related pay disparity by studying Irish manufacturing organizations and found that gender moderated the relationships between distributive justice perceptions and affective commitment. The concerns of gender differences in pay need to be tested in different national context.

In a more recent work by Fischer et al. (2007), researchers focused on the social and economic context in distribution of organizational resources in studying employee perceptions of allocation decisions made by their supervisor. They studied the relationship of national values and economic and organizational factors across six nations and reported differences in reward allocation principles based on equity, equality, and need in work organizations across Germany, United Kingdom, New Zealand, United States, and Brazil. All of these findings support the notion that values act as guiding principles in determining an individual’s perceptions of events, behaviors, and situations.

Perceived Fairness: Procedural Justice

Researchers have studied fairness perceptions regarding processes or procedures managers use in allocating rewards and relevant outcomes. People hold expectations about what is a fair procedure in a given situation. It appears that beliefs about fairness are universal in nature (Greenberg, 2001). Examples of events related to procedural justice perceptions include performance appraisal, employee selection, and allocation of funding, to name a few. The primary goal of procedural justice research has been to explain why procedural justice matters. Very little attention has been given to studying the range of concerns that procedural justice encompasses or its definition. Researchers have found procedural justice, among all the three types of organizational justice, to be most closely related to organizational attitudes and behavior.

Leventhal (1980) proposed six criteria for evaluation of procedural justice and suggested that procedural fairness perception can be fostered by adhering to the following procedural rules: (a) consistency, (b) bias suppression, (c) accuracy, (d) correctability, (e) representativeness, and (f) ethicality. Perceptions of procedural justice have been found to be linked to various individual-level outcomes namely organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) or those extrarole behaviors that go above and beyond “the call of duty” (Kamdar, McAllister, & Turban, 2006) as well as organizational commitment (Fedor, Caldwell, & Herold, 2006). Fischer and Smith (2006) studied British and German organizations and found that value orientations of employees influenced the effects of perceived procedural fairness on organizational commitment, on self-reported compliant, and on proactive aspects of extrarole behavior. When employees perceive fairness of the process behind an outcome, they generally tend to have higher organizational commitment, greater trust and supervisory commitment. Studies with social-exchange interpretation of the justice-OCB relation-ship found that trust and organizational support mediate the effects of procedural justice on OCB. Employees having positive justice perceptions feel valued and respected and consider supervisors as more trustworthy. Yet another set of researchers considered employee role definition effects on OCB. Further research is warranted to uncover the extent to which the effects of role definition reflect social exchange versus impression management tactics.

Riolli and Savicki (2006) reported that lower procedural justice perception is predictive of higher burnout, strain, and turnover. Procedural justice was found positively related to organizational commitment and negatively related to resistance and turnover intentions. It has also been suggested that even when the employee does not perceive the fairness of outcome (distributive justice), if the procedure is perceived as fair employees react more favorably toward the decision. Yet another study indicates that procedural justice perceptions are highly predictive of attitudes and behaviors especially when outcomes are perceived as unfair (Hershcovis et al. 2007).

Very few studies have systematically examined the role of contextual variables in cross-cultural studies on fairness perceptions. Prior research indicates that decentralized organizations are perceived as more procedurally fair. There is also evidence that suggests that the degree of power distance in a culture will influence the rigidness of rules, regulations, and policies in organizations that operate in that culture. In a study by Ambrose and Schminke (2003), organizational structure was found to influence social-exchange relationship with organization and supervisor. Social exchange was operationalized as perceived organizational support and supervisory trust. Organizational structure was measured in their study in terms of the degree to which the departments reflected mechanistic or organic characteristics. Mechanistic structures are more rigid and tight. They reflect traditional bureaucracies where power is centralized, formal rules and regulations influence decisions, and communications follow clear hierarchical channels. In contrast, and on the other end of the continuum, organic organizations reflect flexibility and have decentralized structures where communication channels are less clear and rules and regulations take a backseat to helping employees reach their goals. For example, if it takes a manager to pay salary upfront to a subordinate to help attend a personal emergency, it would be rule breaking for an organization where employees get paid at the end of every month. (Some researchers refer to this as prosocial rule breaking, and they have begun to show research attention on this evolving concept.) As expected, Ambrose and Schminke found that the relationship between procedural justice and perceived organizational support is higher in mechanistic organizations. On the other hand, organic organizations were found to have higher interactional justice as observed through higher supervisory support.

Recently, the concept of “procedural justice climate,” which refers to group-level cognition of how a group as a whole is treated in an organization, was introduced. Subsequently, results of cross-level analyses indicated that these aggregate procedural justice perceptions explained unique variance in behavior beyond individual procedural fairness perceptions. In another study, organizational procedural justice climate was found to moderate the effect of organizational variables like power and status on victim’s revenge, forgiveness, reconciliation, or avoidance behavior (Aquino, Tripp, & Bies, 2006). Colquitt (2004) investigated reactions to procedural justice in teams and the results of two studies suggest that when fairness was perceived consistent within the team employees exhibited higher levels of role performance. These results extend the study of procedural justice perceptions to another level.

Procedural justice plays an important role in cooperative alliances where fair procedural justice perceptions can serve as a foundation for the relationship between the exchange parties (Luo, 2005). Analysis of 124 cross-cultural alliances in China lends support to this proposition. It was found that alliance profitability is higher when both parties have high justice perceptions. Luo also identified that shared justice perceptions become more salient when the cultural distance between alliance partners is high or when the industry of operation is uncertain.

Perceived Fairness: Interactional Justice

Interactional justice is a relatively newer concept compared to the other two organizational justice perceptions. This type of justice perception occurs when employees perceive that they are treated well in the organization. Two identified types of interactional justice are informational and interpersonal justice. Showing concern for employees and treating them with politeness, respect, and dignity have been studied under interpersonal justice. Apologies have also been seen to demonstrate interpersonal justice. Informational justice perceptions occur when employees are provided timely, complete, and accurate information about the various information including policies and procedures in an organization.

A few researchers have suggested that treating an employee fairly is just not enough to increase performance; managers or leaders should also consider the fair treatment of other members in the team (Colquitt, 2004). Researchers have identified several characteristics of leader-member exchanges (LMXs) and their outcomes. Erdogan, Liden, and Kraimer (2006) studied teachers from high schools in Turkey, and the dimension respect for people was found to strengthen the relationship between interactional justice and LMXs. This would mean that the type of leader behavior that lead to liking and trust will lead to high-quality social exchange relationship. By a clear understanding of high-quality exchange relationship, organizations can foster desirable employee attitude and behavior. The relationship between interactional justice and supervisory trust was found to be stronger in organic organizations. Williams, Pitre, and Zainuba (2002) identified that interactional justice perceptions were related to the intentions to engage in OCB.

Aryee, Chen, Sun, and Debrah (2007) attempted to study the antecedents of abusive supervision and work outcomes of affective organizational commitment and citizenship behavior at organizational and individual levels. Subordinate-supervisor dyads from a telecommunication company from China served as subjects for this study. Results pointed out that authoritarian leadership style moderated the relationship of interactional justice (supervisors’ perception) and abusive supervision.

Moliner, Martinez-Tur, Peiro, Ramos, and Cropanzano (2005) investigated interactional justice perceptions by considering the relationship between unit-level interactional justice perceptions and unit-level burnout. Quality of the relationship with supervisor was found to influence burnout experiences. The study findings emphasized the predominant role of interactional justice at the unit level.

The implications of these findings for practice include training of managers could promote interpersonal treatment and thereby maintaining well-being of team members.

There is a general agreement in the justice perceptions literature that fairness lies in the eye of the beholder. Based on Adams’s (1965) equity theory propositions, if employees perceive a discrepancy between actual outcomes earned and expected outcomes this inequity perception may influence employee behavior. According to equity theory propositions, individuals make their judgments about what they bring to situations and compare it to a referent other. Fairness is perceived if one is perceived to receive better outcomes (rewards, treatments, etc.) and input (one’s education, experience, skills, etc.) compared to that of the referent other. This would mean that equity comparisons are subjective judgments and the organization will have less direct control over it. Some researchers have asserted that certain individual differences (e.g., personality) moderate the effects of justice perceptions on job attitudes and subsequent behavior. The role of personality agreeableness, openness to experience, and test-taking self-efficacy were identified with perceived fairness. Most of the studies that examined the relationship of justice perceptions and its role in influencing employees approached the justice reactions from a rather cold cognitive response perspective. However, Barsky and Kaplan (2007) suggested examining a hot perspective would be more appropriate in studying work-related social judgments. These researchers focused on individuals’ emotions (temperament and mood) in shaping justice perceptions. These researchers argued that when employees make judgments about events at workplaces under uncertainty and incomplete information employees rely on their feelings to make judgments. The study looks at state and trait affect, which are theorized to affect job attitudes (job satisfaction, job commitment, etc.) largely through separate mechanisms. The results show that state and trait affect relates to judgments of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice perceptions.

Suggestions For Future Research

Future justice studies of cross-cultural nature should focus on evolving a comprehensive theory identifying precursors and consequences of perceived fairness at different levels of analysis. Future research could benefit by exploring possible antecedents like perceived breach in psychological contracts. Organizational and international interventions should explicitly consider the role of culture and its fit to practices in improving fairness perceptions and creating a fair work environment.

The term fairness has meaning and relevance that transcends employee perceptions in an organizational context.

As organizations continue to excel in serving the global world with the needed products and services, it is imperative that we are mindful of the dynamic cultural aspects that come into play. There is growing consensus among international management researchers and practitioners that there is no such thing as universal management solution. Cultural differences, by shaping job attitudes and behavior, necessitate the need for identifying a fit between a given culture and practice. Management practices developed in one culture need not necessarily be successful in another culture. For example, empowerment initiatives, a very popular one in the United States, failed to yield positive results when exported to cultures where people are not expected to take initiative as a cultural norm. Available cross-cultural/cross-national research emphasizes the role of culture in shaping employee attitudes and behavior by forming a framework to assess fairness perceptions of rules, policies, allocation decisions, procedures, events, interactions, treatment, and so forth that they come across in an organizational setting. The national-level or societal-level culture will influence the organizational culture, which will in turn impact managerial practices and organizational effectiveness. As many organizations go global in the 21st century, leaders and managers should nurture a work environment/organizational culture in which employees thrive and reach optimal performance. Cross-cultural research should be conducted with a focus on both theory development and theory testing as it applies to different cultures to identify and explain different meanings of justice around the world. Given the continued and growing interest in fairness perceptions and its effect on employee attitudes and behavior, creating a framework to study the cross-cultural implications of justice perceptions on individual, group, and organizational levels and beyond is a relevant and timely topic for both researchers and practitioners of the 21st century management.

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