Abstract
Purpose: This study examined the factors that predict employees' perceptions of procedural justice in university settings. The paper also reviews the ethical aspects of justice and psychological contracts within employment relationships.Design/Methodology/Approach: The study examined the predictors of perceived procedural justice in a two-wave longitudinal sample of 945 employees from 13 universities by applying the Job Demands-Resources theoretical model of stress. The proposed predictors were classified into two categories: Job demands of work pressure and work-home conflict; and job resources of job security, autonomy, trust in senior management, and trust in supervisor. The predictor model also examined job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment, demographic (age, gender, tenure, role) and individual characteristics (negative affectivity, job involvement) as well as Time 1 (T1) perceptions of procedural justice to ensure that tests were rigorous.Findings: A series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that job satisfaction at T1 was the strongest predictor of perceived procedural justice at Time 2. Employees' trust in senior management, and their length of tenure also positively predicted justice perceptions. There were also differences between academic and non-academic staff groups, as non-academic employees' level of job satisfaction, trust in senior management, and their length of organizational tenure predicted procedural justice perceptions, whereas for academics, only job satisfaction predicted perceived justice. For the “all staff” category, job satisfaction was a dominant and enduring predictor of justice, and employees' trust in senior management also predicted justice.Research limitations/implications: Results highlight the importance of workplace factors in enhancing fair procedures to encourage reciprocity from employees. As perceived procedural justice is also conceptually linked to the psychological contract between employees-employers, it is possible that employees' levels of job satisfaction and perceptions of trust in senior management, relative to other work attitudinal outcomes, may be more effective for improving the broader working environment, and promoting staff morale.Originality/value: This study adds to research on applied business ethics as it focuses on the ethical aspects of perceived procedural justice and highlights the importance of workplace factors in enhancing fair procedures in organizational policy to encourage reciprocity and promote healthy organizational environments.
Highlights
Recent international research shows that the high global costs of work-related stress for employers due to absenteeism, presenteeism, and the loss of productivity, and the subsequent high health care costs for the community are a growing international concern (Giorgi et al, 2014; Mucci et al, 2015)
Of the 4969 participants, this paper reports on the responses from the 945 matched tenured and contract staff who participated in both waves of the survey and provided responses to the measure of perceived procedural justice
Excluding the effects of the Time 1 (T1) level of procedural justice, the strongest predictor of justice was job satisfaction which means that the more satisfied that employees are with their jobs, TABLE 2 | Mean (SD) age, gender, and all measures for academic and non-academic staff categories
Summary
Recent international research shows that the high global costs of work-related stress for employers due to absenteeism, presenteeism, and the loss of productivity, and the subsequent high health care costs for the community are a growing international concern (Giorgi et al, 2014; Mucci et al, 2015). Work-related stress can influence the development of physical health problems with consequent negative repercussions on the productivity of human resources (Mucci et al, 2014; Bjørnstad et al, 2015). Organizations rely upon “...acts of cooperation, altruism, and spontaneous unrewarded help” from employees to maintain a healthy organizational environment Justice is an important theme in effective organizational contexts, and an improved knowledge of employees’ experiences of justice is needed to help understand the benefits of developing and maintaining a sense of justice within organizations. Employees perceive three main forms of justice: The fairness of the outcomes of a decision or allocation of goods (distributive justice); the fairness of the processes that are used to make decisions (procedural justice); and the fairness of the interactions and treatment that an individual receives from another (relational justice; Li and Cropanzano, 2009)
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