Linking Organisational Justice to Malaysian Public Doctors’ Turnover Intention: A Moderated-mediation Model

Abstract

Malaysia is working on achieving Universal Health Coverage for its people. On the other hand, the migration of experienced doctors from the public to private sectors is a significant hurdle to achieving universal health access. The scenario harms health systems worldwide, including Malaysia, where many public doctors have resigned from the Ministry of Health. One ground reason for their withdrawal was concerns about the justice system. A review of the literature revealed that a positive perception of organisational justice could inversely impact the level of turnover intention. This serves as a precursor that leads to actual turnover among organisational employees. To a certain extent, organisational citizenship behaviour and personal norm of reciprocity could determine the nature of the interaction between the variables with their mediation or moderation roles. Therefore, this conceptual paper aims to investigate to what extent the mediation of organisational citizenship behaviour and moderation of personal norms of reciprocity could significantly alter the interaction between organisational justice and turnover intention among Malaysian public doctors. The authors believe this is the first study of its kind to integrate organisational citizenship behaviour and personal norms of reciprocity in a moderated-mediation model involving Malaysian public health professionals, particularly doctors.