Organisational justice, organisational values and gender-based equity of leadership opportunities: a case study in a Brazilian public security organisation

Abstract

The work environment is a diverse place, where people interact daily to obtain results for organisations. Organisations have been providing gender-based equity actions to promote meritocracy. The situation worsens when criteria for ascension to leadership positions are discussed, most of the time intentionally occupied by men, violating the premise of impersonality. Diversity management and social inclusion have been intensively developed, generating engagement and psychological safety for the social actors involved. The main of this paper is to test two predictive models, in a Brazilian public security organisation, that include variables related to the perception of organisational justice, organisational values, and the perception of equality in professional advancement criteria. The sample was composed of 988 Brazilian police officers, chosen through stratified random sampling. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression. The results suggest that there is a strong and positive relationship between perceived organisational justice and perception of gender-based equity of opportunities. None of the organisational values predicted the two criteria variables. As limitations, the collected data were anonymous, a reason that did not allow the comparison between means due to some clustering variable. The equity suggested that organisational values need to be, in fact, operationalised in terms of formal practices that promote them. Limitations and suggestions were made.