Organizational justice: A cross-national comparative study of ghanaian industrial workers and their finnish counterparts

Abstract

The increased globalization in organizations has created the challenge to investigate and understand the organizational behaviours of employees from different cultural backgrounds. The current study investigated organizational justice from a cross-national perspective. Participants were Ghanaian (N = 320) and Finnish (N = 520) industrial workers. Data was collected with Blader and Tyler's (2003) scale. The Ghanaian participants responded to the English version, and the Finnish participants, a Finnish version. The analyses investigated differences on the three justice components (distributive, procedural and interactional). Further analyses examined which of the three best predicts job satisfaction, the relationships between demographic variables and justice perceptions. T-test, correlations, and regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses. Contrary to our expectations, Ghanaian respondents evaluated higher distributive and procedural justice. As predicted, they indicated more sensitivity to interactional justice than their Finnish counterparts. Significant links between all three justice components and job satisfaction were recorded in both samples. Interactional justice indicated the strongest influence. Demographic variables showed more impact on justice perceptions among Ghanaian workers than their Finnish counterparts. The study's theoretical and practical implications are discussed.