Teachers’ Workplace Aggression Behaviors and Their Relationship with Organizational Justice

Abstract

In this study, it was aimed to examine teachers’ workplace aggression behaviors and organizational justice perceptions and test the predictive effect of organizational justice on workplace aggression. Designed with causal comparative and correlational methods, the study had a sampling of 408 teachers, working in Kayseri and selected according to proportional stratified random sampling technique. Teachers’ Workplace Aggression Scale developed by the researchers and Organizational Justice Types Scale by Kuru-Çetin (2013) were used as data collection tools. Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis, t-test, one way ANOVA, simple and multiple linear regression analyses were used in data analyses. The results showed that teachers rarely observe aggressive behaviors at school, with a higher mean of covert workplace aggression score than that of overt workplace aggression. Organizational justice perceptions were at medium level, with a higher mean of procedural justice score than that of distributive justice. The simple linear regression analysis showed that organizational justice, explaining 10% of the variance, was a significant predictor of teachers’ workplace aggression behaviors. However, in the multiple linear regression it was observed that procedural justice, explaining 10% of the variance, was the only significant predictor of workplace aggression and distributive justice wasn’t a significant predictor of teachers’ workplace aggression. The practical and theoretical implications of the study were discussed.