The Moderating Role of Social Dominance Orientation in Justice and Emotional Exhaustion

Abstract

The present study examined the association between organizational justice and emotional exhaustion and whether psychological contract breach was a mediator of these linkages. In a sample of 384 employees from a spectacles-manufacturing company in China, we tested the proposed relationships with robust data analytic techniques. The results suggest that individuals’ justice perceptions (Time 1) are related to their psychological health (Time 2). As predicted, psychological contract breach fully mediated the linkages between distributive, procedural and interpersonal justice and individuals’ emotional exhaustion, partially mediated the linkage between informational justice and emotional exhaustion. Results showed that social dominance orientation moderates the relationship between procedural and interpersonal (but not distributive and informational) justice with psychological contract breach as well as the relationship between psychological contract breach and emotional exhaustion. On the basis of the findings, the author concluded that the connection between organizational justice and emotional exhaustion is more complex than was previously believed--thereby yielding a pattern of moderated mediation.