Two parallel mechanisms of the relationship between justice perceptions and employees' citizenship behaviour: A comparison of the organizational identification and social exchange perspective

Abstract

Based on the widely accepted relationship between procedural justice and organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), this study examines and compares two mechanisms—social exchange with organization and organizational identification, through which employees are motivated to engage in organizational citizenship behaviour. A total of 152 teachers and their corresponding peers in a middle school completed the survey. We used bootstrapping to test our hypotheses. We found that procedural justice perception of employees is associated with their OCB-I (individual-oriented OCB) and OCB-O (organizational-oriented OCB) through two different mechanisms. Justice perception was related to OCB-I mainly through social exchange. Meanwhile the effect of justice perception on OCB-O was mainly channelled through organizational identification of the employees. Social exchange and identification are two parallel mechanisms, which may explain the relationship between procedural justice and OCB. However, their psychological mechanisms are different, which could be manifested in their relationships to different patterns of citizenship behaviours. On top of emphasizing various exchanges with employees, organizations should help employees to form a clear and positive organizational identity so that employees are proud of being one of its members. This study is the first to compare directly the effects of social exchange with organizational identification on employee citizenship behaviours.