Event Justice Perceptions and Employees’ Reactions: Perceptions of Social Entity Justice as a Moderator

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

Building on 2 paradigms in organizational justice research and on fairness heuristic theory, the author argues that employees' perceptions about the fairness of social entities (their supervisor and their organization) moderate the relationship between their perceptions about the fairness of specific events and their reactions. A survey of 265 supervisor-employee pairs in 4 companies was conducted to test this argument. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed that when employees perceived their organization to be generally fair, this perception moderated the relationship between the perceived justice of a particular event and their reactions to the organization (organizational commitment and organization-directed citizenship behavior). In addition, employees' perceptions of the fairness of their supervisor were found to moderate the relationship between the perceived justice of a particular event and their supervisor-directed responses (trust in managers and supervisor-directed citizenship behavior) and their organization-directed responses. The results suggest that employee attitudes and behavior can be better understood when both event justice perceptions and social entity justice perceptions are considered together.

Keywords

event justice, organization entity justice, social entity justice, supervisor entity justice

Discipline

Business

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

Journal of Applied Psychology

Volume

93

Issue

3

First Page

513

Last Page

528

ISSN

0021-9010

Identifier

10.1037/0021-9010.93.3.513

Publisher

American Psychological Association

City or Country

USA

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