Look Who's Talking! Impact of Communication Relationship Satisfaction on Justice Perceptions

Abstract

Communication in an organization forms an important part of most organizational processes. Effective communication leads to not only successful implementation of other processes such as change and divestitures, but also to positive organizational perceptions among employees. It encourages the perceptions of distributive and procedural justice leading to greater job satisfaction and performance among employees. This study looked at communication relationship satisfaction (CRS) and its impact on perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Communication relationship satisfaction (CRS) is an umbrella concept to convey the extent to which available information meets the task-related and general information needs of employees. Employees assess their satisfaction with communications inside organizations on four different facets: (a) with supervisors (b) with peers (c) with top management and (d) with the organization as such (Putti, Aryee and Phua, 1990). Perceived justice is a multi-dimensional construct encompassing three dimensions, namely distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of the tangible outcomes of a dispute, negotiation, or decision involving two or more parties. Procedural justice refers to the perceived fairness of the policies, procedures, and criteria used by decision makers in arriving at the outcome of a dispute or negotiation. Interactional justice refers to the manner in which people are treated during the conflict resolution process Building upon previous research, we predicted that CRS across all facets will be positively related to all forms of organizational justice. We also predicted that CRS with top management will be the strongest predictor of distributive and procedural justice and CRS with supervisor will be the strongest predictor of interactional justice 292 executives belonging to different organizations were surveyed and the results supported the hypotheses: CRS was found to be strongly related to all the three components of organizational justice. Employees appeared to give far more importance to communication from the top management and their immediate supervisors than to the general communication from the organization as an entity. The results of this study become important in light of the recent layoffs and changes that are occurring in the corporate world. Clearly, any communication likely to impact perceptions of justice should be routed through the more appropriate channels.