Organizational Justice and Employee Work Attitudes: The Federal Case

Abstract

Organizational scientists have claimed that organizational justice is an essential requirement for effective organizational management. Perceived justice in the organization is predicted to influence employees’ attitudes toward their job and workplace significantly. This study explores how perceived organizational justice is related to employees’ work-related attitudes including job satisfaction, trust toward their supervisors and management, and intention to leave their agency. It also examines how gender differences affect these relationships. This study uses the 2005 Merit System Protection Board Survey to measure three types of organizational justice—distributive, procedural, and interpersonal—and tests the relationships using hierarchical regressions. The results indicate that higher levels of three types of organizational justice are positively related to job satisfaction and trust in supervisor and management, whereas they are negatively associated with turnover intentions of employees. Distributive justice is the one most strongly associated with job satisfaction, trust in management, and turnover intention of employees among three attributes of organizational justice. Women show higher levels of trust in management than men when they perceive procedural justice, whereas men show higher levels of trust than women when they perceive distributive and interpersonal justice.