Organisational Justice and Employee Well-being

Organisational justice is one of the most crucial factors in establishing a fair working environment in the organisations. Organisational justice influences the perceptions of the employees in any organisation towards a healthy and fair workplace and that affects the well being of the employees as well as of the organisations. As stated by Törnroos et al. (2018), the concept of organisational justice includes the perceptions or judgment of the employees regarding the behavior and attitude of the management of an organisation and the resultant behavior of the employees towards that organisation. The moral or ethical behaviour of the organisation often play a significant role in establishing a fair work environment. On the other hand, organisational well being is another important aspect depicting the work culture of an organisation. According to Georgalis et al. (2015), the well being of an organisation includes the concept of individual well-being, involvement of the employees and cultural well being linked to the important outcomes, like productivity, employee retention and health. Employee motivation and well being are mutually dependent concepts and organisational justice is a factor that binds these two. The problem statement of this essay is to critically evaluate the concept of organisational justice as a form of motivation of the employees and its relationship with organisational well-being.

Many studies have been conducted overtime that addressed the concepts of organisational justice and organisational well being. Both of these concepts are not only psychological but also implemented through organisational practices and policies. Organisational justice is of three types, distributive, procedural and interactional justice. This aspect ensures the business ethics and compliances. The internal justice system of any corporation is extremely important for fostering the values of trust and integrity. Lack of organisational justice results in instability, insecurity and distrust among the employees, which in turn, affects the organisational performance and increases employee attrition as well (Vukonjanski et al. 2012). Thus, to establish a healthy and stable working environment, organisations must earn the faith of the employees by implementing organisational justice policies, which also has a significant impact on the motivation and well being of the employees.

In a study by Ayim Gyekye and Haybatollahi (2014), which focused on the relationship between organisational justice and organisational safety climate based on the fairness perceptions of the employee safety behaviour, it is found that organisational safety climate includes aspects like job satisfaction, accident frequency, safety compliance, and these aspects have a positive impact on the employee job satisfaction. According to the authors, the culture of organisational justice helps to achieve a safe environment for every employee, thereby positively influencing the working culture as well as employee motivation. Thus, ensuring a safe working environment for all creates a positive psychological impact on the employees, which in turn increases their motivation. Hence, organisational justice helps to achieve employee motivation and thereby enhances organisational well being.

Different Components of Organisational Justice and Their Impact on Employee Motivation

On the contrary, Ajala and Bolarinwa (2015) showed in their study on organisational justice and psychological well being of the employees in the government service in Osun, Nigeria, that the perceptions of individuals towards the fairness in the organisation is majorly psychological and based on social interaction. As the survival of the organisations depends largely on the behaviour, attitude, feeling and thinking of the employees, these aspects have a larger impact on the organisational performance than the actions and policies undertaken by the company. The factors of motivation lie within the behavioural characteristics of the employees and in their psychology and organisational justice does not play a significant role in influencing the organisational well being. This is mostly a psychological factor based on some actions, practices or policies by the organisations, such as, decisions of promotions, tasks assignments, benefits and incentive structure, rewards and recognitions etc. and the thoughts, feelings, perceptions and understanding of the employees are more important in achieving the well being. Thus, the authors stated that the management of the organisations should implement the organisational justice in a manner that ensures psychological well being of the employees through interpersonal relations and perceptions of them.

In this context, another study by Stamenkovic (2014) can be mentioned. In this study, the author explored the significance of the organisational justice on the motivation of the employees in Serbia. The author found that if a good relationship can be established between the motivational factors and organisational justice, it can solve many interpersonal problems within the workplace. This ensures a healthy working environment. According to the author, organisational justice, if implemented correctly, can help in a fair social exchange. As the perceptions of the employees influences the motivational aspects, the organisations must influence the perceptions of the employees through fair practices and policies. However, this study did not focus on the impact of organisational justice on the well being of the organisations. It only focused on the impact on the interpersonal relationships within the organisations in Serbia.

On the contrary, Dobre (2013) showed in his paper that employee motivation and performance highly affect the organisational performance and the material factors yields the maximum employee satisfaction. Various benefits, empowerment, rewards and recognition, incentive schemes and opportunities for career progress are extremely important factors for ensuring and enhancing employee motivation, but the practices under organisational justice do focus on equality but not on ensuring the expansion of schemes and benefits. Thus, organisational justice does not ensure that the organisation will provide many attractive benefits and rewards to the employees, which helps in increasing the motivation of the employees. Employees get demotivated due to stress in work, monotonous jobs and lack of benefits and flexibility and organisational justice does not ensure that the demotivational factors are reduced.

The Relationship between Organisational Justice and Organisational Safety Climate

Georgalis et al. (2015), showed in their study that the three different components of organisational justice play a significant role in predicting the components of psychological well being of the employees. The factors are autonomy, personal growth, interpersonal relationships, environmental growth, etc. the authors found that the individuals consider work as a central action in life and the fairness in regards to procedures, distribution and interaction results in the psychological well being of the employees. This causes fulfilment, contentment and to make an employee more skilled and proficient to make more critical and existential hurdles in life. Thus, organisational justice not only makes an employee more skilful for professional work, but also makes him more competent to deal with challenges in life.

On the other hand, Gelens et al. (2014) illustrated that the perceptions regarding procedural and distributive organisational justice affects the relationship between the identification of the employees as a highly potential employee and his work effort and job satisfaction quite significantly. It has been found through the studies that the employees who were perceived as the high potential employees get better organisational justice than the ones who are not considered as high potential. Thus, this type of perception affects the job satisfaction, as well as motivation of those employees and also negatively affects the organisational well being.

Hosmer and Kiewitz (2005) addressed the implications of behavioural justice on the business ethics and stakeholder theory. The authors stated that the perception of fairness in the organisations was mostly subjective and related to the attitudinal changes in the job satisfaction of the employees along with organisational commitment and trust on the management. There were also significant changes in the behavioural changes in the individual and group performance activities, quantitative changes in the numbers, efficiency and quality of the divisional outputs and ultimate changes in the financial performance and competitive advantage of the organisations. After the study, the authors concluded that all the constructs of organisational justice should be applied not only on the current employees but also on the stakeholders of the organisations, and the subjective perceptions of the stakeholders coupled with the objectives of the managers would lead to further attitudinal, numerical and behavioural changes and would improve the performance eventually. Thus, normative stakeholder theory and the business ethics should be combined with the organisational justice for a wider outcome on the improved performance and hence, organisational well being can be achieved through organisational justice.

Conclusion

At the end of the discussion it can be concluded that in majority of the studies performed earlier, it was found that organisational justice is a very significant aspect for the organisations, which helps in ensuring a stable, secure and trustworthy working environment. Perceptions of the employees regarding the fairness of the organisational policies and actions are the determining factors of organisational justice. As most of the authors have concluded that this has a positive impact on the employee motivation as well as performance and well being, they studied this aspect in different places and different contexts and still have found a similar pattern in the outcomes. However, it was also found that, different components of organisational justice have different impact on psychological well being of the employees and their performance, which in turn influences the organisational well being.

References

Ajala, E.M. and Bolarinwa, K.O., 2015. Organisational Justice and Psychological Well-being of Employees in the Local Government Service of Osun State, Nigeria. African Research Review, 9(4), pp.55-72.

Ayim Gyekye, S. and Haybatollahi, M., 2014. Relationship between organizational justice and organizational safety climate: do fairness perceptions influence employee safety behaviour?. International journal of occupational safety and ergonomics, 20(2), pp.199-211.

Dobre, O.I., 2013. Employee motivation and organizational performance. Review of Applied Socio-Economic Research, 5(1).

Gelens, J., Hofmans, J., Dries, N. and Pepermans, R., 2014. Talent management and organisational justice: Employee reactions to high potential identification. Human Resource Management Journal, 24(2), pp.159-175.

Georgalis, J., Samaratunge, R., Kimberley, N. and Lu, Y., 2015. Change process characteristics and resistance to organisational change: The role of employee perceptions of justice. Australian Journal of Management, 40(1), pp.89-113.

Hosmer, L.T. and Kiewitz, C., 2005. Organizational justice: A behavioral science concept with critical implications for business ethics and stakeholder theory. Business Ethics Quarterly, 15(1), pp.67-91.

Stamenkovic, S., 2014. Importance of organizational justice on employee motivation in Serbia. ACTUALITIES. 24. 102.

Törnroos, M., Elovainio, M., Hintsa, T., Hintsanen, M., Pulkki?Råback, L., Jokela, M., Lehtimäki, T., Raitakari, O.T. and Keltikangas?Järvinen, L., 2018. Personality traits and perceptions of organisational justice. International Journal of Psychology.

Vukonjanski, J., Nikoli?, M., Hadži?, O., Terek, E. and Nedeljkovi?, M., 2012. Relationship between GLOBE organizational culture dimensions, job satisfaction and leader-member exchange in Serbian organizations. Journal for East European Management Studies, pp.333-368.