The Relationship between Organizational Justice and
International Journal of Basic Sciences & Applied Research. Vol., 4 (5), 255-259, 2015 Available online at http://www.isicenter.org ISSN 2147-3749 ©2015 The Relationship between Organizational Justice and Organizational Commitment of Physical Education Teachers of Tabriz Ali Rajabi1,2, Mohammad Rahim Najafzadeh1,2* 1 Department of Physical Education, East Azarbaijan Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran 2 Department of Physical Education, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran * Corresponding Author Email: [email protected] Abstract The aim of conducting this research is determining the relationship between organizational justice and organizational commitment of physical education teachers of Tabriz. The research method is descriptive-correlative. The population included all physical education teachers of Tabriz, among which 181 individuals participated in the research. Data collection tools were organizational justice inventory by Niehoff and Moorman and Allen and Meyer organizational commitment questionnaire. Pearson correlation coefficient was used for data analysis. Results showed that there was a significant correlation between three components of organizational justice, affective organizational commitment, normative organizational commitment and continuance organizational commitment. It is suggested to managers of physical education to use strategies for increasing organizational justice in order to increase the organizational commitment of physical education teachers Keywords: Organizational justice, Organizational commitment, Physical education teachers. Introduction Organization is a social system and its life and sustainability depends on existence of a strong link between its constituent parts and elements. Perception of unfairness has destructive effects on the spirit of teamwork; because it affects the efforts and motivation of employees. Unfairness and unfair distribution of achievements and outputs of the organization weakens the employees’ morale and decrease their spirit of making efforts and doing activities; thus observing justice is the key to survival and sustainability of development and progress of the organization and its employees (Seyed Javadin et al., 2008). During the history, justice has always been discussed as an essential need for the social life of human beings. Nowadays regarding the comprehensive and multidimensional role of justice in the social life of human beings, its role has become more obvious than ever. Since a long time ago experts in social sciences have known about the importance of justice as the basic and necessary pillars of effectiveness of actions and performances. Such importance of justice in organizations is not unexpected; because it is claimed that justice is the first factor of health of social institutions. Organizational justice is a term used for describing the role of justice which is directly related to job positions; especially it is discussed in organizational justice that what methods should be used for dealing with employees so that they feel that they are being treated fairly (Yaghoubi et al., 2009). Studying and surveying justice in organization has resulted in detecting three different components of justice in organization including distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice. Distributive justice refers to the fairness of outcomes and results received by employees. This type of organizational justice is rooted in the equity theory. This theory pays attention to the answering method of individuals regarding the interventions and unfair behaviors of managers and supervisors in distributing facilities and rewards in organizations (Eric G et al., 2007). Procedural justice points out the fairness in procedures evaluating performance. Procedural justice is defined as the perceived fairness of procedures and processes by which the outcomes are allocated. This dimension of justice emphasizes on methods and procedures during which the decisions related to outcomes are made. Procedures are perceived to be fair when they are used constantly and regardless of personal benefits and based on specific base and information and when 255 Intl. J. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 4 (5), 255-259, 2015 they consider the interests of all participatory parts of organization and also when the ethical standards and norms are observed. By increasing the perception of procedural justice the employees will have a positive idea about the superiors and the organization; even if they complain about the payments, promotions and even if they use other personal messages (Pool W., 2005). Procedural justice focuses on the personal aspect of organizational actions especially behavior and communications between management and employees. Interactional justice focuses on the behaviors of supervisors and their role in observing the organizational justice and conceptually it is similar to informal quality of behavior. This dimension of justice includes the interpersonal behaviors or perceived level of fairness of behavior of employees in an organization. Interactional justice less includes the formal dimensions of interactions (James, 2008). Organizational commitment has been widely studied by different researches and different definitions have been provided for it. Mowday et al state that organizational commitment is the amount of power and identity an individual feels with its organization. In another definition it has been said that organizational commitment is the feeling of attachment and dependence of an individual to the organization. The common thread in different definitions of organizational justice is the term attachment, dependence or link between individual and organization. Generally researchers have detected three types of commitment which result in organizational commitment: affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment (Handlon, 2009); in the following lines these three types of commitment are explained. Affective commitment is the most important element of organizational commitment. Affective commitment is defined as the individual’s attachment to or dependence on the organization. Normative commitment is the second concept and element creating organizational commitment. Normative commitment is defined as a kind of commitment and obligation which directs employees toward this feeling to stay at the organization (Chang & Lin, 2008). Researchers have found out that normative commitment is not guided by the level of payment, education or age; rather it is a mutual trust that creates the obligation and commitment for staying. In a research Allen & Meyer stated that organizations trying to create a culture that expects the employees to be loyal to the organization have higher chances of having employees with high normative commitment. Normative commitment results in increasing the trust in the organization and it is an important factor for stimulating individuals to participate in the organization. Normative commitment is highly related to job satisfaction. Also researchers found out that employees who have high normative commitment stay at the organization because they feel that ethically this is the right thing to do. In a study, Wiener (1982) stated that individual’s internal ethics and organizational culture guide the employees’ normative commitment (Quoted by Handlon, 2009). Continuance commitment is the third component of organizational commitment. Continuance commitment is defined as a need for staying with one organization because of the high costs of turnover. Allen and Meyer state that continuance commitment is created based on two factors: number or amount of investment and the importance of that investment. Employees stay at the organization because they think that probably the costs of turnover are very high (Handlon, 2009). Thus the current research tries to answer this question that is there a relationship between organizational justice and organizational commitment of physical education teachers or not. Methodology The research method was descriptive-correlative. The population included all physical education teachers of Tabriz with the number of 334 individuals; and based on Morgan table 181 individuals randomly participated in this research. The predictor variable was organizational justice and criterion variable was organizational commitment. At the research implementation stage, after providing introductory explanations about the measuring tools and aim of conducting the test, the answering method was fully explained to participants. Regarding the ethical considerations, after obtaining their testimonials, and providing enough information, they were assured that the received information would be only used in this research and they would be protected from all sorts of abuse. The following questionnaires were used for measuring research variables. Organizational Justice Inventory: This inventory was designed by Niehoff and Moorman (1993) and it includes 20 questions which measures three dimensions of organizational justice (distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice) and items are graded based on a 5-degree Likert scale. In a research Nadiri & Tanoa (2010) achieved the validity of the questionnaire through Cronbach alpha; for distributive justice it was 0.91, for procedural justice it was 0.92, for interactional justice it was 0.76 and for overall organizational justice it was 0.94, which indicates acceptable reliability for the questionnaire (Quoted by Etebarian, 2010). Organizational Commitment questionnaire: This questionnaire was designed by Allen & Meyer (1990) and it includes 24 questions by which three dimensions of organizational commitment (affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment) are measured. Items are graded based on a 5-degree Likert scale. In a research Schneider (2003) showed that questions of organizational commitment had desirable validity. Its reliability was equal to 0.81 and generally, it showed acceptable reliability of the questionnaire (Quoted by Dehghanian, 2013). Validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by professors and experts. Reliability of the questionnaires was surveyed by the use of Cronbach alpha and the achieved coefficients were 0.91 and 0.84 respectively for organizational justice and organizational commitment which indicate the desirable reliability of measuring tools. Pearson correlation coefficient was used for data analysis. In all analyses the significance level was p≤0.05. 256 Intl. J. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 4 (5), 255-259, 2015 Results Table 1 shows the mean and standard deviation of research variables. Table 1. Statistical description of research variables. Variable Distributive justice Procedural justice Interactional justice Organizational justice Affective commitment Continuance commitment Normative commitment Organizational commitment No. of Items 5 6 9 20 8 8 8 24 Mean 10.97 13.44 20.62 45.04 12.03 17.25 19.65 48.94 SD 4.28 5.90 8.83 15.60 5.75 6.98 8.84 16.59 Change Range 13 18 24 46 26 25 24 61 Minimum 4 4 6 20 4 4 6 21 Maximum 17 22 30 66 30 29 30 82 Pearson correlation coefficient showed a significant correlation between organizational justice and organizational commitment (r= 0.9, p≤0.05). Also, the correlation between component of procedural justice and organizational commitment was surveyed. The results achieved from Pearson correlation showed that there was a significant correlation between component of procedural justice and affective organizational commitment (r= 0.26). Thus it could be concluded that by increasing the procedural justice the affective organizational commitment increases and by decreasing the procedural justice the affective organizational commitment decreases. Also there was a significant correlation between procedural justice and normative organizational commitment (r= 0.16); which means that by increasing the procedural justice the normative organizational commitment increases and by decreasing the procedural justice the normative organizational commitment decreases; and ultimately, there was a significant correlation between procedural justice and continuance organizational commitment (r= 0.64); which means that by increasing procedural justice the continuance organizational commitment increases and by increasing the procedural justice the continuance organizational commitment decreases (Table 2). Table 2. Correlation between procedural justice and dimensions of commitment. Independent variable Procedural justice Dependent variable Affective organizational commitment Normative organizational commitment Continuance organizational commitment r 0.26* 0.16* 0.64* p 0.000 0.026 0.000 No. of observations 181 181 181 * p≤0.05 Other results showed that there was a significant correlation between component of distributive justice and affective organizational commitment. It could be concluded that by increasing the distributive justice, the affective organizational commitment increases and by decreasing the distributive justice the amount of affective organizational commitment decreases. Also there was a positive and significant correlation between component of distributive justice and normative organizational commitment. It could be said that by increasing the distributive justice the amount of normative organizational commitment increases and by decreasing the distributive justice the normative organizational commitment decreases; and ultimately there was a significant correlation between component of distributive justice and continuance organizational commitment and the correlation coefficient was (r= 0.15); which means that by increasing the distributive justice the amount of continuance organizational commitment increases and by decreasing the distributive justice the amount of continuance organizational commitment decreases (Table 3). Table 3. Results of correlation between two variables of distributive justice and dimensions of organizational commitment. Independent variable Distributive justice Dependent variable Affective organizational commitment Normative organizational commitment Continuance organizational commitment r 0.64* 0.23* 0.15* p 0.000 0.000 0.041 No. of observations 181 181 181 *p≤0.05 Other analyses showed that there was a significant correlation between component of interactional justice and affective organizational commitment; which means that by increasing the interactional justice the amount of affective organizational commitment increases and by decreasing the interactional justice the amount of affective organizational 257 Intl. J. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 4 (5), 255-259, 2015 commitment decreases. Also there was a significant correlation between component of interactional justice and normative organizational commitment. And ultimately, there was a positive and significant correlation between component of interactional justice and continuance organizational commitment; which means that by increasing interactional justice the amount of continuance organizational commitment increases and by decreasing the interactional justice the amount of continuance organizational commitment decreases (Table 4). Table 4. Results of correlation between two variables of interactional justice and dimensions of organizational commitment. Independent variable Interactional justice Dependent variable Affective organizational commitment Normative organizational commitment Continuance organizational commitment r 0.21** 0.88** 0.63* p 0.000 0.000 0.000 No. of observations 181 181 181 * p≤0.05 Discussion and Conclusion The aim of conducting this research was surveying the correlation between dimensions of organizational justice and organizational commitment of physical education teachers of Tabriz. Results showed that there was a positive and significant correlation between all dimensions of organizational justice and all dimensions of organizational commitment. These findings were consistent with research results of Moghimi (2005), Zarifi et al (2011), Moorman (1991), McFarlin & Sweeney (1992), Carash & Spector (2001), Yavuz (2010), Shen et al (2010), Fatt et al (2010), Jennifer (2011) and Ren (2011). Their results showed that there was a positive and significant correlation between components of organizational justice and organizational commitment and its three dimensions. Since the most important and valuable capital of an organization is its human capital and the more attention paid to this valuable capital the more success the organization will have, thus the managers should try to create organizational justice in order to achieve employees’ commitment. The more fair relationships in the workplace the more the probability of development of organizational justice will be. If the workplace is full of injustice and high social injustice, then the development of organizational justice will be harder. Based on these findings it could be said that increasing the organizational justice increases the organizational commitment and decreasing organizational justice decreases the organizational commitment. It is suggested to managers, authorities and experts of physical education in Tabriz to pay attention to the fact that developing and preserving fair behaviors, creating a sense and perception of justice in organization and employees are necessary for increasing the employees’ positive attitudes, commitment, loyalty, motivations for efforts and individual and team performances. The more the amount of employees’ organizational justice the more the effect on the organizational commitment will be and it results in improving the organizational commitment which ultimately results in increasing effectiveness and performance of organizational activities. Thus these results indicate that physical education managers should use the suggested strategies to increase the amount of organizational justice and organizational commitment of employees. Managers could have a significant role in empowering employees, recruiting competent individuals, creating a system of meritocracy, creating job safety, making employees participate in decision makings and helping them develop their capabilities and increasing the organizational justice and improving the employees’ organizational commitment. References Bahramzadeh, Hosseinalizadeh, Yadegari M, 2008. Analysis of organizational justice and organizational commitment of employees of girls guidance schools in education districts of Mashhad, Science-research journal. 8(21). Carash YC, Spector PE, 2001. The role of justice in organizations: A Meta-analysis, Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Process. 86 (2). Chang T, Lin H, 2008. A study on service employees’ customer-oriented behaviors, Journal of American academy of business. 13: 92-98. Dehghanian H, Sabour E, Hojati AR, 2013. Surveying the correlation between components of organizational justice and organizational commitment in an insurance company, Insurance research. 2: 153-180. Eric G, Lambert, Nancy L, Hogan, Marie L, Griffin, 2007. The Impact of Distributive and Procedural Justice on correctional staff, job stress, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, Journal of criminal justice. 35: 644- 656. Etebarian A, Ahmadi Panah, Mehrabadi A, 2010. Correlation between perceived organizational justice and conscientiousness of employees of Islamic Azad University-Khorasgan Branch (Isfahan). Journal of leadership and educational management. 2(12), 23-41. Fatt CK, Khin SEV, Heng NT, 2010. The Impact of Organizational Justice on Employee’s Job Satisfaction, American Journal of Economics and Business Administration. 2 (1): 56-63. 258 Intl. J. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 4 (5), 255-259, 2015 Handlon RL, 2009. The departure of the insurance agent: the impact organizational commitment, organizational justice, and job satisfaction have on intent to leave in the insurance industry, dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree doctor of philosophy, Capella University. Available at: http://proquest.umi.com/login. James B, Deco ink, 2008. The effect of organizational justice, perceived organizational support, and perceived supervisor support on marketing employee`s level of trust, Journal of bushiness research. 695: 2-7 Jennifer Shu-Jen L, Shu-Cheng L, 2011. Moderating effect of organizational climate on the relationship of organizational support and service oriented organizational citizenship behaviors, African Journal of Business Management. 5 (2): 582-95. McFarlin DB, Sweeney PD, 1992. Distributive and procedural justice as predictors of satisfaction with personal and organizational outcome,. Academy of Management Journal. 35: 637-626. Moghimi SM, 2005. OCB, from theory to practice, Cultural journal of management. 3 (11): 19-48. Moorman RH, 1991. Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors: Do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship? Journal of Applied Psychology. 76 (6): 845-55. Pool WL, 2005. Organizational justice as a framework for understanding union management relations in education, Canadian journal of education. 30: 725-748. Ren-Tao M, 2011. Perceived Organizational Support, Job Satisfaction, Task Performance and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in China, Institute of Behavioral and Applied Management. 105-27. Seyed Javadin SR, Farahi MM, Taheri Attar GH, 2008. Recognition of effectiveness of dimensions of organizational justice on different aspects of job satisfaction and organizational satisfaction, Journal of business administration. 1(1). Shen YM, Yuan DH, Zhang H, Yang D, Zhang JF, Zhang QL, 2010. The Impacts of Perceived Organizational Support and Perceived External Prestige on Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Organizational Identification as Mediator and Need for Self-esteem as Moderator, Acta Psychological Sinica. 41 (12): 1215−27. Yaghoubi M, et al., 2009. Correlation between organizational justice, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees of top hospitals of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Journal of health management. 12 (35). Yavuz M, 2010. The effects of teacher’ perception of organizational justice and culture on organizational Commitment African, Journal of Business Management. 4 (5): 695-701. Zarifi F, Yousefi B, Sadeghi S, 2011. Correlation between organizational justice and organizational commitment of experts of Physical Education Organization of Islamic Republic of Iran, Journal of sports science researches. 1(2). 259
© Copyright 2024