The Organizational Justice-Job Engagement Relationship: How Social Exchange and Identity Explain This Effect

• Published in: Journal of managerial issues Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 28 - 45
• Main Authors: Haynie, Jeffrey J., Flynn, C. Brian, Baur, John E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pittsburg State University 22.03.2019; Pittsburg State University - Department of Economics
• Subjects: Analysis; Employee motivation; Engagement (Philosophy); Ethical aspects; Human resource management; Leadership; Organizations; Social aspects; Social identity
• ISSN: 1045-3695; 2328-7470

Job engagement is positively related to many beneficial workplace outcomes. Of the antecedents to employee engagement, distributive and procedural justice have garnered a great deal of attention. In seeking to explain the mechanisms through which organizational justice can impact employee job engagement, two theoretical approaches have largely been used – social exchange and social identity theories. While useful in extending the understanding of the relationship between organizational justice and job engagement, each approach has been advanced independently which has led to questions whether they uniquely mediate the focal relationship. To address this issue, the current research examines the ordering of a dual-mediated process through which just treatment helps to form the social exchange mechanisms assisting in the development of organizationally-related social identities known to influence employee job engagement. Using perceived organizational support and organizational identification as indicators of social exchange and identity respectively, these relationships are replicated across two samples and suggest that they exert indirect effects sequentially on the relationships of distributive and procedural justice with job engagement.