The relationship between organizational justice, employee absenteeism, and role stress

A wide range of research has explored organizational outcomes of employee fairness perceptions. Results from previous studies have revealed correlations between organizational justice and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and productivity (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). However, there is limited research that correlates employee wellness characteristics such as role stress levels and absenteeism rates with organizational justice. Therefore, the current study examined the relationship between organizational justice, employee role stress levels, and absenteeism rates. It was hypothesized that, as levels of organizational justice increased, role stress and absenteeism would decrease.; Employees from different organizations across industries were used to test the hypotheses in this study. Participants were surveyed online. Two hundred thirty-three subjects were included in the final data set.; Results supported Greenberg's (1993) four component taxonomy of organizational justice. As predicted, there was a strong, significant, negative relationship between the social determinants of organizational justice and role stress. Counter to predictions, absenteeism was not related to organizational justice or to its subcomponents of distributive or procedural justices. Furthermore, no gender differences in role stress were detected for employees who perceived distributive injustice.; This study shed light on an important organizational outcome variable, role stress, associated with organizational justice. Research shows that stress in the workplace is increasingly becoming an epidemic (Dobreva-Martinova et al., 2002). Furthermore, previous research has linked role stress to employee burnout (Rowe, 2000). Therefore, the results of the current study have important organizational implications in that high perceptions of the social determinants of organizational justice were strongly related to lower role stress levels.; No relationship was found between role stress and absenteeism, indicating that higher role stress levels were not linked to the expected increased absenteeism rates. This finding is also important for organizations. Perhaps the stress that employees experience in the workplace manifests in decreased productivity, rather than in increased absenteeism.; It would be both interesting and practical to conduct additional research further exploring the relationship between organizational justice, role stress, productivity, and other wellness issues such as employee burnout, physical symptoms, and mental functioning.