| This dissertation studies the interrelationships among perceived justice, selected affective states, and selected behaviors in work organizations. A mail survey was conducted of the employees of a large, southeastern hospital. Employees were asked a number of questions to measure their perceptions of the fairness of organizational processes and outcomes, their job satisfaction and loyalty to the organization, their propensity to seek other employment, and the likelihood of their speaking out in the organization. It was hypothesized that perceived distributive justice would most strongly affect job satisfaction, that perceived procedural justice would most strongly affect loyalty, and that job satisfaction and loyalty would interact to affect the choice of dissatisfied employees to speak out or to leave the organization.;Based on research in the fields of psychology, sociology, and economics a process model of employee perception, affect and behavior was developed. The hypothesized structural relationships were tested using LISREL, a structural equation modeling technique. Some hypotheses were also tested using standard methods of multiple regression and analysis of variance.;The findings of the study support some hypotheses but not others. A number of conclusions and implications were inferred from the findings. First, it was concluded that perceptions of procedural and distributive justice have weak but similar effects on job satisfaction and loyalty, once the effect of the capacity to be heard was removed and evaluated separately. Second, the capacity to be heard was discovered to have a major effect on loyalty, and was found to be the only significant determinant of the propensity to use voice (i.e., to speak out). Third, job quality was found to be the strongest determinant of job satisfaction, and loyalty was found to be a major deterrent to turnover. Finally, the data suggest that structural variables (job quality and employee participation) were more significant determinants of employee attitudes (and, through them, behaviors) than justice perceptions. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings were discussed, as were opportunities for future research. |
