Justice and job engagement: The role of senior management trust

• Published date: 01 August 2016
• Date: 01 August 2016
• Author: Kevin W. Mossholder,Stanley G. Harris,Jeffrey J. Haynie
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2082

Justice and job engagement: The role of senior

management trust

JEFFREY J. HAYNIE

1

*, KEVIN W. MOSSHOLDER

2

AND STANLEY G. HARRIS

2

1

Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, Louisiana, U.S.A.

2

Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A.

Summary We examined whether job engagement mediated the effects of organizational justice dimensions on work be-

haviors and attitudes. Considering distributive and procedural justice from a motivational perspective, we pro-

posed that job engagement would mediate these two dimensions’relations with the work outcomes of task

performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and job satisfaction. We also expected this mediation effect

would be magnified when senior management trust (SMT) was high. Our results showed that the simple me-

diation model was supported only for distributive justice. Alternatively, the indirect effect of procedural jus-

tice on work outcomes through job engagement was significant only when SMT was high. Implications of our

findings and areas for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: job engagement; organizational justice; trust; performance; job attitudes

Effective organizational leadership involves motivating employees to contribute to firm goals. A general means by

which senior managers can establish an organizational context that favorably influences employee contributions is

offering equitable outcomes (distributive justice) and enacting fair policies and procedures (procedural justice)

(Colquitt, Greenberg, & Zapata-Phelan, 2005). These justice dimensions have been considered as structural determi-

nants of justice because they focus more on the context in which organizational members interact (Greenberg, 1993).

Often treated under the rubric of organizational justice, distributive and procedural justice have each been argued to

increase employees’efforts to meet work responsibilities and attain organizational goals (e.g., Folger & Konovsky,

1989; Kim & Mauborgne, 1991, 1993). These two forms of justice have been shown to favorably influence job per-

formance and work attitudes (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001).

Although social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) has often been used to explain justice–outcome effects, justice

scholars (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2013) have begun to recognize that these effects may be due as much to motivat-

ing processes as the influence of reciprocity norms and social indebtedness at the heart of social exchange the-

ory. This nascent research stream suggests procedural justice includes intrinsic and relational motives that

promote stronger effort by enhancing positive affect, identity, and cooperative attainment (Blader & Tyler,

2009; van Dijke, De Cremer, Brebels, & van Quaquebeke, 2015; Zapata-Phelan, Colquitt, Scott, & Livingston,

2009). These effects should also extend to distributive justice because organizational policies and procedures

make possible desired outcomes on which distributive justice perceptions are based. Building upon these dynam-

ics, we examined job engagement as a motivational vehicle capable of explaining distributive and procedural

justice effects on performance and attitudes.

Job engagement signifies group or organization identification (Tyler & Blader, 2003) whereby employees invest

physical, cognitive, and emotional energies to meet role expectations (Macey & Schneider, 2008). We argue that

justice stimulates affect and identity, in the form of job engagement, that may not be fully captured by social

exchange reciprocation processes (Blau, 1964; Gouldner, 1960). Instead, employees willingly invest themselves

in their jobs in the presence of positive psychological states (i.e., safety, availability, and meaningfulness; Kahn,

*Correspondence to: Jeffrey J. Haynie, Department of Management, Nicholls State University, P. O. Box 2015, Thibodaux, Louisiana 70310,

U.S.A. E-mail: jeffrey.haynie@nicholls.edu

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 06 March 2015

Revised 03 December 2015, Accepted 07 December 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 889–910 (2016)

Published online 19 January 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2082

Research Article

1990). Fair organizational outcomes and procedures may energize employees to give of themselves, thus establish-

ing relational identities that ultimately facilitate cooperative exchanges (Blader & Tyler, 2009; van Dijke et al.,

2015). In short, we suggest justice may promote feelings and energies leading to job engagement, a notion congruent

with research supporting the positive influence of organizational resources on job engagement states (Crawford,

LePine, & Rich, 2010; Freeney & Fellenz, 2013).

While justice judgments have the ability to energize job engagement states, Colquitt and Greenberg (2003)

suggested that employee sensitivity to justice may be contingent on authority trustworthiness. Collins and Smith

(2006) indicated the broader social context of an organization can affect employee motivation and knowledge

sharing and identified trust as a critical relational mechanism. In many organizations, senior managers are the par-

amount authority responsible for external strategic direction and oversight of internal governance structures that

guide employee work efforts (Hodson, 2004). As such, trust that employees develop in senior managers (senior

management trust, SMT) is partly shaped by experiences employees have with various organizational systems as

well as their broader perceptions about the effectiveness with which senior managers have guided the organization

(Gillespie & Dietz, 2009). From the reliability of work arrangements and the consistency of policies promoting

organizational solidarity, employees draw overall cues as a basis for such institutional-based trust (Bachmann,

2003, 2011; Wittek, 2003).

Employees have limited interactions with senior managers, which means that SMT is likely to be impersonal.

Given the information from which SMT is derived, it should be institutional based (Bachmann, 2003) and descrip-

tive of the organization’s trust environment. Trust assessments derived from organizational-level decisions and ini-

tiatives can act as contexts that alter relationships between employee-level attitudes and behaviors (Fulmer &

Gelfand, 2012). Thus, despite its impersonal, contextual grounding, we argue SMT could play an important function

in moderating the relations of distributive and procedural justice with job engagement. Dirks and Ferrin (2001) of-

fered that trust can affect how employees evaluate the future and their willingness to invest effort in bettering the

organization. In line with Dirks and Ferrin’s anticipation proposition, employees with higher SMT could be more

motivated by past positive organizational experiences (e.g., fair outcomes and procedures) in comparison with em-

ployees having lower SMT. Trust can facilitate potent mobilizing effects (McEvily, Perrone, & Zaheer, 2003),

allowing employees to feel their efforts will benefit the organization collectively and assuring employees about

the organization’s viability (Shapiro, 1987).

Employees need to trust those charged with enacting fair outcomes, policies, and procedures to become fully en-

gaged (Macey & Schneider, 2008). Senior managers generate trust by credibly guiding the firm and displaying abil-

ity, benevolence, and integrity (trustworthiness factors; Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995) in managing employees.

When employees evaluate these factors favorably, they are more likely to develop SMT perceptions that promote

confidence in the system administered by these senior managers (Shapiro, 1987). In essence, high SMT helps re-

move uncertainty surrounding the system, so employees can better appreciate the behavioral guidance set forth by

fair organizational practices. This circumstance allows the impact of justice to be more easily converted into job

engagement.

Our proposed theoretical model is displayed in Figure 1. By examining the combined influence of justice, SMT,

and job engagement on job performance and attitudes, we make two main contributions. First, we examine whether

job engagement provides an agentic path through which organizational justice influences work outcomes. Employee

engagement (Christian, Garza, & Slaughter, 2011) has been shown to lead to higher job-related effort (i.e., task per-

formance) as well as supplying increased employee assistance that contributes to the overall work context (i.e.,

organizational citizenship behavior (OCB); Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2006). Additionally, engaged em-

ployees view work as a more fulfilling experience, which may be manifested in terms of higher job satisfaction

(Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Rather than rest solely on the dynamics of social exchange indebtedness, we suggest

that distributive and procedural justice influence work behavior and attitudes through affect-related and identity-

related motivation embodied by job engagement. Second, we investigate whether SMT magnifies the effect of orga-

nizational justice on employees’willingness to fully invest in their work. SMT is an important global indicator of the

faith employees have in senior managers despite their greater hierarchical position and status (Six & Sorge, 2008).

890 J. J. HAYNIE ET AL.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 889–910 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job