Systemic justice and burnout: A multilevel model

• Author: David L. Patient,Alain Marchand,Victor Y. Haines
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12166
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Systemic justice and burnout: A multilevel model

Victor Y. Haines III

1

|David L. Patient

2

|Alain Marchand

1

1

School of Industrial Relations, University of

Montreal, Canada

2

Católica‐Lisbon School of Business and

Economics, Catholic University of Portugal,

Lisbon, Portugal

Correspondence

Victor Y. Haines III, School of Industrial

Relations, University of Montreal, P.O. Box

6128, Station Centre‐Ville, Montréal, Québec

H3C 3J7, Canada.

Email: victor.haines@umontreal.ca

Funding information

Fonds de recherche du Québec‐Santé, Grant/

Award Number: 13928; Canadian Institutes of

Health Research, Grant/Award Number:

200607MHF‐164381‐MHF‐CFCA‐155960

Abstract

With the aim of extending organisational justice research to

embrace significant and enduring aspects of the workplace context,

this study examines organisational culture and human resource

management (HRM) as constitutive dimensions of systemic justice

and relates them to employee health. Bridging organisational justice,

HRM, organisational culture, and occupational health research, we

advance and test a multilevel model relating systemic justice to

burnout. Data collected from 60 organisations; 89 employee

groups; and 1,976 employees provide support for the hypothesised

relationships between justice‐oriented culture, in terms of

organisational values and group culture, and justice‐oriented HRM.

In turn, justice‐oriented HRM related directly to employee burnout

and indirectly through employee perceived job control and supervi-

sor social support.

KEYWORDS

burnout, human resource management, job control, organisational

culture, organisational justice; systemic justice, supervisor social

support

1|INTRODUCTION

Research on organisational justice over the past five decades has tended to look at specific dimensions, starting with

distributive justice and then incorporating procedural justice and interactional justice in subsequent waves of

investigation (Colquitt, Greenberg, & Zapata‐Phelan, 2005). Numerous studies have thus associated employee

perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interpersonal fairness to commitment, decision acceptance, and

satisfaction (Cohen‐Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001) as well as employee

health and well‐being (e.g., Elovainio, Kivimäki, & Vehtera, 2002; Liljegren, & Ekberg, 2009). Recently, however,

scholars have suggested that perceptions regarding specific justice facets might not capture the depth and richness

of justice. Rather, employees might make more holistic judgments regarding the fairness of an organisation or person

(Greenberg, 2001; Lind, 2001), termed overall justice (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009). As with specific dimensions of

justice, however, these overall evaluations of justice have been examined as individual‐level employee perceptions

or, more recently, at the small group level (Li & Cropanzano, 2009). Justice as an enduring cultural and structural

attribute of an organisation has received little research attention.

Received: 17 July 2015 Revised: 20 June 2017 Accepted: 13 July 2017

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12166

92 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Hum Resour Manag J. 2018;28:92–111.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj

The aim of this study is to address justice as an organisational‐level phenomenon. Rather than draw from the

event paradigm, which focuses on specific instances of unfairness (e.g., performance evaluations), this study takes

the entity perspective (cf. Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001). Rather than investigate specific justice‐related

events and processes that cycle faster, such as specific layoff or promotion decisions, this study therefore addresses

deeper, organisation‐wide aspects of justice that cycle slowly. That is, we begin to investigate the organisation itself as

a fair system (Beugre & Baron, 2001; Sheppard, Lewicki, & Minton, 1992) that reflects a justice orientation through its

culture and human resource management (HRM) practices (Figure 1).

To describe or evaluate an organisation in terms of a fundamental emergent characteristic is not uncommon.

Argyris and Schön (1978) introduced the learning organisation, and organisations have been represented as virtuous

(Cameron, 2003) and forgiving (Fehr & Gelfand, 2012). Sheppard et al. (1992) coined the term systemic justice to refer

to the overall fairness of the work organisation, and Greenberg (1996) used the same term in reference to justice

accomplished through structuring the work context. Despite these early insights, systemic justice has rarely been

operationalised or empirically related to meaningful outcomes. Systemic justice is likely to be manifested in different

ways, including organisational values and culture, which in turn are expected to be reflected in HRM practices.

Systemic justice involves looking at the organisation at a level higher than the individual and examining specific values,

beliefs, and practices that have general and ongoing applicability.

There has been increasing interest in the impact organisational justice and HRM systems can have on employees'

physical and psychological health (Elovainio, Heponiemi, Sinervo, & Magnavita, 2010; Robbins, Ford, & Tetrick, 2012).

Experiencing unfair treatment or procedure is a specific stressor that can threaten employee perceptions of their

social standing and full membership within a group (Brockner, Tyler, & Cooper‐Schneider, 1992; Tyler & Lind,

1992). Employee perceptions of unfairness can impact self‐rated health status (Elovainio et al., 2002), sickness

absence (Head et al., 2007), and burnout (Liljegren & Ekberg, 2009). In our cross‐level model, we focus on burnout

as an outcome of systemic injustice, not only because it is an important facet of employee well‐being but also because

of its effect on turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and organisational commitment (Alarcon, 2011; Lee & Ashforth,

1996). A growing interest in employee well‐being and health in HRM research (Kroon, van de Voorde, & van

Veldhoven, 2009; Van De Voorde, Paauwe, & Van Veldhoven, 2012; Zhang, Zhu, Dowling, & Bartram, 2013) further

underscores the relevance of burnout as an outcome of considerable practical interest.

Although research has tended to examine the effects on burnout and other health outcomes of individual justice

perceptions, sociocultural climates in the workplace can also directly and indirectly influence important health out-

comes (Siegrist, 2005; Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt‐Glaser, 1996). Given the importance of ongoing and overall

FIGURE 1 Illustration of linkages between systemic justice and burnout

HAINES III ET AL.93

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