Organizational justice and employee engagement

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore whether perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional justice are related to employee engagement, as an extension of the antecedents-consequences model of Saks (2006), and to examine the possibility of inter-relationships between these three dimensions of justice. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 210 employees of public sector banks in India covered measures of job and organization engagement (OE) proposed by Saks (2006) and the scale on distributive, procedural and interactional justice developed by Niehoff and Moorman (1993). The relationships between justice perceptions and engagement were analysed using correlations and hierarchical regression analysis. Findings – Results show that distributive, procedural and interactional are inter-related with each other. Further, distributive and interactional justice take precedence over procedural justice in determining job engagement, while distributive justice plays the most important role in determining OE, followed by procedural and interactional justice. Practical implications – By highlighting the inter-relationships among the three dimensions of justice, this study offers useful insights into the underlying processes through which job and OE can be improved through these inter-relationships. Findings also highlight the application of concepts like relative deprivation in Indian public sector banks to increase the engagement levels of their employees. Originality/value – This paper adds to the very small number of studies that have investigated the role of interactional justice in enhancing job and OEs. It has also established inter-relationships between the three dimensions of organizational justice and their individual roles in determining job and OEs.