Public Officials’ Fairness Perceptions and Organizational Commitment: Testing the Mediating Role of Public Service Values and Interpreting the Findings within an Institutional Legitimacy Framework

Key Points

• Organizational commitment is significantly influenced by perceptions of fairness among public officials.
• Procedural fairness enhances normative legitimacy, creating a pathway to cultural and cognitive legitimacy.
• Distributive fairness directly contributes to organizational commitment, emphasizing its practical significance.
• The findings indicate a need for tailored policy design focusing on the institutionalization of fairness.