Perceived Injustice in HRM and Voluntary Turnover Intention: The Role of Organizational Cynicism and Recruitment Path

Given the significant personal and organizational costs associated with voluntary employee turnover, numerous studies have sought to identify its determinants. While prior research has enhanced understanding of how individual and organizational factors shape turnover decisions and how dissatisfactory conditions can be mitigated, fewer studies have examined what occurs when such conditions escalate into organizational cynicism, particularly within the context of human resource management (HRM). This study empirically examines how employees’ perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional injustice in HRM—particularly in pay and promotion decisions—influence their voluntary turnover intentions through the mediating role of organizational cynicism. It also explores whether these relationships differ across recruitment paths, comparing rank-in-person and rank-in-job systems within the South Korean civil service. The results reveal that perceptions of procedural and interactional injustice significantly increase employee cynicism and turnover intention, with cynicism partially mediating these effects. In contrast, distributive injustice did not have a significant influence on either outcome. The proposed moderated mediation involving recruitment path was also unsupported, indicating that the indirect effects of injustice through cynicism are consistent across recruitment systems. Theoretical and practical implications, along with directions for future research, are discussed.