Goal Ambiguity and Promotion Fairness in Public Organizations: The Mediating Roles of Training Effectiveness, Performance Feedback, and Job Autonomy

Maintaining fair, performance-oriented human resource management (HRM) systems in the public sector is essential for sustaining high employee and organizational performance. This article examines how organizational goal ambiguity shapes perceptions of promotion fairness. I argue that when goals are difficult to measure, explain, or prioritize, public organizations struggle to implement fair promotion systems because clear, managerially actionable performance criteria are lacking. Specifically, I hypothesize that goal ambiguity undermines perceived promotion fairness through three mechanisms: degrading organizational training programs, reducing the quality of supervisory feedback, and restricting employee autonomy. To test this goal ambiguity-based model of promotion fairness, I analyze data from a large sample of South Korean public sector employees using structural equation modeling. The findings show that goal ambiguity has a direct, negative effect on perceived promotion fairness and that the three proposed mechanisms operate as mediators. This study contributes to the literature by showing how the pervasive phenomenon of goal ambiguity in public organizations can erode HRM systems—fostering cynicism rather than rewarding performance.