Abstract
Wide range of human behaviors in the context of organizations can be explained by how the workplace perceives distributive, procedural, interactional, and relational fairness. That is why numerous researchers investigated the role of justice perceptions on job satisfaction, withdrawal behaviors, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, and productivity. However, there is a gap in the research arena regarding the role guanxi plays in organizational justice, especially in organizational injustice. Guanxi in organizational injustice, is a concept derived from the concept of network and the concept of nepotism. Network and nepotism (are more taboo and) are common topics of research in the arena organizational studies, whereas in the arena of education and higher education institutions, are still lacking. Guanxi is a form of social capital that aims to amass symbolic capital, and the more powerful one's symbolic capital, the more influential one's standing becomes.
TopIntroduction
Organizations are social systems where human resources are the most important factors for effectiveness and efficiency. Organizations need effective managers and employees to achieve their objectives. Organizations cannot succeed without their personnel’s efforts and commitment (Rad &Yarmohammadian, 2006). Employee job performance and satisfaction are considered key variables that can influence the organization performance. In a highly competitive environment, global business must strive to identify factors that influence the employees’ performance and job satisfaction. One factor is organizational justice, which is based on an individual’s perception of the fairness of treatment received from an organization, and their behavioral reactions to such perceptions (Fernandes & Awamleh, 2006). Employees would be more satisfied when they felt they were rewarded with justice, and employees with higher job satisfaction are more likely to be committed to the organization, with higher retention rates, and tended to have higher productivity (Fatt, Kwai, Wong, & Ngee, 2010). The organizational justice factor in one of three types of organizational citizen behavior (OCB).
Organizational Citizen Behavior (OCB) is one of the most favorite issues of organizational behaviors (Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2006). In the previous decade, it has been regarded as a kind of individual behavior, helping long-term success of the organization (Castro, Armario, & Ruiz, 2004). Organ (1988) recognizes OCB as a conscious and autonomous behavior, leading to organizational productivity. In that case, the personnel go beyond their obligations and voluntarily cooperate and consult with others (Organ et al., 2006). Concerning relatively equal regulations among financial institutes, customer evaluation from the services depends on the qualification, attitudes, experience, and the skills of the personnel behaviors related to the customers affect future service relations. In this respect, over-role activities like OCB play an important role for reaching customer satisfaction and deposit absorption.
Previous researches have focused on the importance of OCB in fulfilling organizational efficiency (Organ et al., 2006). Since recognizing the predictors of OCB, different studies have been done on recognizing those factors (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009). In this regard, various variables like job satisfaction (Lester, 2008), personality (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000; Van Emmerik & Euwema, 2007; Hossam, 2008), leadership style (Podsakoff et al., 2000), organizational commitment (Gautam, Dick, Wanger, Upadhyay, & Davis, 2006) and other variables have been examined, identifying their contribution to OCB. Of their great importance in the changing conditions of today, there exist three types of OCB, organizational justice, psychological empowerment, and job involvement (Menon, 2001). The focus of this chapter will be on organizational justice. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the concept of organizational justice and define the term organization and the term justice. The chapter will also outline the various types of organization justice in relation to organizational justice theory. The chapter will conclude with a case study on the injustice in the foundation of organizational citizenship behavior within a higher education institution.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Procedural Justice: The formal level of the decision-making process associated with these and related outcomes, including the provision of some system of employee complaint or appeal regarding the consequences of first-stage decision-making.
Organization: Is an entity, such as an institution or an association that has a collective goal and is linked to an external environment. As such, organizations are social systems where human resources are the most important factors for effectiveness and efficiency.
Nepotism: By inappropriate pure mutuality or instrumental reciprocity, or even by negative reciprocity. As such, it is favoritism granted to families, relatives, and friends regardless of merit, and it also implies a misuse of relationships between parties.
Organizational Justice: Is based on an individual’s perception of the fairness of treatment received from an organization, and their behavioral reactions to such perceptions.
Organizational Justice Theory: Focuses on how individuals socially construct incidents of justice and injustice.
Interactional Justice: Has been called the social side of justice and focuses on the quality of informal interpersonal interactions in the workplace, especially between supervisors and subordinates.
Network: Refers to a natural human tendency to relate to one another and has also been defined as social capital within an organizational setting.
Distributive Justice: The perceived fairness of reward allocation within an organization, such as their current pay and benefit levels.
Guanxi: The practice of building such networks, is morally neutral but in everyday life, it implies both high moral principles and petty calculations with ethics and tactics coexisting in tension and in harmony—a coexistence expressed in the choreography of guanxi etiquette.
Relational Justice: Explain the social implications of perceived injustice and determines the relations between different social normativities in a responsible way. In particular, relational justice asks legal reasoning to take seriously the public dimension of contract as constituted by its polycontextural relevance in different spheres of autonomy.