Organizational Justice, Job Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Higher Education Institutions: A Research Proposition in Vietnam

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are place contributing to the intellectual advancement of the nation, quality human resource, and to a number of socio-economic improvements for society and organizations. Despite facilitators and staffs are the bare-bone of HEIs, there is a scarcity of research, both conceptual and empirical, focusing on their organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). To attempt to fill this gap, this article develops a conceptual model of OCB under influencing of organizational justice and job satisfaction. The prospective respondents were chosen randomly from HEIs (public and private). Individuals have been employed at least one year and above will be the unit of analysis in which the experimental test of the proposed model will be conducted. The results suggest that organizational citizenship behavior is one of the most important factor influence the organizational performance. Furthermore, the performance of HEIs does not affect only the national human resources, but also impact on national economy. In this context, a conceptual framework is proposed to study the determinants of organizational citizenship behavior in the form of organizational justice and job satisfaction. Additionally, the ultimate benefits of OCB through perceived organizational justice with job satisfaction as mediator is enlightened. Finally, the authors discuss the managerial implications of their research.

1. Introduction

Human resource (HR) is one of the most valuable properties for organizations. Not like other resources, HR really is the core source of any organizations. Many organizations have been using HR as their core competencies. In any organization, the superior goal is improving its performance, particular, in HEIs, the quality of HR is the most influence factor affects the performance or quality of students. It is affected by organizational policies and culture. Human resources are the main key effect on organizational performance (Becker & Gerhart, 1996). Education systems, in particular higher education systems, not only hold an important role in education systems, but also in economy of every country. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are place contributing to the intellectual advancement of the nation, quality human resource, and to a number of socio-economic improvements for society and organizations. Quality of graduated students could be considered as the most important performance indicator of HEIs.

The World Bank and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) jointly commissioned a study on the future of higher education in developing countries. The findings suggested that faculty members in developing countries were less motivated, rewarded poorly and under qualified in comparison to academic staff in developed economies. Academics of developing countries are faced with these critical issues and ultimately this leads to less commitment and as a result an increase in the intention to leave. Lee (2004) confirmed these findings and suggested that teachers are offered fewer financial incentives, leading to an absence of commitment and higher turnover.

Organ (1988) suggested that organizations should consider role of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) as important factor for increasing the spontaneous, innovative and cooperative attitudes in a way to respond to the constantly changing demands aiming to promote efficiency. Organ showed that job satisfaction is predictor of the "good citizen". He also indicated that workers perceive job satisfaction in terms of highly individualized, instinctive evaluations of fairness in their workplace. Chelagat, Chepkwony, and Kemboi (2015) agreed that OCB have a positive and significant effect on employee performance. Furthermore, Turnipseed and Rassuli (2005) found that manager’s benefit from positive OCB as well as employees.

2. Conceptual Framework and Hypotheses Development

This study will propose a comprehensive model that encompasses how organization justice factors affect employee’s job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior. Based on the conceptual model and literature review, seven hypotheses have been articulated to describe the impact of organizational justice on employee’s job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior.

2.1. Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Batman and Organ (1983) were first introduced the term organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) to science world. OCB has been thought as personal and arbitrary behaviors which were not correctly defined by the formal remuneration system of organization and generally increased organization’s performance. Arbitrary means that this behavior is not among the occupational duties or role behaviors and it is not among the employees’ recruitment commitment and it is not compulsory for employees to do it (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). Since OCB presented, many research studies have conducted with the five-factor conceptualization suggested by Organ (1988). These factors are: altruism (helping specific others); civic virtue (keeping up with important matters within the organization); conscientiousness (compliance with norms); courtesy (consulting others before taking action); and sportsmanship (not complaining about trivial matters). Although a great deal has suggested to be condensed in few studies (MacKenzie, Podsakoff, & Fetter, 1991) and be supported for a three-factor model of OCB:“conscientiousness” is removed, and “altruism” and “courtesy” are combined to form a single “helping” dimension (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994), the original five dimensions of OCB still the objectives for researching of behavior scientists.

The majority of the research studies conducted and concluded that OCB as behaviors that have positive impact on the organizations productivity and effectiveness (Turnipseed & Rassuli, 2005; Koster & Sanders, 2006). Hence, it is necessary to have a research on OCB and factors influence it, and, the present study concentrates on OCB as consequences of organizational justice (Yadav, 2016).

2.2. Organization Justice

Organizational justice is the employees’ perception of the fairness with which they have been treated by an organization (Greenberg & Colquitt, 2006). Organizational justice can be interpreted as a virtue allowing for mutual consideration and involving both relationships with others and outcomes that affect others’ physical, psychological and social welfare (Cropanzano, Rupp, Mohler, & Schminke, 2001). The components of organizational justice have often been divided into three aspects: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice (Leventhal, 1980; Bies & Moag, 1986; Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, & Taylor, 2000; Cropanzano Rupp, Mohler, & Schminke, 2001; Iqbal, 2013). Leventhal (1980) established some core attributes that make procedures justice. A justice process is one that is applied consistently to all, free of bias, accurate, representative of relevant stakeholders, correctable and consistent with ethical norms. Cropanzano (2007) agrees with core attributes that make procedures justice suggested by Leventhal (1976), procedural justice refers to the means by which outcomes are allocated, but not specifically to the outcomes themselves.

Bies and Moag (1986) introduced the idea of interactional justice. Originally, interactional justice identified on the basic of a study of expectations for interpersonal treatment during recruitment. These included justification (explaining the basis for decisions), truthfulness (an authority figure being candid and not engaging in deception), authority (being polite rather than rude), and propriety (refraining from improper remarks or prejudicial statements (Colquitt, 2001). Awang and Ahmad (2015), on their study of impact of organizational justice on OCB found that distributive justice and interactional justice are significant in impact on OCB with the index .19 and .25, consecutively.

2.3. Relationships between Organization Justice and Employee’s Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction can be generally defined as an employee's attitude towards his/her job or how people feel about their jobs and different aspects of their jobs (Brief, 1998; Spector, 1997) and the extent to which employees like their work (Ellickson & Logsdon, 2002). Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, and Ng (2001) reported that distributive justice was an important predictor of job satisfaction. Furthermore, Masterson, Lewis, Goldman and Taylor (2000) found procedural justice to be a stronger predictor of job satisfaction than interactional justice. Moreover, the significant positive relationship between job satisfaction and organizational justice was found by Zainalipour, Fini, and Mirkamali (2010). Distributive justice and interactional justice positively correlated with four facets of job satisfaction namely, supervision, co-worker, pay and promotion and they did not have correlation with nature of job as a facet of job satisfaction. Thus, based on these previous studies, we propose that:

Proposition 1: Distributive justice is positively related with job satisfaction.

Proposition 2: Procedural justice is positively related with employee’s job satisfaction.

Proposition 3: Interactional justice is positively related with employee’s job satisfaction.

2.4. Relationships between Organization Justice and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

The organizational citizenship behavior has not strongly impact on individual performance, but also on organizations productivity and effectiveness (Turnipseed & Rassuli, 2005). Organ and Ryan (1995) found that organizational citizenship behavior is largely encouraged by perceived organizational justice. Moon, Mayer, Kamdar, and Takeuci (2008) stated that when individual is given fair rewards compared with what they have contributed, it is a sign that abilities are valued by the organization. Several researchers have argued that distributive justice has a positive impact on OCB (Yaghoubi, Afshar, & Javadi, 2012; Hemdi, Razali, Rashid, & Nordin, 2012). With the same perspective, Lambert and Hogan (2013) find out that relationship between procedural justice and OCB is more intensive. In addition, Zeinabadi and Salehi (2011) in their study concluded that when academic staff sees certain procedures are fair, although they are not directly affected, they will respect as members of the organization. Furthermore, Awang and Ahmad (2015) concluded that interactional justice has significant influence on OCB. The results consistency with DiPaola and Hoy (2004), the informal praise may be the best commendation for them to exhibit OCB. So, based on literature review, we hypothesize:

Proposition 4: Distributive justice is positively related with OCB.

Proposition 5: Procedural justice is positively related with OCB.

Proposition 6: Interactional justice is positively related with OCB.

2.5. Relationships between Employee’s Job Satisfaction and OCB

George and Jones (2012) conducted an empirical investigation of the satisfaction and OCB relationship and found that satisfied employees have higher OCB because they want to reciprocate to the organization whose already treat them well. This results generally consistently with previous research (Wagner & Hollenbeck, 2010). This notion has been strengthen by many studies (Foote & Tang (2008); Intaraprasong (2012); Talachi, Gorji, & Boerhannoeddin, 2014). Recently, Prasetio, Yuniarsih, and Ahman (2017) have found that job satisfaction has positive and significant effect on OCB with the correlation of .334. So we propose that:

Proposition 7: Employee’s job satisfaction is positively related with OCB.

3. Research Methodology

Generally, there are many conceptual research frameworks available on organizational justice, employee’s job satisfaction, and OCB.

3.1. Measurement Issues

To measure the various constructs, validated items were adapted from prior studies and revalidated for investigate the conceptual framework. All the focal constructs of the model were measured using reflective constructs that were adapted from literature and designed by using a seven-point Likert scale to facilitate measurement, with a rating scale from (1) “strongly disagree” to (7) “strongly agree.”

The following briefly describes the five variables should be used in the models. First, the measurement for distributive justice is drawn from a prior study, which measured the employee’s perceived of equality, equity, and needs (be treated like all other people, like some other people, and like no other person). Six survey items were used to measure employees perceived on distributive justice are adapted from the studies of Leventhal (1976) and Cropanzano, Bowen and Gilliland (2007). Second, the procedural justice is defined as appropriateness of the allocation process such as consistency, lack of bias, accuracy, representation of all concerned, correction, and ethics of organization procedures, the seven items measurement for this construct is adapted from adapted from Thibaut and Walker (1975), and Leventhal (1980) studies. The third variable uses the six items measurement adapted from Bies and Moag (1986), Shapiro and Bies (1994) studies, which investigated appropriateness of the treatment employee receives from authority person for interactional justice. The fourth variable uses the five items measurement adapted from Smith, Kendall and Hulin (1969) study, which reflects employee’s job satiation (Brief, 1998). Finally, the OCB is generated from the ten items measurement for this construct was adapted from prior studies of Smith, Organ and Near (1983), Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman and Fetter (1990), and Williams and Anderson (1991).

3.2. Unit of Analysis

The prospective respondents were chosen randomly from HEIs (public and private). Individuals has been employed at least one year and above will be the unit of analysis. The restriction on duration of employment is necessary for participant understand clarify about HEI, which him or her has worked in which the experimental test of the proposed model will be conducted.

3.3. Statistical Data Analysis

To achieve the objectives of the study, the structural equation modeling (SEM), particular, a partial least square method (PLS) is suitable since this techniques permits the simultaneous estimation of multiple equations and performs factor analysis including regression analysis all in one step (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2014). The research should follow a two steps approach. First, the measurement model is estimated based on the confirmatory factor analysis. Second, the researchers analyze the structural model and estimate the path coefficients, both for the direct as well as for the mediated effects.

4. Conclusion

Organizational citizenship behavior is one of the most important factor influence the organizational performance. Furthermore, the performance of HEIs does not affect only the national human resources, but also impact on national economy. In this context, a conceptual framework is proposed to study the determinants of organizational citizenship behavior in the form of organizational justice and job satisfaction. Additionally, the ultimate benefits of OCB through perceived organizational justice with job satisfaction as mediator is enlightened.