Elsevier

Journal of Business Research

Volume 63, Issue 12, December 2010, Pages 1349-1355
Journal of Business Research

The effect of organizational justice, perceived organizational support, and perceived supervisor support on marketing employees' level of trust

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2010.01.003Get rights and content

Abstract

For more than four decades, research has investigated the relationship between perceptions of organizational justice and employees' work attitudes. This study used two data sets to examine how perceptions of organizational justice influence marketing employees' perceived support and trust. Specifically, this study examines the role of perceived support as a mediator between organizational justice and trust. The results indicate that in Study 1 perceived organizational support (POS) serves as a mediator between procedural justice and organizational trust. Interactional justice is both a direct and indirect predictor of supervisory trust through perceived supervisor support (PSS). Distributive justice is related indirectly to organizational trust through PSS and directly to organizational trust. In contrast to the results in Study 1, distributive justice is an antecedent to both POS and PSS while procedural justice is related directly to organizational trust.

Introduction

Social exchange theory is one of the most important paradigms for comprehending employees' attitudes. It is an important part of sociology (Blau, 1964) and social psychology (Homans, 1958, Thibaut and Kelley, 1959) and comprises a basis for theories in organizational behavior such as leader-member exchange (LMX) (Graen and Cashman, 1975, Gerstner and Day, 1997, Liden and Graen, 1980), transformational leadership (Bass, 1985, Judge and Piccolo, 2004), organizational justice (Adams, 1965, Bies and Moag, 1986, Folger and Greenberg, 1985) and trust (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002). The reason that social exchange theory is a dominant framework for various theories is that it is used to explain a variety of employees' work attitudes (Colquitt, 2001, Dirks and Ferrin, 2002, Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002, Richard et al., 2009).

Social exchange involves two important facets — trust and fairness. Because fair exchange is an important aspect of social exchange theory, research has investigated the relationship between perceptions of organizational justice (distributive, interactional, and procedural) and employees' work attitudes (see Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001, Colquitt et al., 2001 for literature reviews). In addition to fairness, trust is an important aspect of social exchange (Blau, 1964). Trust is gained through the reciprocal interactions of the parties involved in the relationship (Homans, 1958) and is a key element of social exchanges. Trust and organizational justice are linked (Aryee et al., 2002). Fair treatment will enhance the social exchange relationship and, thus, will increase the level of trust between the two parties. When employees perceive they have been treated fairly in the allocation of rewards (distributive justice), given a voice in the evaluation process (procedural justice) and perceive that they are receiving fair interpersonal treatment from management (interactional justice), a level of trust will develop between superior and subordinate leading to positive outcomes.

This research has four purposes. First, although trust is an important link between organizational justice and employees' work attitudes (Blau, 1964), sparse research exists testing this relationship. Thus, one of the purposes of this research is to examine how perceptions of organizational justice influence employees' level of trust.

Second, only a few studies have analyzed all three forms of organizational justice in a single study (e.g. Aryee et al., 2002, Camerman et al., 2007, Roch and Shanock, 2006). However, empirical research shows that all three types of organizational justice are important in predicting employees' attitudes (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001, Colquitt et al., 2001). In order to fully understand the social exchange process all three forms of justice need to be included.

Third, although trust is an integral part of social exchange theory and is linked to organizational justice (Moorman et al., 1998), most research has examined only trust in the supervisor and not organizational trust (Konovsky and Pugh, 1994, Pillai et al., 1999). However, Whitener (1997) proposes that trust can develop between the employee and both the supervisor and the organization. Recent research indicates that organizational justice is related highly to both trust in the direct leader and trust in the organization (Aryee et al., 2002, Dirks and Ferrin, 2002, Stinglhamber et al., 2006). This study expands the existing literature by examining the relationship between organizational justice and both organizational trust and supervisory trust. By analyzing both facets of trust, a more meaningful understanding in how fairness perceptions influence work outcomes can be achieved.

Fourth, this study makes an additional contribution by expanding on prior research examining the relationship between organizational justice and trust by analyzing the role of perceived support in the justice-trust linkage. Research indicates that perceived organizational support (POS) is correlated with organizational justice and trust (Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002, Dirks and Ferrin, 2002). Most prior research has investigated the relationship between perceived support and organizational justice, but trust was not included as part of the analysis. In addition, since these variables are highly correlated, the fact that to our knowledge only one study (Stinglhamber et al., 2006) has included all three variables (justice, perceived support, and trust) in a single model is surprising and indicates the need for further research. This study will extend prior research by testing a model that investigates the role of perceived support as a mediator between justice and trust. But, unlike previous research, all three forms of organizational justice will be included along with both organizational trust and supervisory trust when examining how perceived support mediates this relationship.

The focus of this study is limited to investigating the relationship among organizational justice, trust, and perceived support. However, other research has shown that these variables are antecedents to employees' job satisfaction (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002, Valentine et al., 2006), organizational commitment (Baker et al., 2006, DeConinck and Bachmann, 2005, Riggle et al., 2009), sales performance (Pappas and Flaherty, 2008), turnover intentions, and turnover (Brashear, 2005) (Aryee et al., 2002, Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002). Thus, understanding the relationship among these variables can provide important information for organizations to better understand various outcomes. The hypothesized model appears in Fig. 1. Support for the hypothesized relationships appears in the literature review below.

Section snippets

Social exchange theory

Research conducted by sociologists (Blau, 1964, Homans, 1958) and social psychologists (Thibaut and Kelley, 1959) was the foundation of social exchange theory. Much of the theory used to explain interactional and organizational justice, perceived support, and trust derived from social exchange theory (Blau, 1964). According to Blau (1964), social exchange is “the voluntary actions of individuals that are motivated by the returns they are expected to bring and typically do in fact bring from

Method

To test the models, two data sets were used. The first data set was used to evaluate the fit of the model developed earlier. The best-fitting model from study one was then examined with a second data set in an effort to validate its usefulness. As has typically been used in marketing research studies (e.g., DeConinck and Stilwell, 2004, Vitell et al., 2003), two convenience samples were used to analyze the hypothesized model.

Confirmatory factor analysis model

The correlations, means, and standard deviations for Study 1 appear in Table 1. The first step in analyzing the data was to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the variables. With the exception of the GFI and AGFI fit indices, the results of the CFA indicated a very good model fit (χ2 = 940.04, df = 681, p = .00, GFI = .83, AGFI = .80, NFI = .96, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .041, CI = .034–.047).

Structural model

The next step in analyzing the data was to test the hypothesized model. The results indicated a very good fit by

Sample characteristics and procedure

The same procedures that were used in Study 1 were used in Study 2 to collect the data. Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of 1000 marketing managers whose names were obtained from the same company from which the list of advertising managers was obtained. None of subjects were part of the sample pool used in study one. Questionnaires were received from 248 managers. Two questionnaires were deleted due to missing data. The characteristics of the sample were as follows: the mean age

Results for Study 2

The results of the measurement model indicated a good fit by most of the indices (χ2 = 1,041.04, df = 681, p = .00, GFI = .82, AGFI = .80, NFI = .95, CFI = .97, RMSEA = .046, CI = .041–.052). Also, all of the indicator variables loaded significantly on the hypothesized factor. The best-fitting model in study one was tested using the second data set. All of the paths that were significant in study 1 were significant in study 2 (see Fig. 3). In addition, the modification indices indicated that two paths should be

Discussion and implications

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship among organizational justice, perceived support, and trust. The results of this study have several important implications. This study was the first one to include POS, PSS, three components of organizational justice, and both organizational trust and supervisory trust in a model. One data set was used to test the hypothesized relationships while a second data set was used to confirm the results from the first study. Overall, these

Limitations and future research opportunities

This study offers several opportunities for research. Since this study was the first to include three measures of organizational justice, POS, PSS, and trust, future research needs to replicate these findings. The results reported here both confirm and conflict with previous published results. The situation is particularly important regarding distributive justice given its influence on POS and PSS and since it was not included in the Stinglhamber et al. study (2006).

One area for future research

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