جامعه شناسی کاربردی (Jun 2015)
The Relationship between Participation in Decision Making, and Supervisor\\\'s Perceived Support with Organizational Citizenship Behaviors among Employees, with Emphasis on the Mediating Role of Procedural and Perceived Distributive Justices
Abstract
Introduction Among different organizational variables, social exchange theory has had an effective role in explaining and perceiving organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and organizational justice. Exchange of justice is an important aspect of social exchange theory. A number of studies have investigated the relationship between perceived organizational justice and employees' attitudes. However, the issue that is examined in organizational justice and OCB is how employees should be treated such that they perceive the existence of justice in the organization. This study aimed at examining a proposed model based on the mediating role of procedural and perceived distributive justices in the relationship between supervisor's perceived support and participation in decision making with organizational citizenship behavior Materials & Methods The present study is of relational type. The population of the study include all employees of Agricultural Society of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad in Iran in 2011. From 490 employees, 120 were selected based on simple random sampling method. The questionnaires in this study include (1) Participation in decision-making inventory that was invented by Parnel and Bell (2001), (2) Supervisor's support inventory that was made by Eisenberger et al. (1986), (3) Organizational citizenship behavior questionnaire which was invented by Smith et al. (1983), (4) Distributive Justice Inventory as was made by Colquitt (2001), and (5) Procedural Justice Inventory as was made by Niehoff and Moorman (1993). Also, the analysis of the data started with preliminary analysis (zero-order Pearson correlations) to gain a basic insight of data. Then, more sophisticated analyzes were performed to assess the fitness of the proposed model, all of which were performed by Structural equation modeling (SEM) using maximum likelihood estimation of AMOS software, 16th version (Arbuckle, 1997). In order to determine that whether the proposed model fit the data, a combination of fitness parameters were used. To investigate the indirect (intermediate) effects in the proposed model, Baron and Kennyʼs (1986) method was used and to determine its significance, Sobelʼs (1982) test was used. Discussion of Results & Conclusions The results of the study showed that the perception of justice (both procedural and distributive) has significant effects on the participation of employees in decision-making and consequently showing organizational citizenship behavior. As Kinicki and Kreitner (2006) claimed, justice in the organization shows employees' perceptions of fair treatment in the working environment and it is a factor which is made on the basis of the working conditions (Greenberg & Colquitt, 2005). When employees' opinions are listened to and they are included in decision making processes, they think that justice exists in the organization and rewards and facilities are distributed justly. Leventhal (1980) believes that fair procedures are characterized by the following properties: distribution of facilities should be unbiased and equal for all people over time, it should be carried out based on accurate information, it should be correctable, and it should be based on moral and ethical norms; Thus for their participation in decision-making, employees should be informed about the organization's information and they should have equal opportunity to express their opinions and implicit values and norms such as fairness and consistency in the allocation of benefits and resources. The findings of this study are in line with the studies mentioned in the literature (Muhammad, 2004; Zhang, Lee & Zou, 2010), which show the importance of the mediating role of perceived organizational support in the organization's inputs and outputs (including OCB, job satisfaction, organizational commitment). The results of this study and other attempts, which have been carried out with regard to organizational justice theory, point to the significance of this mediating variable as an important motivational instrument in organizational behaviors and officials and managers should consider it. Based on organizational justice theory, it can be predicted that staff react against the presence or absence of organizational justice in the workplace. One of these reactions is the increase or decrease in the output data; in that when staff observes that the justice does not exist in the organization, they get negative stress and thus in order to reduce such stress they try to decrease their participation and inputs in the organization. In such cases, their organizational citizenship behavior might decrease. Contrariwise, if staff feel that organizational justice exist in the workplace, they become motivated to increase their participation and inputs in the organization by helping behaviors such as organizational citizenship behavior. On the other hand, in the proposed model it was hypothesized that if employees feel that they are under the support of their supervisors, they show more OCB perceiving procedural and distributive justice; this hypothesis, however, has not been confirmed and the research hypothesis based on the mediating role of justice in the relationship between supervisor's perceived support and OCB was rejected. The reason might be explained by the fact that when employees consider their supervisor as one who has his own supervisor so he has no role in distributing rewards and allocating resources. The organizational norms are determined in the way that only senior managers make decisions and supervisors and junior officials have no freedom of action. This finding is in disagreement with the findings of a number of previous studies. The reason for such disagreement can be found in different working atmospheres in various organizations. In some organizations, managers give their supervisors freedom of action in decision-making procedures and processes and allow them to determine the way rewards should be distributed among staff. Though, in some other organizations supervisors might not have such freedom and they might have only higher positions in terms of rank but are similar with their subordinates in terms of power over action. In such organizations, even if staff perceive their supervisor's support, they might not have a clear understanding of justice in their organizations and if they show behaviors beyond the call of duty and OCB, it is because of the respect they have toward supportive behaviors of their supervisors, not because of the perceived justice and this lends further support to Greenberg and Colquitt' theory (2005), who claimed that the perception of justice in the organization is based on the working environment and the atmosphere of the organization .
