The effect of organizational justice on employee performance in the Indian Public Sector Units: the role of organizational identification

Abstract

Purpose

Past studies have proved the effect of justice on performance. However, the findings across studies have been inconsistent and there remains a substantial unexplained variance between the constructs. Therefore, justice researchers urge for further exploration of the underlying mechanism of the relationship by introducing influencers. This study responds to such call of the researchers by testing the influence of organizational identification (OID) on the justice-performance relationship in the context of Indian Public Sector Units (PSUs).

Design/methodology/approach

The study is grounded in the positivism philosophy. The research hypotheses were tested using cross-sectional data gathered using a pre-tested questionnaire. In this study, the authors have used covariance-based structural equation modeling commercial software (AMOS 24.0).

Findings

OID did not mediate the relationship between justice facets and performance. Rather, informational justice, followed by procedural and distributive justice had direct positive influences on performance. OID, however, moderated the procedural justice-performance such that the relationship strengthened at higher levels of OID and the interpersonal justice-performance relationship such that the relationship dampened at higher levels of OID. Interestingly, the relationship between interpersonal justice and performance was insignificant in the absence of the moderator, showcasing the strongest case of moderation.

Originality/value

The paper explores OID as an influencer to justice-performance relationship in Indian PSU context for the very first time, thereby highlighting unique finings. It contributes to the further understanding of the unexplained variance in the justice-performance relationship.

Citation

Pattnaik, S. and Tripathy, S.K. (2023), "The effect of organizational justice on employee performance in the Indian Public Sector Units: the role of organizational identification", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 30 No. 8, pp. 2583-2607. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-08-2021-0508