Although the study of organizational justice has increased markedly in the past few years, little work has focused on the relationship between justice perceptions and extrarole behaviors. This study examined the relationship between perceptions of fairness and organizational citizenship behaviors in a sample drawn from two firms in the midwestern United States. A theoretical basis for a relationship between fairness and citizenship was drawn from equity theory and other theories of social exchange. Structural equation analysis with LISREL 7 found support for four hypotheses, including support for a relationship between perceptions of procedural justice and four of five citizenship dimensions. Conversely, perceptions of distributive justice failed to influence any dimension of citizenship. Implications for the relationship between procedural justice and citizenship are discussed. In an article assessing the past, present, and future states of research on organizational justice, Greenberg (1990b) suggested that organizational justice research may potentially explain many organizational behavior outcome variables. Organizational justice is the term used to describe the role of fairness as it directly relates to the workplace. Specifically, organizational justice is concerned with the ways in which employees determine if they have been treated fairly in their jobs and the ways in which those determinations influence other work-related variables. Two sources of organizational justice are routinely cited: distributive justice, which describes the fairness of the outcomes an employee receives; and procedural justice, which describes the fairness of the procedures used to determine those outcomes (Folger & Greenberg, 1985). In essence, the belief of researchers who support the value of organizational justice is that if employees believe they are treated fairly, they will be more likely to hold positive attitudes about their work, their work outcomes, and their supervisors. As evidence for the relationship between procedural and distributive justice and a variety of organizational variables, Greenberg (1990b) cited studies by Alexander and Ruderman (1987), Folger and An earlier version of this article was presented at the 51st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Miami, Florida, in August 1991. This article was based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Management, Indiana University. I gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Dennis W Organ, Janet P. Near, Philip M. Podsakoff, Scott B. MacKenzie, and two anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts of this article.
Though it appears intuitively appealing that individual differences should be related to a person's decision to perform citizenship behaviors, the search for such individual differences has yet to yield clear results. In this study, data were collected to assess the extent of a relationship between individualism–collectivism as a within culture individual difference and self‐reports of organizational citizenship behaviors. Results suggest that if an individual holds collectivistic values or norms, he/she would be more likely to perform citizenship behaviors. In addition, this relationship was found to be robust to common method effects and to the effect of the relationship between procedural justice and OCB. Implications for the way collectivistic tendencies within cultures may be used in organizations are discussed.
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