The study by Robert H. Moorman titled “Relationship between Organizational Justice and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: Do Fairness Perceptions Influence Employee Citizenship?” aimed at canvassing “the relationship between perception of fairness and organizational citizenship behaviors in a sample drawn from two firms in the Midwestern United State.” The two companies were labeled A and B by the researcher and as the researcher noted in the article, company A majors in the application of paint on rolled steel while company B majors in rolling steel although the researcher did not give any reason as to why he picked the two companies for the research.
The researcher hypothesized that job satisfaction is not influenced by the dimension of OCB when the effects of organizational justice are controlled. Additionally, besides hypothecating that OCB can be positively influenced by perceptions of organizational justice, the researcher also conjectured that perception of organizational justice has a potential positive influence on job satisfaction.
Moorman (1991) was not able to reject the null hypothesis that one population is accounting for another population from the two samples selected for the research citing that the two group analysis was not large enough to warrant a rejection of the null hypothesis. Nonetheless, the researcher noted that there were considerable differences in the demographics of the two groups, even though the differences were insignificant in light of the study. However, as the researcher reported, he found out that the dimension of OCB is, by all means, not influenced by job satisfaction in a setup where perceptions of organizational justices are controlled. Further, from the two-groups’ analysis of the differences between the companies, the researcher came to the realization that the two groups were not large enough to reject toe null hypothesis judging from the obtained chi-square statistics obtained. The researcher also found out from the overall confirmatory factor analysis of the scale cores that there was a convergent and discriminant validity of the nine variables of the research. The results from the analysis of the nested models and evaluation of the individual paths also led to the realization the researcher could not reject any of the formulated hypotheses.
From the study, it can be concisely asserted that managers will impact positively on their subordinate staff if they behave in a manner that does not show any element of unfairness. Ideally, managers should treat their employees fairly within mind that such treatment goes a long way in influencing the occurrence of citizenship behavior.
As the researcher professedly stated, his research did have some limitations that could have a potential negative influence on the findings of the research. For instance, the generalizability of the research findings was overly influenced by the fact that the two populations from the two companies were excessively unique. Admittedly, the researcher does not explain how the two populations from the companies were unique. Furthermore, the methods that the researcher used to analyze the data are demonstrated complex, and this raises concerns on the confidence of the research findings. However, the researcher contended that the research had a remarkable managerial implication and could also go a long to influence any future research on the same topic. For instance, as Moorman (1991) asserts, the research, by leading to the realization that managers can directly influence the activities of their subjects, will be utilitarian in governing the behavior of their subordinated with regards to the employees.
Reference
Moorman, R. H. (1991). Relationship Between Organizational Justice and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: Do Fairness Perceptions Influence Employee Citizenship? Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(6), 845-855.