Preferences for justice norms and job satisfaction

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between distributive justice and job satisfaction in formal organizations by investigating the application and acceptance of justice norms and distribution rules. In approaching the justice evaluations of white-collar workers, primary emphasis has been placed on preferences for norms (either equity or need) and dimension of evaluation (status or performance characteristics) ln the allocation of rewards, and on whether agreement between employees' and managers' preferences affects the employees' perceived justice and satisfaction levels. Two preference scales and a perceived justice scale were developed in order to measure the magnitude of the relation between perceived justice and agreement variables. A satisfaction scale was used to measure the employees' satisfaction levels in order to investigate the relation between perceived justice and satisfaction. The existence of a meaningful relation between perceived justice and agreement variables, between satisfaction and perceived justice was hypothesized, however was not supported by the results. The predicted differences were not found in the data. The failure to support the hypotheses may be the results of a number of artifacts of the study, including on overly-homogeneous sample, macro-economic conditions and lack of variance in norm preferences and levels of job satisfaction.