European Journal of Experimental Biology Open Access

Key words

distribution justice, interaction justice, procedural justice, multiple regression analyses, intention to leave, employees

Introduction

Justice is the most important subject that has been received great attention during long time. Justice is a positive and good moral being for changing the life of human being. All societies are depending on justice; therefore, any discussion about it is one of the first necessities of human life. Justice is a base of human wisdom. [1] Any progress and efficiency of organizations is mostly based upon correct application of human force. Greater organizations will face with greater problems for this purpose. [2] It is a long time that specialists of Social Sciences & Management found out the importance of social justice as a necessity for effectiveness in organizational processes. [3] Certainly there is no employee who may accept injustice and do not react to it. If he/she is unable to have any reaction, it may make him/her really burnout and depress. Promotion and maintenance of justice behaviors in organizations and among employees are really necessary for increasing positive attitudes of employees, more loyalty, motivation and individual/group efforts accordingly. [4] In fact, people have various reactions against injustice. A considerable part of the mentioned reactions are harmful for the organization may be resulted into negative consequences. [5]

On the other hand and upon increasing the competition and development of human resources, all organizations are trying to maintain their talented employees and enrich them for benefiting from their high level of performance. But organizations are always worry about leaving their capitals and face with any losses. [6] In fact, absence, intention to leave, and lack of motivation have different reasons related to family and social problems that should be find outside the organizations.

Furthermore, any permanent absence and lack of on time presence at work would be considered as a lower level of reaction. But leaving the job is a more serious reaction which is highly considered by most researchers of behavior sciences and organizational specialists. Any leaving of job by employees will create a lot of damages for the organization including more costs to find another employee, training of new persons, and reduction in production and beneficiary of the organization. [7]

It seems that feeling of injustice is another factor which is really effective on burnout of employees and increasing their interest to leave the job. Organizational justice may point out to understanding of employees about fairness and justice behaviors. [8] In fact, organizational justice is a degree by which all employees find out the rules, procedures and organizational policies as justice as possible. [8] Intending to leave affects in different ways the potential and final fate of the organization. [9] Prise (1977) defined intention to leave as the exit of organization and a sign of nonsatisfaction. One of the greatest organizational problems is intention to leave which is a shock for organizational process. It is really considerable for all managers of organizations to maintain and benefit from their human forces. [7] Intention to leave is when people make decision to exit the organization. In other words, it is a change in personal membership in the organization with a wide range of changes. [10] Gol Parvar & Nadi (2010) concluded in their research that there is a negative and significant relation between intention to leave with organizational justice, distributed justice, approach justice, and transaction justice. [11]

Therefore, in case of any increase in organizational justice and its factors, there will be a reduction in intention to leave. Also Robert (et al. 1999) found out that organizational justice has a negative relation with intention to leave. [12] On the other hand, there is a significant relation between intention to leave and all three subscales of organizational justice which are distributed justice, approach justice and transaction justice. There are several reasons for this association. First, people conclude that they will not lose anything after intention to leave. Second, due to injustice behaviors they believe that organization may not consider them any more. [13] In a 2-year research on 2969 employees at Finland, Elovainio (2004) assessed the effects of organizational justice on mental health of participants and found that organizational justice affects employees’ health and therefore, reduces their absences due to health problems. [14] Eric & Nancy (2008) found out that organizational justice indirectly affects employee’s decision for intention to leave. [15] After evaluation of different managers, Salleh (et al, 2009) found that distributed justice, approach justice and transaction justice have a negative and significant relationship with more request of employees to intention to leave. [16]

In a research titled “Organizational Justice in Sport”, Daniel (et al, 2010) indicated that there is a positive and significant relation between organizational justice and job satisfaction. [17] In a research by Alam (2010) it was mentioned that employees’ job satisfaction may reduce their decisions to leave their job. In addition, Lambert (et al. 2010) found that there is a significant relation between distributed justice and approach justice with job burnout decisions to leave the job. [18] Later in 2011 Thomas ET al conducted a research to see if employees’ personality and justice perceptions can predict workplace deviance in a sample of 464 employees working in a large retail organization. [19] They found that personality – including a sixth factor called Honesty–Humility, and its facet of trait Fairness– accounted for incremental variance in deviance criteria beyond justice perceptions. They also suggested that organizations may benefit from personality-related interventions more than justice-related interventions in order to reduce their workplace deviance. In a research by Ademola (2012) on 200 employees at Nigeria it was stated that organizational justice has a considerable effect on intention to leave. [20]

Sport and Youth Head Office of Tehran have a great role in promotion of sport. Needless to state that all occupied employees in these departments could be effective on further success or failure of organization and also further success of sport in a country. It is really important to have a good knowledge about justice situation and efforts for its improvement in sport organizations. This effort may cause development and progress of human force in organization and further success of sport in a country. Good understanding of injustice may cause destructive effects on group work because it may affect all efforts of human force and so their motivation. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate relationship between organizational justice and intends of employees to leave job in Sport and Youth Head Office of Tehran of Iran. We chose Tehran due to wide range of different fields of sports at this province and a lot of sport facilities. In addition, it is not only the capital of country but is considered as the sport capital of country as well.

Materials and Methods

Subjects completed two self reported measures as part of a cross sectional study. This was a population based study as the sample population included all employees of Sport and Youth Head Office of Tehran (N=180). 117 of participants completed and returned the questionnaires and shaped our study population. We used two questionnaires to collect data in this study: First, Chester and Todd Organizational Justice Questionnaire (2007). This questionnaire has 3 dimensions including procedural justice (from question 1 to 13), distributive justice (from question 14 to 17), and interactive justice (from question 18 to 26). Questionnaire has 26 items and each question has a response option of 1 - 5 Likert scale which range from very low to very high. Total score could be from 26 to 130. Second, Kaman (questionnaire of intention to leave including 3 items, each with 1 to 5 likert scale ranging from completely disagree to completely agree. (Kaman et al, 1979).The content and face validity of questionnaires were specified by the specialists and professors of Sport Management. The internal consistency of organizational justice and intention to leave questionnaires was tested by alpha Chronbach and reported to be 0.94 and 0.84, respectively. Descriptive indexes and Kolmogorove Smirnove statistical tests (for evaluation the normal situation of data), Pearson, and Spearman correlation coefficient (for evaluation any relations among variables) and stepwise multiple regressions (for evaluation any effects of a variant out of estimated ones) in SPSS software are applied for further data collection at significant level of P≤0.05. Descriptive statistics (e.g., mean, standard deviations, and frequency) were calculated to describe the sample and summarize data. Kolmogorov-Smirinov test was used to verify data normality. To verify the association between variables, Spearman correlation coefficients were used for categorical and continuous variables, respectively. Spearman’s correlation was also used when data were continuous but not normally distributed. To find intention to leave predictors, stepwise multiple linear regression was used. Individuals with missing information from the questionnaire were excluded from the specific analysis. Statistical significance was considered for p values less than 0.05. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS Version 20.

Results

Results showed that 51 persons (%43.6) of concerned employees were male and 66 persons (%56.4) were female. The average age of respondents was 37±7.88 in this research. Regarding the marital status of employees it was specified that 28 persons (%23.9) were single and 89 persons (%76.1) were married. The C.V. of employees show that 19 persons (%16.2) had 1-5 years of experience, 27 persons (%23.1) had 6-10 years of experience, 31 persons (%26.5) had 11-15 years of experience, 23 persons (%19.7) had 16-20 years of experience and 17 persons (%14.5) had more than 20 years of experience.

To test if data were normally distributed the Kolmogorov-Smirinov Test was used. Results in Table 1 show that organizational justice date (z=. /808, p=. /532) are normal and data of intention to leave (Z=1.66, P=0.008) are abnormal.

Table 1) The results of Kolomogorove Smirnove test to verify data normality

Regarding the results in table 2, there is a negative and significant relationship between organizational justice and intention to leave of employees (r= -0.198, P=0.033). Also, the results of correlation coefficient shows that there is a negative and significant relationship between the components of distributive justice (r=-0.193, P=0.037) and interactional justice (r=-0.230, P≤0.01) with intention to leave. In addition, there is no significant relationship between procedural justice and intention to leave. (r=-0.110, P=0.239).

Table 2) Relationship between organizational justice and its dimensions with intention to leave (N=117)

Regarding the results of table 3, Durbin Watson test equal to 1.79 that confirm regression test. According to the results, only 0.084 of changes in intention to leave is reasonable by organizational justice in this model.

Table 3) The results of Durbin Watson test for independence of errors

As it is presented in Figure 1, the histogram plot has been used to test the normality distribution of residuals. Having a mean of zero and standard deviation of 0.99 confirmed the regression test.

Figure 1: Histogram diagram of the normality distribution of residuals

Regarding the results of regression test presented in table 4, there is a linear relation between both variants of organizational justice and job level (p ≤0.05).

Table 4) Regression analysis of organizational justice and intention to leave

According to the table 5, the results of first step of multiple regression analysis showed that only distributed justice has ability to predict intention to leave. As it is seen in the table one unit change or increase in distributed justice intention to leave decreases by 0.217. As a result, it is possible to reject any theory about equal coefficients and fixed or zero quantity based upon t quantities and significant level. Therefore it is necessary to keep mentioned B coefficients in regression equation. Then the regression equation is as follows:

Table 5) Regression for estimation of any interests in intention to leave

y=8.191 – 0.156 distributed justice

Discussion and Conclusion

According to the results of this research, it is obvious that there is a negative and significant relationship between organizational justice and intends to leave job (r=-.0198, P=0.033) which is in parallel with the results of Golparvar & Nadi (2010), Robert (et al. 1999), Elvianio (2004), Eric & Nancy (2008), Thomas (et al. 2011) and Ademola (2012). [11,14,15,19 and 20] This means that if employees score higher on organizational justice their decisions for leaving job decreases. According to the results of Kim (2009) it is obvious that those employees who believe their organization has justice behavior with them, have better relations with the organization and try more for its progress and developments.

Furthermore, when the employees were sure about the justice behavior in the organization, they were more confident and satisfied in comparison with injustice behavior. Results shown by Alam (ET al. 2010) and Jenifer (et al. 2010) also indicate that when the employees are satisfied of their jobs there would be a reduction in their decisions for intention to leave. [21,22]

In addition, Liew & Sharan (2008) reported that there is a negative and significant relation between organizational space and intention to leave. [23] Also the personality of employees may modify considerably the relation between organizational situation and intention to leave. In a research by Whisenant (2005) it was reported that there is a significant relation between students’ understanding about justice and their interests in continuation a special sport. [24] Prise (1977) stated intention to leave from organization can be due to the non-satisfaction of job. [7] Since it has been proved in this research that there is a negative relation between organizational justice and intention to leave and since there are a lot of damages for the organization resulted from intention to leave (i.e. finding another employees, training of new-hired employees and their socialization from one side and also any reduction in production, functions and beneficiary of organization on the other), it is proposed to all managers of sport organizations to focus on equal justice among all employees for prevention from the foregoing accidents. They should follow up justice in all steps of work among all employees in order to enable them to feel justice in managerial system of organization and go forward with additional motivation.

According to the results, it is obvious that there is a negative and significant relation between distributed justice and intention to leave (r=-0.193, P=0.037) which is in parallel with the results of researches of Gol Parvar & Nadi (2010), Salleh (et al. 2009) and Lambart (et al. 2010). [11,16,18] This means that upon increasing the distributed justice in an organization there will be a reduction in intention to leave among all employees. Furthermore, according to the results of regression analysis, it is obvious that distributed justice has an important effect on intention to leave. Fatt (et al. 2010) has stated that there is a positive and meaningful relation between distributed justice and job satisfaction/ organizational commitment. [25] In addition, Jenifer (et al. 2010) reported that there is a negative and significant relation between job satisfaction and organizational commitment and intention to leave. [22] It seems when there are positive understanding and judgment for employees about fair distribution of benefits such as salary and updating opportunity, employees believe in justice behavior of their managers and supervisors and so even without any allowance received from the organization, they work better than their standard job criteria and also there is a reduction in their intention to leave among them.

According to the findings of this research there is no significant relationship between approach justice and intention to leave (r =- 0.11, P= 0.239) which is in contrast with the results of Gol Parvar & Nadi (2010), Salleh (et al. 2009) and Lambart (et al. 2010) Aghaei(Et al.2012). [11,16,18,26] Perhaps such a result shows the lack of effectiveness of approach justice on intention to leave and/or lack of application of approach justice in the organization. Of course with regard to the small sample size, it is not possible to approve this result confidentially. As it has been mentioned in relevant literature, approach justice is a process for specifying distribution of allowances. Alexander & Ruderman (1997) have shown that the feeling of justice in an organization (distributer & procedure) directly affects replacement and intention to leave as well. [27]

In addition, the results also showed a negative and significant relation between interaction justice with intention to leave (r=-0.230, P≤0.01). Interaction justice has the most powerful relation among all dimensions of organizational justice with intention to leave. This is in parallel with the results of Gol Parvar & Nadi (2010), Elvainio (2004), Salleh et al. (2009) and Thomas et al. (2011). [11,14,16,18] This means that more understanding about interaction justice among employees leads to a reduction in intention to leave among them. Klendauer (2009) has mentioned that although there was a relation among all dimensions of organizational justice with commitment of managers but interaction justice had the highest effect among others. [28] According to the results of Andrews (ET al, 2008) it is obvious that there is a positive and significant association between interaction justice and group coherence.[29] One of the reasons for this association can be related to the gender differences as most concerned employees were females (%56), so interaction justice had the most powerful relation with intention to leave. Regarding this fact that females in Iranian society more interact with other females rather than males, they may find better understanding about justice in their organization and so reduction in intention to leave among them. Because as mentioned before, when there are better interactions among employees, due to a unique and similar feeling, they help each other to solve their problems and have effective progress towards ideals of organization.

It is proposed to all managers of Sport organizations to have enough attention to the performance of employees, do not have personal prejudice, benefit from all decision making criteria, provide on time feedback and reasoning for making any decisions, trust and respect the fellows, and follow high level aspects in communication skills in order to have effective progress towards more interaction justice in the organization. These help to reduce feeling among employees for any intention to leave as well.

In conclusion, it is proposed to recognize and apply various factors for increasing organizational justice in order to reduce intention to leave among employees. This in long time would considerably increase the output of employees and so organization. By a revision in salary and the procedure of payment in a way that create a correct relation between duties and commitments and employees’ responsibility, it is possible to increase justice organization. This would increase employees’ interest to stay longer in organization and try their best to reach the goals and ideals of organizations.

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