Perceptions of Organizational Justice Among State Government Employees: The Effect of Years of Public Service

Abstract

Over the past several decades, researchers across public and private organizations accumulated evidence that perceptions of organizational justice influence work attitudes and performance. Building on previous research, the present study examines the determinants of perceived organizational justice, including the effect of years of public service. By focusing on years of public service, the study explores how perceived organizational justice changes depending on time spent working in public organizations. Based on the regression analysis of the survey data of 522 state government employees, the study concludes that state government employees who report more years of public service are less likely to perceive their workplace as fair. The findings of the study are discussed in terms of their practical implications for improving a quality of workplace experiences among government employees, as one of the essential factors for maintaining high-performing public organizations.

Keywords

organizational justice state government public service

Introduction

Do current government employees perceive their workplace as fair? It is important to answer this question for several reasons. First, the theory of organizational justice states that in both public and private organizations, employee perceptions of organizational justice influence work attitudes and behavior. Empirical studies tested this theory and found that perceived organizational justice is associated with organizational citizenship behavior (Moorman, 1991), organizational identification and commitment (Tyler & Degoey, 1995), and increased trust (Aryee, Budhwar, & Chen, 2002). On the contrary, perceived unfairness at work is associated with sabotage (Ambrose, Seabright, & Schminke, 2002), theft (Greenberg & Scott, 1996), and misconduct (De Schrijver, Delbeke, Maesschalck, & Pleysier, 2010). In other words, organizations that are perceived to be fair tend to have more committed employees, whereas organizations that are perceived to be unfair are more likely to suffer from employee misconduct. Therefore, high-performing organizations rest on work environments where employees believe they are treated fairly.

Second, fairness is essential for public organizations. Taxpayers fund public organizations, including government, to deliver public services based on values of equity and fairness (J. V. Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015; R. B. Denhardt & Catlaw, 2015; R. B. Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000; Frederickson, 1990, 2010; Stone, 2002). Being representatives of larger communities (cities, states, nations), government employees are expected to put public interest above their private interest to ensure the general welfare. It may be difficult to do so if government employees perceive their workplace as unfair. Therefore, fairness should be an operating principle of public organizations not only externally but also internally.

Last but not least, exploring perceptions of workplace fairness among government employees is especially important nowadays, when government is constantly critiqued by media and citizens, and overall trust in government reached its historic low (Pew Research Center, 2017). In an attempt to respond to this critique, government agencies undergo numerous civil service reforms and changes to personnel policies. As a result, current government employees are likely to not only face negative attitudes from the public that they serve but also experience frequent changes to their organizational structures and policies. Thus, studying perceptions of organizational justice among government employees is essential for understanding today’s government as a workplace.

The present study aims to make two contributions. First, the study explores how years of public service, along with other individual and work-related characteristics of government employees, may influence their perceptions of organizational justice. This approach differs from most studies, which conceptualize organizational justice as a determinant of a variety of organizational attitudes and behavior (Cho & Sai, 2012; Choi, 2011; De Schrijver et al., 2010; Hassan, 2013; Lavena, 2016; Rubin, 2009). In doing so, it builds on the findings of previous studies and provides more insight into the characteristics of government employees who are more likely to perceive their workplace as fair or unfair.

Second, the study develops a more dynamic view of organizational justice in public organizations by focusing on how perceived organizational justice varies among government employees reporting between 1 and 40 years of working for the government. Although the study does not track the same individuals over years, it provides an important perspective on how perceptions of fairness differ among present-day government employees at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of their careers.

The study uses survey data collected from 522 full-time permanent government employees at a large state government agency in the Midwest. The examined agency is responsible for the state personnel management and facilitation of the organizational environments which foster perceptions of organizational justice throughout the state government. Therefore, exploring perceptions of the agency employees, whose job is to ensure that all state employees are happy at work, provides an additional layer of understanding the effectiveness of public personnel management systems.

Drawing from the previous theoretical and empirical research on organizational justice, the study developed a theoretical framework and testable hypotheses to explore the relationship between years of public service and perceived organizational justice among government employees. The findings of the study are discussed in terms of their practical implications for improving the quality of workplace experiences among government employees, as one of the essential factors for maintaining high-performing public organizations.

Previous Research: Effects of Organizational Justice/Injustice

Over the past several decades, organizational justice researchers conducted hundreds of observational and experimental studies of different organizations across private and public sectors (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2013). Researchers in the fields of social psychology, organization studies, and occupational health have accumulated evidence that organizational injustice is associated with individual and organizational effects that do not contribute to a productive work environment, while organizational justice is a significant determinant of the effective workplace. Table 1 summarizes the effects of perceived organizational justice and injustice.

Table 1.

The Effects of Perceived Organizational Justice/Injustice.

	Organizational injustice	Organizational justice
Individual effects	• Mental health issues (Ndjaboue, Brisson, & Vezina, 2012; Spell & Arnold, 2007), including depression (Grynderup et al., 2013; Ybema & van den Bos, 2010), psychological strain (Francis & Barling, 2005), insomnia (Elovainio et al., 2009; Greenberg, 2006); • Physical health issues, including cardiovascular diseases (Elovainio, Leino-Arjas, Vahtera, & Kivimäki, 2006) and increased sickness absence (Duijts, Kant, Swaen, van den Brandt, & Zeegers, 2007; Elovainio et al., 2013; Hjarsbech et al., 2014); • Overall decrease in employee well-being (Lawson, Noblet, & Rodwell, 2009), including heavy drinking (Kouvonen et al., 2008) and lower self-esteem (Ferris, Spence, Brown, & Heller, 2012).	• Job satisfaction (Davis & Ward, 1995; DeConinck & Stilwell, 2004; Irving, Coleman, & Bobocel, 2005; Choi & Rainey, 2014; Narisada & Schieman, 2016); • Innovative behavior (Janssen, 2004), engagement, and empowerment (van Dijke, De Cremer, Mayer, & van Quaquebeke, 2012); Motivation (Minkler, 2004; Zapata-Phelan, Colquitt, Scott, & Livingston, 2009).
Organizational/group effects	• More active unions (Aryee & Chay, 2001; Blader, 2007b; Johnson & Jarley, 2004; Rubin, 2011); • Trust issues and withholding information (Bidarian & Jafari, 2012; Lin & Huang, 2009; Saunders & Thornhill, 2003); • Turnover (DeConinck & Stilwell, 2004; Hassan, 2013; Nadiri & Tanova, 2010; Parker & Kohlmeyer, 2005); • Sabotage (Ambrose, Seabright, & Schminke, 2002), theft (Greenberg & Scott, 1996), misconduct (De Schrijver et al., 2010; Ferris et al., 2012; Kickul, 2001); • Workplace aggression and violence (Aquino, Galperin, & Bennett, 2004; Diamond, 1997; LeBlanc & Barling, 2004), work alienation (Ceylan & Sulu, 2011).	• Organizational citizenship behavior (Lavelle, Rupp, & Brockner, 2007; Moorman, 1991; van Dijke et al., 2012), organizational identification and commitment (Blader, 2007a; Brockner, Tyler, & Cooper-Schneider, 1992; Olkkonen & Lipponen, 2006; Tyler & Degoey, 1995); • Increased trust (Aryee, Budhwar, & Chen, 2002; Choi, 2011), loyalty to senior leadership, and cooperation (Cho & Sai, 2012); • Whistleblowing (Lavena, 2016; Seifert, Sweeney, Joireman, & Thornton, 2010),

The findings reported in Table 1 are especially important in the context of public organizations. It is crucial to ensure that government employees perceive their workplace as fair to avoid potential misconduct in public organizations, where employees spend taxpayers’ money on public policies that aim for equitable and fair societal outcomes. As an extensive amount of research has found that there is a clear relationship between perceptions of organizational justice and employees’ behavior at work, the next logical step is to examine what explains variation in perceptions of organizational justice and how the perceptions change over time.

Organizational Justice and Years of Public Service

Researchers have devoted little attention to exploring factors that influence how government employees perceive organizational justice in their workplace, including a relationship between years of work for the government (public service) and perceived organizational justice. For example, a few scholars have explored perceived organizational justice in government, focusing on the federal level (Cho & Sai, 2012; Choi, 2011; Choi & Rainey, 2014; Lavena, 2016; Rubin, 2011), state level (Hassan, 2013; Noblet & Rodwell, 2009), and international context (De Schrijver et al., 2010; Francis & Barling, 2005; Kouvonen et al., 2008; Marmot & Bell, 2012). However, many studies conceptualize perceived organizational justice as a determinant of different organizational outcomes, including turnover intentions and job involvement (Choi, 2011; Hassan, 2013), expectancy of career development and job satisfaction (Cho & Sai, 2012), organizational misbehavior (De Schrijver et al., 2010), and whistleblowing (Lavena, 2016). Other scholars have focused on perceived fairness of performance evaluations among government employees (deLeon & Ewen, 1997; Harrington & Lee, 2015; Kim & Rubianty, 2011). Overall, their findings do not differ much from previous research and are generally consistent with the effects of organizational justice research reported in Table 1. At the same time, studies that explore determinants of perceived organizational justice among government employees are relatively scarce.

It is important to note that although most previous studies include basic demographic characteristics of government employees, such as age, education, and organizational tenure, researchers often treat these as control variables, which consequently have not received full attention. Interestingly, taking a closer look at the previous studies’ results reveals a negative correlation between years of public service and (a) perceptions of fairness of performance appraisals (Harrington & Lee, 2015, N = 442,500), (b) loyalty to senior leadership and expectancy for career development (Cho & Sai, 2012, N = 52,214), (c) job satisfaction (Choi & Rainey, 2014, N = 221,479), and (d) public service motivation (Moynihan & Pandey, 2007, N = 237). Thus, it seems that as years go by perceptions of organizational justice may decrease.

At the same time, literature on turnover in the government suggests that as employees get older and work more years, they are less likely to quit their jobs (Moynihan & Landuyt, 2008; Moynihan & Pandey, 2008). Therefore, there seems to be an interesting contradiction: As time goes by, government employees tend to have lower levels of job satisfaction, yet they are less likely to quit their jobs.

One of the possible explanations for this contradiction is offered by Hummel (2008). In his work “Bureaucratic experience,” Hummel offers a phenomenological approach to understanding public service as an everyday experience of working in a bureaucratic environment. Following Max Weber (1968), Hummel describes an alienating experience, where efficiency and control come at a price of employee disengagement from routine administration of formalized procedures. This negative effect of the bureaucratic experience might accumulate over many years of public service as employees become increasingly disengaged, perceiving their workplace as not fair. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, understanding the effect of the years of public service (organizational tenure) requires an interpretation of the years not just as a control variable or a number but, more importantly, as an everyday experience of working in a government bureaucracy. Thus, the present study hypothesizes that perceived organizational justice decreases with more years of public service.

Defining Organizational Justice

While the effects of perceived organizational justice/injustice seem to be quite clear across a variety of organizational settings, researchers are still debating over a definition and measurement of organizational justice (Byrne & Cropanzano, 2001; Colquitt & Rodell, 2015). Looking at a historical development of the concept, we find that one of the first conceptualizations of justice in an organizational setting is Adams’s equity theory. Defining distributive justice as the equitability of outcomes received from a social exchange or interaction, Adams investigated the equitability of the ratio of input (work) to outcome (pay) across similar workers (Adams, 1963, 1965). Adams believed that if the ratio differed between two workers doing a similar job, workers would decrease or increase their input accordingly. Even though this theory explained much, it did not explain cases when workers’ work-to-pay ratio differed, and yet they still considered it fair.

The limitations of Adams’s equity theory motivated researchers to develop a theory of procedural justice, which was concerned with the perceived fairness of processes used to make decisions regarding outcomes (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Thibaut & Walker, 1978; Thibaut, Walker, LaTour, & Houlden, 1974). The concept of procedural justice was subsequently refined into six parameters, including consistency, bias suppression, accuracy, correctability, representativeness, and ethicality (Leventhal, 1980), and was applied in more recent studies focusing on perceived procedural justice among U.S. federal employees (Rubin & Weinberg, 2016).

In addition, scholars conceptualized interactional justice in a way that differentiated between the effects of formal processes and informal interactions that influence outcomes (Bies, 2001; Bies & Moag, 1986; Tyler & Bies, 1990).¹ More specifically, Bies argued that interactional justice focuses on the quality of interpersonal treatment, the communication aspect of procedures, and whether workers are treated with dignity and respect (Byrne & Cropanzano, 2001; Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002). Thus, we can define perceived organizational justice as employees’ perceptions of the fairness of compensation, formal procedures, and informal social interactions at work.

The present study uses a three-dimensional conceptualization of organizational justice, which includes distributive, procedural, and interactional fairness, and hypothesizes that as years go by, government employees perceive their workplace as less fair in terms of compensation, procedures, and interactions at work:

Hypothesis 1: Perceived distributive fairness is negatively associated with years of public service.

Hypothesis 2: Perceived procedural fairness is negatively associated with years of public service.

Hypothesis 3: Perceived interactional fairness is negatively associated with years of public service.

After studying the effect of years of public service on three dimensions of organizational fairness separately, the present study uses a composite score which includes all three dimensions of organizational justice to determine its relationship with years of public service.

Hypothesis 4: Perceived organizational justice is negatively associated with years of public service.

Thus, due to challenges in operationalization of the concept of fairness, the study explores perceived organizational justice among government employees by testing three dimensions of organizational fairness as separate dependent variables and then compiling them to produce a cumulative score of organizational fairness. Next, the cumulative score is compared with a single-item measure of perceived organizational justice to validate the explanatory power of the three-dimensional conceptualization of organizational fairness in public organizations (Beugre & Baron, 2001).

Method

Data and Method

The hypotheses were tested using data collected via an online survey of employees of a large state agency in the Midwest. The agency employs 1,775 people who work across seven divisions responsible for a state government’s personnel and property management, budgeting, as well as provision of IT services to other state agencies. This variety of functions within one agency creates a unique demographic diversity of respondents, summarized in Table 2. The survey was distributed in the spring of 2016 via a listserv, which includes all agency employees. Two recruitment emails were sent to agency employees 1 week apart. The emails contained information regarding the anonymity, confidentiality, and voluntary nature of participation in the survey, as well as a link to take the survey. The survey questions were based on the academic literature in the fields of organizational psychology and public administration, as well as the best practices of surveying government employees in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Most survey items were measured using a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4= somewhat agree, 5 = strongly agree). To ensure the clarity and reliability of the measures, the survey questions were piloted using a focus group of 16 government employees. Overall, 716 surveys were received, with a dropout rate of 6%. The average response rate was 40%, ranging from 31% to 62% depending on the division. The survey data are analyzed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis, with a final sample size of 522 observations. The results are reported in Tables 4 and 5.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics of Variables.

Variables	M	SD	Minimum	Maximum	Unit
Distributive fairness	3.02	0.96	1	5	α = .90
Procedural fairness	3.07	1.02	1	5	α = .89
Interactional fairness	3.30	1.03	1	5	α = .90
Overall fairness: composite score	3.12	0.83	1	5	α = .93
Overall fairness: single-item scale	67.40	28.39	0	100	Overall, I believe that my organization treats me with fairness (0 = not fair at all; 100 = very fair)
Years of public service	13.78	9.56	1	40	In total, how many years have you been working for the state government?
Years of public service²	91.22	98.93	.05	687.49	The variable centered around M = 13.78
Age	3.73	1.10	1	6	What is your age? (Less than 25 (1); 25-34 (2); 35-44 (3); 45-54 (4); 55-64 (5); 65-74 (6)
Education	4.21	1.28	1	7	What is the highest level of education you have completed? (Less than high school (1); High school (2); Some college (3); 2-year college degree (4); 4-year college degree (5); Master’s degree (6); PhD or professional degree (JD, MD) (7)
Male	—	—	0	1	Male = 1 (58%); Female = 0 (42%)
Salary range	4.19	1.56	1	8	What is your salary range? (Less than US$19,999 (1); US$20,000-US$29,999 (2); US$30,000-U$39,999 (3); US$40,000-US$49,999 (4); US$50,000-US$59,999 (5); US$60,000-US$69,999 (6); US$70,000-US$79,999 (7); More than US$80,000 (8)
Organizational identification	3.30	1.04	1	5	The state government empowers its employees to work in the best interests of the citizens. I am proud when I tell others that I work for the state government (α = .71)
Work–life balance	73.56	22.88	1	100	I achieve a good balance between my work and my private life (0 = no balance; 100 = very good balance)
Positive affectivity toward work	3.60	1.12	1	5	My division inspires me to do my best. I feel encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things (α = .78)

Dependent Variables

In the present study, distributive, procedural, and interactional dimensions of organizational justice are used as separate dependent variables. The distributive justice was operationalized as perceptions of the fairness of government employees’ compensation, including salary and benefits. It was measured using Colquitt’s four-item scale ( α = .90; Colquitt, 2001). Procedural justice, a six-item score (α = .89), measures fairness of hiring, promotions, career development, appeals, performance, and overall ethicality of procedures from a government employee perspective. Interactional justice was measured using a six-item score (α = .90) concerned with a perceived quality of supervision and communication among government employees. Specific survey items used to measure each dimension of organizational justice are described in more detail in the appendix.

Second, the present study tests validity of the three-dimensional conceptualization of organizational justice—distributive, procedural, and interactional—by combining them into one cumulative score of overall organizational justice, which includes 20 items (α = .93). Then, this score, as a cumulative dependent variable, is compared with a single-item dependent variable that measures the perceived organizational justice of government employees on a scale from 0 to 100. These two measures of overall organizational justice were compared against each other in terms of the direction and magnitude of standardized and unstandardized coefficients.

Independent Variables

An independent variable of primary interest is years of public service, which was measured by asking a question, “In total, how many years have you been working for the state government?” This is a conservative measure of years of public service and is likely to be underreported. As the question asks specifically about years of public service in a state government, it may not include years of work for agencies of local or federal government. The study acknowledges this limitation; however, as it is more likely to cause underestimation of the reported years of public service, it will not significantly bias the estimations. A quadratic term of the years of public service was also included in the model to test for a curvilinear relationship between years of public service and perceived organizational justice.

The present study also examines the effects of individual and work-related characteristics of government employees. As perceptions of organizational justice are considered to be influenced by personal characteristics of the perceiver (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001), Model 1 includes such individual characteristics as years of public service, age, education, and gender. In addition, Model 2 controls for work-related factors including salary range, organizational identification, work–life balance, and positive affectivity, which were previously found to be positively correlated with perceptions of organizational justice (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Folger & Konovsky, 1989; Hassan, 2013; Wanberg, Bunce, & Gavin, 1999). Organizational identification was measured using a two-item score (α = .71) that asked about feeling empowered and proud to work for the state government. Similarly, positive affectivity, defined as disposition to experience positive emotional states, was measured using a two-item scale (α = .78). Work–life balance was measured using a single-item scale from 0 to 100. The model also controls for differences in the organizational environments of seven divisions of a state agency.² Table 2 reports descriptive statistics of the variables; correlation coefficients between the variables are included in Table 3.

Table 3.

Correlations Between Independent Variables.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1. Years of public service	1
2. Years of public service²	.36*	1
3. Age	.46*	.07	1
4. Education	−.03	−.03	−.14*	1
5. Male	−.19*	.01	.09*	−.03	1
6. Salary range	.36*	.07	.11*	.43*	−.05	1
7. Organizational identification	−.11*	−.03	−.07	.03	−.08	.06	1
8. Work–life balance	−.02	.10*	−.04	−.03	−.17*	−.04	.30*	1
9. Positive affectivity	−.14*	−.01	−.19*	.06	−.12*	.11*	.68*	.27*

p < .05.

Results

To assess the effect of years of public service on perceived organizational justice, this study used OLS regression analysis to test four hypotheses. Table 4 presents unstandardized and standardized coefficients of the regression analysis of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. The effect of years of public service on each dimension of organizational justice was analyzed using two models. Model 1 includes individual characteristics, whereas Model 2 includes both individual and work-related characteristics of the state government employees.

Table 4.

OLS Regression Results of Distributive, Procedural and Interactional Justice.

Variables	Distributive justice				Procedural justice				Interactional justice
	Model 1		Model 2		Model 1		Model 2		Model 1		Model 2
	Coefficient	β	Coefficient	β	Coefficient	β	Coefficient	β	Coefficient	β	Coefficient	β
Years of public service	−0.011**	−0.11	−0.013**	−0.13	−0.018***	−0.17	−0.012***	−0.11	−0.016***	−0.15	−0.007**	−0.07
Years of public service²	0.002***	0.17	0.002***	0.17	0.001	0.06	0.000	0.03	0.001	0.06	0.000	0.03
Age	−0.015	−0.02	−0.021	−0.02	−0.106***	−0.12	−0.038	−0.04	−0.105**	−0.11	−0.037	−0.04
Education	0.119***	0.16	0.096***	0.13	0.104***	0.13	0.023	0.03	0.057*	0.07	0.009	0.01
Male	−0.313***	−0.16	−0.261***	−0.13	−0.285***	−0.14	−0.033	−0.02	−0.160*	−0.08	0.081	0.04
Salary range			0.118***	0.19			0.070***	0.11			0.044**	0.07
Organizational identification			0.191***	0.21			0.429***	0.44			.31***	0.31
Work–life balance			0.005***	0.14			0.002*	0.05			0.003**	0.07
Positive affectivity			0.104**	0.12			0.323***	0.35			0.496***	0.53
Constant	2.757***		0.866***		3.382***		0.189		3.707***		0.185
R ²	.08		.25		.09		.68		.06		.70

Note. Number of observations = 522. The model includes controls by division. OLS = ordinary least squares.

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Distributive Justice

The analysis indicates that overall, the perceived fairness of compensation decreases with more years of public service. This relationship is curvilinear and decreases at an increasing rate. In other words, over time, state employees tend to perceive their compensation as less fair. However, after a certain period, their perceptions of compensational unfairness become less intense. This result holds even after controlling for individual as well as work-related characteristics, including reported organizational identification, work–life balance, and positive affectivity toward work that are positively correlated with perceived distributive justice.

Gender is another important factor that explains variation in the perceptions of distributive justice among surveyed employees. Men are less likely to perceive their compensation as fair compared with women. This finding is true only for distributive justice, and the negative coefficient is not statistically significant in terms of perceived procedural and interactional justice after controlling for work-related characteristics of the state employees.

Furthermore, the education and salary range of state government employees are positively associated with their perceived fairness of compensation. A correlation coefficient between education and salary range is .43, which means that people reporting higher levels of education tend to have higher salaries; therefore, they are more likely to perceive their compensation as fair.

Similarly, organizational identification and positive affectivity are also positively correlated with perceived fairness of compensation. A correlation coefficient between organizational identification and positive affectivity is .68, meaning that respondents who are more likely to experience positive emotional states tend to strongly identify themselves with the state government and have higher measures of perceived fairness of compensation. These findings are consistent with previous research.

Work–life balance is another variable which is positively associated with perceived fairness of compensation, suggesting that state employees who report work–life balance are more likely to be happier at work and perceive their workplace as fair.

In general, the magnitude of standardized coefficients suggests that years of public service and work-related factors have a greater explanatory power than do age, education, and gender of state government employees.

Procedural and Interactional Justice

Overall, the regression analysis results for procedural and interactional justice are quite similar and suggest that state government employees with more years of public service tend to perceive their workplace as less fair in terms of both formal procedures and social interactions at work. In other words, employees who report many years of public service are more likely to perceive internal policies—including hiring, promotions, and career development as well as social interaction at work—as unfair. The perceived fairness of formal procedures and social interactions at work also tends to lower among older and male employees, whereas it tends to increase among more educated state employees. However, these results are not statistically significant when the model controls for their work-related characteristics.

It is interesting to note that salary range is positively correlated with all three dimensions of organizational justice. A higher salary range in government agencies typically corresponds to a higher position within the organizational hierarchy. This means that government employees with higher salaries, more power, and supervisory responsibilities are more likely to perceive procedures, interactions, and compensation as fair.

The analysis of standardized coefficients shows that organizational identification and positive affectivity are the most important factors explaining the variation in perceptions of fairness of both formal procedures and social interactions at work. In other words, the state government employees who feel encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things, who are inspired to do their best, and who feel empowered and proud to work for the state government have higher levels of perceived procedural and interactional fairness. However, the next most important factor remains years of public service, which retains its negative coefficient and statistical significance even after controlling for organizational identification and other work-related characteristics. The full model explains 68% of the variation in perceived procedural justice and 70% of the variation in perceptions of interactional justice.

Thus, years of public service are consistently negatively associated with perceived organizational justice across all three dimensions, which suggests that more seasoned government employees are more likely to perceive compensation, procedures, and interactions at work as unfair.

Overall Organizational Justice

The two OLS regression analyses of organizational justice reported in Table 5 also suggest that state government employees who spent more years in public service are less likely to perceive their workplace as fair. This relationship is curvilinear for both multi-item and single-item measures of organizational justice. Similar to results for distributive justice, it decreases at an increasing rate.

Table 5.

OLS Regression Results of Perceived Organizational Justice.

Variables	Single-item scale		Composite score
Variables	Coefficient	β	Coefficient	β
Years of public service	−0.437***	−0.15	−0.011***	−0.13
Years of public service ²	0.024***	0.08	0.000***	0.10
Age	0.077	0.00	−0.031	−0.04
Education	0.657	0.03	0.048**	0.08
Male	−3.693**	−0.06	−0.09*	−0.05
Salary range	2.293***	0.13	0.082***	0.15
Organizational identification	7.117***	0.26	0.297***	0.37
Work–life balance	0.353***	0.28	0.004***	0.11
Positive affectivity	10.036***	.39	0.287***	0.38
Constant	−25.8***		0.45***
R ²	.64		.66

Note. Number of observations = 522. The model includes controls by division. OLS = ordinary least squares.

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Among individual characteristics of state employees, age does not have a statistically significant effect on perceived organizational justice, whereas male employees are again more likely to perceive their workplace as unfair compared with women. Work-related characteristics of state government employees, including salary range, organizational identification, positive affectivity, and work–life balance, are positively associated with perceived organizational justice, which is consistent with previous research. Thus, the magnitude and statistical significance of standardized and unstandardized coefficients suggest that composite and single-item measures of organizational justice are consistent with each other as well as with most results reported in Table 4, which validates a three-dimensional conceptualization of organizational justice.

In sum, the findings suggest that perceived organizational justice is lower among state employees with more years of public service and male employees, and it is higher among respondents who have higher salaries and report positive affectivity, organizational identification, and work–life balance.

Discussion and Conclusion

Perceived organizational justice is essential for all organizations that aspire to have high-performing and committed employees. It is especially important for present-day public organizations that are responsible for using taxpayers’ money to advance the general welfare. If government employees do not perceive their workplace as fair, they may be less likely to do their best at work.

This study focused on exploring the characteristics of current government employees who are more likely to perceive their workplace as fair or unfair, with a specific focus on the effect of years of public service. As perceptions of fairness may change over time, the present study examined how perceived organizational justice varies depending on the number of years a person worked for the state government. Looking at both new and seasoned employees, the study found that state government employees’ perceptions of organizational justice decrease with more years of public service and are at their lowest level among employees who are in the middle of their public service career. This finding is disturbing because this group of employees may be considered the core personnel who have the necessary institutional knowledge, experience, and skills for working in the state government and sharing their experience with new employees.

Given the effects of the perceived organizational injustice reported in Table 1, the findings may have important consequences for employee well-being and overall organizational effectiveness. As perceived organizational injustice is found to be associated with employee mental and physical health issues, as well as counterproductive work behavior, state agencies need to pay more attention to the perceived fairness of compensation and formal procedures, including hiring, promotions, career development, and performance management. This may be especially important today, when overwhelming government critique leads to budget cuts, frequent organizational changes, high rates of employee turnover, and problems with hiring new employees. It seems that state government employees who remain in public service are expected to maintain the same quality of work, even if their colleagues are leaving the job, vacancies remain open for extended periods, and they are not compensated for an increased workload. This is not fair from the perspective of government employees committed to public service. Therefore, it is essential to create personnel policies which ensure that committed experienced employees, who choose to stay rather than quit their jobs, are treated fairly in terms of compensation, view organizational policies and procedures as legitimate, and feel that they are treated with dignity and respect. People who devote their lives to public service need to feel that their organization treats them fairly.

In addition, the finding offers a possible explanation for the contradiction found in the previous literature, namely, the decreasing job satisfaction of government employees along with relatively low turnover rates. One could argue that as government employees devote many years of their lives to public service, they become more embedded in the system and invested in their jobs. However, the fact that people stay at their jobs does not automatically mean that they perceive their workplace as fair or that they are satisfied with their jobs. As this study indicated, a long-term experience of working in a government bureaucracy may lead to decreased perceptions of organizational justice. Thus, public organizations end up having a committed workforce with low levels of perceived organizational justice and job satisfaction.

It seems that state employees are likely to comply with the status quo that they perceive as unfair. These results are consistent with empirical findings in social psychology which suggest that people have a psychological need to have a favorable attitude toward self, a social group they belong to, and society in general. To do so, they tend to justify and accept the status quo, especially if they believe that it cannot be changed (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003).

It is important to note that the surveyed agency is responsible for managing personnel systems for the state government. This agency has the authority to propose and implement changes that can improve perceived distributive, procedural, and interactional justice for all state agencies. However, it seems that most employees do not believe that they can change the policies perceived as unfair. This pervasive dissatisfaction and compliance with the unfair status quo among long-term employees could easily create an unwillingness to critically analyze, challenge, and improve policies and practices that would benefit government agencies. Hence, the impact of long-term employees who perceive their workplace as unfair on the effectiveness of state agencies is outside of the scope of this article, but is potentially significant.

The findings of this study suggest exciting avenues for future research, which should focus on studying how perceptions of organizational justice and work attitudes of government employees change over time. The use of cross-sectional data limits the present study. Studies using longitudinal data to track the same individuals over the course of their government careers would bring valuable insight into how workplace perceptions of government employees change over time.

While most of the existing research on perceived organizational justice of government employees features federal public employees, few studies explore perceptions of organizational justice among state employees. As state government employees constitute a large proportion of public employees who deliver essential government services on a daily basis, future studies should pay more attention to state employees. The present study is limited to a single government agency in one state. Hence, future studies should confirm the validity of the findings across a variety of government agencies and geographic regions.

Research on how public organizations promote conformity and compliance with policies and practices that are generally perceived as unfair is another interesting topic. Given the findings that employees with more education and higher salaries (who are more likely to be managers) tend to perceive their workplaces as fair, it would be exciting to study how decision-making power of managers affect their perceived organizational justice. For example, researchers could study whether different perceptions of organizational justice among management and staff stifle changes in organizational policies perceived as unfair by staff but not by management. Qualitative studies with in-depth interviews of government employees may be especially informative in terms of understanding how government employees rationalize unfair organizational practices and policies.

Another interesting avenue for future research would be to study the relationship between perceived organizational justice and the quality of communication between staff and management. A specific focus on how decision-making transparency (regarding processes of hiring, promotions, compensation, performance appraisals, and so forth) affects perceived organizational justice may highlight the importance of open communication for increasing perceived organizational justice. Thus, more needs to be understood about perceptions of organizational justice among government employees. The present study is one of the attempts to answer these questions and contribute to the ongoing conversation.

Footnotes

Appendix

Dimensions of Organizational Justice: Construct and Indicators.

Distributive justice (.90)		M	SD	Minimum	Maximum
Distributive justice (.90)				2.98	0.99	1	5
Salary fairness (.93)		2.52	1.16	1	5
Salary—responsibilities	To what extent are you fairly compensated in terms of salary considering the responsibilities that you have?	2.56	1.31	1	5
Salary— experience	To what extent are you fairly compensated in terms of salary in view of the amount of experience that you have had?	2.56	1.32	1	5
Salary—effort	To what extent are you fairly compensated in terms of salary for the amount of effort that you put forth?	2.46	1.27	1	5
Salary— stress	To what extent are you fairly compensated in terms of salary for the stresses and strains of your job?	2.50	1.24	1	5
Benefits fairness (.94)		3.46	1.17	1	5
Benefits —responsibilities	To what extent are you fairly compensated in terms of benefits considering the responsibilities that you have?	3.58	1.27	1	5
Benefits–experience	To what extent are you fairly compensated in terms of benefits in view of the amount of experience that you have had?	3.47	1.25	1	5
Benefits— effort	To what extent are you fairly compensated in terms of benefits for the amount of effort that you put forth?	3.41	1.26	1	5
Benefits—stress	To what extent are you fairly compensated in terms of benefits for the stresses and strains of your job?	3.36	1.26	1	5
Procedural justice (.89)		M	SD	Minimum	Maximum
Procedural justice (.89)		3.08	1.06	1	5
Hiring	My division hires people who can do the job well.	3.28	1.24	1	5
Promotion	Promotions in my division are based on merit.	2.73	1.35	1	5
Appeal	I can initiate a formal complaint or appeal without fear of retaliation.	2.90	1.26	1	5
Career development	My division does a good job supporting employee career development.	2.98	1.32	1	5
Procedural ethicality	Overall, the procedures and policies in my division uphold ethical and moral standards.	3.50	1.25	1	5
Performance management	My division effectively manages poor performance.	2.71	1.26	1	5
Interactional justice (.90)		M	SD	Minimum	Maximum
Interactional justice (.90)		3.23	1.06	1	5
Voice	I have the opportunity to contribute my views before decisions that affect me are made.	3.15	1.34	1	5
Interactional justice (.90)		M	SD	Minimum	Maximum
Interactional justice (.90)		3.23	1.06	1	5
Challenge status quo	It is safe to challenge the way things are done in my division.	3.02	1.31	1	5
Communication	Communication flows effectively between staff and management.	2.81	1.36	1	5
Supervision	I am satisfied with the quality of supervision I receive at work.	3.79	1.27	1	5
Meetings	I feel free to bring up issues that worry me during work meetings.	3.58	1.25	1	5
Interpersonal issues	Overall, I am satisfied with how interpersonal issues are resolved in my division.	3.04	1.23	1	5

Acknowledgements

I thank Michael Diamond, Mirae Kim, Barton Wechsler, Victoria Johnson and three anonymous referees for valuable discussions and comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Darima Butitova is an independent scholar, who received her doctorate in Public Affairs from University of Missouri. Her research interests focus on organizational theory and behavior, employment policy, and public personnel management.

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