Linking Organizational Justice to Organizational Commitment Among Nigerian Police Officers

Abstract

Organizational commitment is an imperative aspect of occupational attitudes as it signals employees’ willingness to stay with their organization and effectively achieve collective goals. Although recent studies have assessed factors influencing police officers’ organizational commitment, very little is known about the antecedents of police commitment in African countries. Based on a survey of Nigerian police officers, the study assesses the linkage between organizational justice and organizational commitment directly and indirectly through organizational trust and job satisfaction. Structural equation modeling (SEM) indicates that the relationship between organizational justice and organizational commitment is principally indirect through the mediating mechanisms of supervisory trustworthiness and job satisfaction. Officers who express greater organizational justice report higher trust in their management and supervisors and, subsequently, stronger job satisfaction, leading to higher organizational commitment. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

Keywords

organizational commitment organizational justice job satisfaction organizational trust Nigerian police

Introduction

Frontline staff constitute an indispensable part of criminal justice organizations as they are responsible for carrying out core functions necessary for the successful maintenance of law and order. Their occupational outlooks and operational styles are influenced by various factors of both internal and external environments. For instance, as an imperative aspect of work-related attitudes, organizational commitment is influenced by organizational and supervisory treatments toward its members (Johnson, 2015; Tankebe, 2010). Organizational commitment signals personal bonds that employees form with their organization over time while performing their assigned individual and collective roles in an organization (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Lambert et al., 2015). High employee commitment levels generate beneficial outcomes, such as better job performance and work engagement and lower turnover (van Gelderen & Bik, 2016).

In policing, recent studies have identified a plethora of antecedents or correlates of police organizational commitment. Most studies found that police officers’ commitment to their organization is affected by such organizational and work characteristics as leadership styles and management practices, fair and supportive administrators and supervisors, job type, autonomy, and training (Baek, 2020; Frank et al., 2020; Johnson, 2015; Shim et al., 2015). Other studies focused on individual officers’ emotional states, showing that their levels of strain, psychological well-being, stress from work–family conflict, and job satisfaction are also predictive of organizational commitment (Nalla et al., 2020; Qureshi et al., 2019).

Some studies of correctional officers’ organizational commitment also revealed that organizational commitment was adversely associated with work behaviors, such as turnover intent/turnover, absenteeism, and staff burnout. Others reported positive connections between organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors (i.e., working harder, being loyal), greater life satisfaction, and heightened work performance (Hogan et al., 2013; Lambert & Hogan, 2009). When employees are committed, their involvement in the organization takes on moral overtones, and their stake tends to extend beyond the satisfaction of merely personal interest in employment, income, and intrinsically rewarding work.

Our study continues this important line of investigation by assessing three correlates of organizational commitment among police officers in Nigeria. We draw mainly upon organizational justice and organizational trust theories (Greenberg, 1987), which posit that perceived organizational fairness and trustworthiness among organizational members are likely to yield positive attitudes and behaviors among employees, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. As shown in Figure 1, organizational justice is linked to organizational commitment directly and indirectly through the mediating mechanisms of organizational trust and job satisfaction. Police organizational commitment has been widely studied in major Western democracies (Jaramillo et al., 2005; Johnson, 2015) and Asian countries of India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Korea (Baek, 2020; Lambert et al., 2015; Nalla et al., 2020; Shim et al., 2015). However, only one study has assessed police organizational commitment in Africa (Tankebe, 2010). Our study can extend the empirical understanding of critical police occupational outlooks and their correlates in Africa.

Figure 1:

Theoretical Framework Linking Organizational Justice to Organizational Commitment

In addition to organizational commitment, another key concept in recent studies of institution–officer interactions is organizational justice, a multidimensional concept that indicates officers’ perceptions of fair treatment by their agency (Bradford et al., 2014). Organizational justice stresses employees’ perceptions that the employing organization treats workers in a just and fair manner (Greenberg, 1990). Organizational justice is instrumental in facilitating greater job satisfaction, commitment to democratic policing and the rule of law, compliance with rules and policies, and fair treatment of and trust in the public, and in reducing job turnover and the impact of adverse events on officers (Bradford et al., 2014; Haas et al., 2015; Kutajak Ivkovic et al., 2020; Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Nix & Wolfe, 2016; Sun et al., 2018; Trinkner et al., 2016; Van Craen & Skogan, 2017; Wu et al., 2017). Despite consistent evidence supporting organizational justice’s role in leading to favorable outcomes, we know little about the linkage between organizational justice and organizational commitment in the policing literature, especially in non-Western countries (see Frank et al., 2020, for a notable exception). Nor do we know whether organizational trust and job satisfaction mediate such a connection.

This study advances the policing literature on two fronts. First, although the existing literature has considered the effects of organizational justice, organizational trust, and job satisfaction on organizational commitment directly, very few studies have investigated the potential mediating role of organizational trust and job satisfaction in the relationship between organizational justice and commitment. Our results shed light on the complex mechanisms linking organizational justice and organizational commitment through important organizational factors of trust and satisfaction within police agencies. Second, this study assesses whether organizational concepts and frameworks developed based chiefly on Western democratic contexts can be universally applied to the African country of Nigeria, whose democracy has been characterized as political pressure on dissents, weak rule-of-law, nonindependent judiciaries, and official corruption (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2019). Given that Nigeria’s traditional cultures, sociopolitical settings, crime rates, and police work environments are different from Western democracies, one may suspect that leadership styles, interpersonal relations, and organizational citizenship behaviors among police supervisors and officers may be somewhat distinctive in Nigeria. Our study provides needed evidence to strengthen our understanding of police cultures and occupational attitudes in a non-Western, African setting and subsequently broaden the internationalization of criminological knowledge.

This study applies structural equation modeling (SEM) to survey data collected from a Nigerian police officer sample to address the primary research question, “Are officers’ views of organizational justice and organizational commitment directly related or indirectly connected through their evaluations of supervisors and job satisfaction?”

Predicting Organizational Commitment Among Police Officers

This study’s focal concern is organizational commitment, a complex construct that has been conceptualized and operationalized in many different, albeit correlated, ways. One popular approach defines organizational commitment as “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization” (Porter et al., 1974, p. 604). Following this conceptualization, Mowday and colleagues (1979) developed a 15-item questionnaire and then a nine-item questionnaire (Mowday et al., 1982) of organizational commitment that focuses on an employee’s faith in and acceptance of the organization’s goals, willingness to devote efforts to the interests of the organization, and intention to remain as a member of the organization. Meyer and Allen (1991) assembled a second famous questionnaire. They viewed organizational commitment broadly as a psychological state that characterizes the relationship between employees and their organization. Their questionnaire contains 24 items representing three organizational commitment components: affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment. Affective commitment reflects the emotional attachment to and involvement in an organization, continuance commitment signals a sense of obligation to stay with an organization, and normative commitment indicates the perceived cost of leaving an organization (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Items associated with both questionnaires have been employed in studying police officers’ commitment to their agencies, with affective commitment as the most common form of commitment employed in the policing literature (Baek, 2020; Lambert et al., 2015; Nalla et al., 2020).

Figure 1 depicts the theoretical model accounting for officers’ commitment to their agencies. We propose that how officers are treated within their institutions represents both a direct and indirect source of officers’ willingness to commit to their organizations. When the police department treats its members with procedural and distributive fairness, rank and file officers are more likely to become emotionally engaged with their organizations and comply with organizational goals and regulations. In addition, officers’ stronger justice perceptions are likely to breed higher degrees of trust in their supervisors and satisfaction with their job, both of which, in turn, cultivate more vital senses of dedication to their organizations. Finally, we expect officers’ stronger sense of trust in their supervisors to foster greater job satisfaction between the two mediating variables. We elaborate on these proposed relationships below.

The Importance of Organizational Justice

Employees’ justice perceptions and their potential impacts on organizational citizenship behavior have drawn much academic attention in social and organizational psychology literature since the 1960s. Greenberg (1987) first coined the term “organizational justice” to synthesize key concepts and arguments in various justice or equity theories. Early conceptual elaboration and integration of organization justice centered around two core dimensions, procedural justice and distributive justice, contending that employees’ fair treatment in decision-making processes and outcomes is likely to foster organizational-referenced consequences (Colquitt, 2001). Greenberg (1993) further proposed a four-factor notion of organizational justice that encompasses procedure justice, distributive justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. The latter two, which are frequently referred to as interactional justice and often highly correlated, reflect the degrees of respect and appropriateness and adequacy of explanations embedded in employee–organization interactions (Bradford et al., 2014). There are debates about whether the four dimensions of organizational justice are conceptually and statistically distinguishable. Some researchers showed that they are separable (Colquitt, 2001), whereas others found that procedural justice, distributive justice, and interactional justice are highly correlated (Martocchio & Judge, 1995). In the criminal justice literature, Tyler’s (1990) work on police legitimacy and public compliance incorporates informational justice and interpersonal justice into procedural justice and only makes the conceptual distinction between procedure and distributive justice.

In the policing context, one of the most popular theoretical frameworks formulated under the rubric of organizational justice is Tyler’s (1990) process-based model of policing. Tyler proposes that procedural justice plays a prominent role in shaping people’s views on the police’s legitimacy than outcome justice. When the police follow fair and equitable procedures (i.e., procedural justice) in both treatment and decision-making during interactions, people are more likely to view them as legitimate and subsequently comply and cooperate with their directives. Although Tyler’s model has received consistent support from studies conducted worldwide, such evidence is mostly limited to the outcomes of public perceptions and cooperation with the police, rather than police’s perceptions of police agencies or themselves.

A relatively recent vein of inquiry has furnished useful information on organizational justice’s role in shaping favorable department–officer relations and officer attitudes and behavior. In the United States, for instance, higher levels of organizational justice rendered by immediate supervisors and sector leadership contributed to officers’ stronger job satisfaction (Wolfe et al., 2018). Similarly, officers’ fair treatment experience from supervisors and coworkers and perception of fair department policies were likely to lower their degrees of distress and cynicism (Trinkner et al., 2016) and potentially breed higher job satisfaction. In the United Kingdom, organizational justice was found to enhance police officers’ organizational identification (Bradford et al., 2014), commitment to democratic policing (Bradford & Quinton, 2014), and satisfaction with the department as a place to work (Myhill & Bradford, 2013). In China and Taiwan, stronger organizational justice, operationalized as fair treatment by supervisors, was associated with higher job satisfaction among police officers (Wu et al., 2017, 2019).

Two areas of this growing line of policing literature remains underinvestigated. One is evidence connecting organizational justice to organizational commitment. An earlier study found that management fairness linked to organizational commitment among New York Housing Authority police officers (Morris et al., 1999). Two U.K. studies have shown that organizational justice improved police officers’ commitment to democratic policing (Bradford & Quinton, 2014) and community policing (Myhill & Bradford, 2013). Both procedural justice and interactional justice were associated with distributive justice, connected to police officers’ job commitment in South Korea (Crow et al., 2012). Two studies found that both procedural and distributive justice were positively linked to police officers’ organizational commitment among India’s police officers (Frank et al., 2020; Qureshi et al., 2017).

Second, Africa, as a region, is mostly absent from scholarly attention to organizational justice. One notable exception is Tankebe’s (2010) work on the Ghana police, showing that supervisors’ fair treatment, which is the strongest predictor among all independent variables, is associated with more substantial organizational commitment among Ghana police officers. More research is warranted from Africa to test the link between organizational justice and commitment under different social, cultural, and political traditions and policing systems.

The Mediating Roles of Trust and Satisfaction

Besides assessing the direct linkage from organizational justice to organizational commitment, this study analyzes the mediating effects of organizational trust and job satisfaction on the relationship between organizational justice and commitment. Organizational trust is a complex concept that has been traditionally investigated along two theoretical perspectives that focus on the relationship between workers and their immediate supervisors and senior leaders and workers’ perception of their supervisors’ and management’s characteristics and the influence of such characteristics on workers’ sense of vulnerability (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002). Organizational trust thus is commonly operationalized as employees’ perceived trustworthiness of administrators and supervisors. Recent trust literature, including studies on correctional staff, has extended organizational trust to include a third form of trust, coworker trust, signaling employees’ perceived trustworthiness of colleagues (Haynes et al., 2020; Kipkosgei et al., 2020; Lambert et al., 2021).

Studies on organizational behavior lend support to the plausible mediating mechanisms through organizational trust and job satisfaction. For example, one study found that Indian workers’ trust in supervisors wholly mediated the connection between interactional justice and organizational citizenship behaviors, and trust in a company partially mediated the relationship between procedural and distributive justice and occupational attitudes, including organizational commitment (Aryee et al., 2002). There is no evidence in the policing literature supporting the mediating roles of organizational trust and job satisfaction, a gap that this study attempts to fill.

Past research on the police has reported some direct or relevant evidence on the relationships between organizational trust and organizational commitment and between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Closely related to the concept of organizational trust are organizational support and supervisor feedback. Organizational support reflects the degree to which an organization recognizes its employees’ contributions and cares about their well-being. A broader concept of organizational support also includes support received from an employee’s supervisors and coworkers. Supervisor feedback involves various communication forms between supervisors and subordinates to improve employee performance and achieve organizational goals. Both organizational support and supervisor feedback can generate positive attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, including organizational trust and commitment (Bak, 2020; Jaramillo et al., 2005; Johnson, 2015).

Based on survey data from a sample of police officers from Florida, Jaramillo and colleagues (2005) reported that officers with higher job satisfaction levels expressed greater degrees of organizational commitment. Likewise, Kuo’s (2015) study related Taiwanese officers’ job satisfaction to their affective commitment to the department. Nalla and colleagues (2020) further found that among Pakistan police officers, the influences of job satisfaction varied across distinctive forms of commitment, with satisfaction with pay and supervision positively linking to affective and normative commitment, whereas satisfaction with promotion negatively relating to continuance commitment. These findings suggest that when police officers are treated fairly and justly by their supervisors and the management, they are more inclined to display a substantial commitment to the police organization.

One would speculate that felt organizational trust fosters job satisfaction among police officers between the two mediating variables. When police officers feel that their supervisors are trustworthy, they are more likely to feel satisfied and express favorable evaluations of their job experience. Studies on organizational behavior offer ample support for this speculation. For example, a study found that supervisors’ trust is directly related to job satisfaction among employees with the Federal Aviation Administration (Cho & Park, 2011).

Challenges to the Nigerian Police

Although Nigeria has become an independent country since the 1960s, the entrenched colonial influences still linger during the postcolonial era of Nigeria policing. The hegemonic class continues to perpetuate police policies and regulations, and the police maintain their aggressive and oppressive nature of law enforcement against the citizenry (Onyeozili, 2005; Zumve, 2012). Not surprisingly, the Nigerian police have been plagued by a swath of challenges that seriously cripple the force’s effectiveness and legitimacy. One of the most acknowledged problems that poses a great challenge to the police’s legitimacy is corruptive and abusive behavior. In Nigeria, an “unwritten and acceptable” culture normalizes police corrupt behavior (Aremu et al., 2011). Police corruption has surfaced as one of the most common forms of official corruption, defining ordinary police officers’ behavior and tarnishing the Nigerian police’s image as a whole (Ladapo, 2012; Ojo, 2014). Frontline officers frequently engage in corruptive actions, ranging from extorting money from drivers at illegal road-blocks to collecting bribes to bend justice in advantage of the highest payer (Onyeozili, 2005). Police brutality, particularly in the form of torture, is pervasive. One study reported that nearly all police stations have a torture room for officers to carry out the horrific act (Ojo, 2014). A recent study on 186 inmates at a Nigerian female prison revealed that nearly 85% of the respondents suffered some abuse in police custody, with 36% of them being sexual assault (Aborisade & Oni, 2020).

Another challenge facing the Nigerian police is incompetency and lack of professionalism to fulfill their fundamental roles of law enforcement, order maintenance, and services. The Nigerian police have poorly executed criminal investigation due primarily to the public’s low willingness to report crime, lack of needed funding, inadequate training of criminal investigators, absence of forensic science experts and facilities, and poor records keeping (Ladapo, 2012). Although police detectives are often portrayed in movies as highly capable and effective in resolving criminal cases, the reality is that clearance rates of severe crimes are low, leaving many homicides unsolved (Aborisade, 2018).

Police corruptive and abusive behaviors and low effectiveness in criminal investigation have led to poor police–community relations exemplified by uncooperative public attitudes toward and fear and mistrust of the police (Zumve, 2012). A recent study showed that people who cast doubt on the Nigerian police’s effectiveness were less likely to report criminal activity about the terrorist group of Boko Haram (Elntib et al., 2018). A strained relationship between the police and the public makes community policing a failed reform in Nigeria (Zumve, 2012).

Nigeria police officers carry out their duties in an unfriendly and unsupportive working environment characterized by a lack of needed training for knowledge and skills, inadequate personnel and operating funding, poor equipment and facilities, and mediocre salary and benefit packages (Ojo, 2014). Police officers tend to suffer high occupational and family stress due principally to uncooperative citizens. Weak managerial and supervisory support are beset and characterized by religious and ethnic biases, subsequently leading to low job satisfaction and organizational commitment. There is a frosty relationship among Nigerian police officers. Okonkwo (n.d.) noted that one hardly notices the existence of “esprit de corps” among officers. It is like everyone has a grudge against the other or a score to settle, so that set up is the order of the day. There is hardly anything like honesty, trust, and comradeship among the police.

A study on the Nigerian police confirmed the importance of organizational and public support by demonstrating that the relationship between ethical attitudes and prosocial behavior is conditional on organizational support and public recognition (Adebayo, 2005). Their ethical attitudes are positively related to prosocial behavior for officers with high or average degrees of organizational support and public recognition. In contrast, among police officers with low perceived organizational support and public recognition, their ethical attitudes are negatively connected to prosocial behavior (Adebayo, 2005). A complex working environment is inclined to stir strong feelings of organizational dismay and even injustice, causing a vast array of undesirable outcomes. Officers may feel devalued, leading to doubt about their self-worth (Ayinde & Ayegun, 2018). Scholars also pointed out that Nigeria officers commit to their organization because of economic reasons, rather than having affection for the police department or work, contributing to the widespread problem of police corruption (Aremu et al., 2011). Weak organizational support or substantial organizational injustice could hinder building trustworthy relationships between officers and supervisors, lowering their commitment to the police force. Police officers do not have life insurance coverage and worry about their family’s future while performing risky and dangerous tasks. Their salary is very meager than other federal civil servants, hindering a moral justification not to compromise their integrity.

Method

Data Collection and Sample

This study used part of the data gathered by a research project on police–public relations in Nigeria. Data collection was carried out between June and September 2018, in the three Senatorial (geopolitical) zones of Ebonyi State, namely, Ebonyi Central, North, and South. Local university researchers developed a survey instrument consisting of 129 items. The project was approved by the Ethics Committee on Research of the researchers’ institution. The research team had a face-to-face meeting with the Police Commissioner of Ebonyi State, who granted the team permission to survey police officers and agreed to facilitate the process of distributing the survey.

Working with the Police Commissioner, the questionnaires were deposited at the Command Headquarters in Abakaliki. All divisional commanding officers were summoned to the headquarters, where they received directives about the project from the Commissioner and instruction on the survey process by our team researchers. Divisional commanding officers then announced the project through internal communication channels to all officers under their commands and encouraged their participation. The survey instrument was then distributed to officers who expressed interest in participating in the project. A snowball sampling approach was also used, where participants were asked to help recruit other officers who may be interested in partaking. The survey contains a letter of consent on the instrument’s first page, which explains the project’s purpose and the voluntary and anonymous nature of participation. Participants filled out the questionnaire with six Likert-type options ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The administration of the questionnaires was conducted over 3 days, during which participants congregated at the common rooms in the police stations except most senior officers who were given the privilege to complete the questionnaires in their respective offices.

The three Senatorial zones had a total of 3,640 police officers. The sampling process generated an initial, nonrandom sample of 150 police officers who agreed to participate and received the survey. Among them, 128 officers completed and returned the survey, resulting in a response rate of 85%. Among the final sample of 128 officers, 60.2% were male, 91.1% served in urban areas, and 86.7% were Christians. The majority of respondents (67.2%) were constables, corporals, and sergeants. Slightly higher than one third (36.7%) of respondents had a high school diploma, and another one third (33.6%) were college educated. Over three quarters (78.1%) of participants were married. Finally, 46.9% of the respondents were supervisors. The main reason for having a high percentage of supervisors was that a great number of officers assigned to the Headquarters and the Area Commands and Divisions, where more supervisors worked, participated in the survey.

Measures

The explanatory model of Nigerian police officers’ organizational commitment consists of an exogenous variable, two mediating variables, and an endogenous variable. The exogenous variable, organizational justice (OJU), is a six-item scale adapted from Lambert et al. (2007), where the respondents were asked how fairly the department has treated them in terms of procedural justice and distributive justice. Two mediating variables represent Nigerian officers’ perceptions of organizational trust (ORT) and job satisfaction (JSA). The measure of organizational trust includes three items that reflect officers’ perceived trustworthiness of their supervisors and management, which have been used in prior studies on correctional officers’ organizational trust (see Haynes et al., 2020). Following similar items in Griffin et al. (2014), job satisfaction is also a three-item measure that indicates officers’ job satisfaction levels.

The endogenous variable, organizational commitment (OCO), which reflects the affective commitment, is a four-item measure that included four questions from Mowday and colleagues’ (1982) organizational commitment questionnaire and has been used by previous studies on police officers (Lambert et al., 2015). We made minor wording changes to Mowday and colleagues’ (1982) original items to fit the context of studying a police force in Nigeria. Missing values were replaced with the corresponding mean for a small number of cases.¹

Table 1 displays the items used for the four latent variables and their descriptive statistics. We confirmed the appropriateness of the construction of these variables by conducting confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results from CFA are explained in detail in the next section. The Cronbach’s alpha associated with each of these scales is .77 or higher (see Table 1), indicating at least acceptable internal reliability. Table 2 shows the correlational matrix of all variables. The highest correlation between two explanatory variables (organizational trust and job satisfaction) was .45, which was acceptable. The CFA results also indicate that these latent variables of organizational justice, organizational commitment, organizational trust, and job satisfaction are all statistically distinguishable.

Table 1:

Descriptive Statistics and Reliability Test Results (n = 128)

Scales and items	M	SD	Range	α
Organizational justice (OJU) (1 = very unfair; 5 = very fair)	16.84	6.09	6–30	.86
How fair have your police agency been in rewarding you when you consider the amount of effort that you have put forth	2.79	1.38	1–5
How fair have your police agency been to you when you consider the responsibilities that you have at work	3.86	1.25	1–5
How fair have your police agency been in rewarding you when you consider the work you have done well	2.76	1.25	1–5
How fair is the promotion process here	2.53	1.37	1–5
How fair is your police agency in explaining decisions that have a significant effect on you	2.98	1.29	1–5
How fair is your police agency in treating you with respect and dignity	2.93	1.36	1–5
Organizational trust (ORT) (1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)	12.14	3.90	3–18	.77
My supervisor is an honest person	4.06	1.53	1–6
I have a trusting relationship with my supervisor	3.91	1.53	1–6
When management says something, you can believe it is true	3.72	1.58	1–6
Job satisfaction (JSA) (1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)	12.91	4.28	3–18	.86
Most days I am happy about my job	4.32	1.72	1–6
I find real satisfaction in my job	4.20	1.60	1–6
I feel satisfied with my job	4.39	1.50	1–6
Organizational commitment (OCO) (1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)	18.39	5.96	4–24	.87
I am proud to tell people that I work for the Nigeria Police Force	4.86	1.63	1–6
I really care about the fate of the Nigeria Police Force	4.95	1.39	1–6
The Nigeria police force really inspires the best in me in the way of job performance	4.61	1.66	1–6
I tell my friends that this is a great organization to work for	4.54	1.68	1–6

Table 2:

Correlation Matrix of All Variables (n = 128)

Variables	1	2	3	4
1. Organizational commitment	1.00
2. Organizational justice	.16	1.00
3. Organizational trust	.42**	.32**	1.00
4. Job satisfaction	.68**	.36**	.45**	1.00

p < .01.

Analysis Plan

We employed the statistical program Mplus7.4 to perform SEM analysis on organizational commitment. Before estimating SEM, we first performed CFA to determine construct validity, determining whether those theoretically driven indicators are loading onto their respective factors. We then conducted SEM to analyze the relationships between the four latent variables. Serial multiple mediation analysis was conducted, as organizational trust and job satisfaction are expected to mediate the association between organizational justice and organizational commitment, and organizational trust is further hypothesized to influence job satisfaction. The maximum likelihood algorithm was used to generate model parameters. To check whether our model fits the observations, several regularly used model fit statistics were introduced, including (a) the comparative fit index (CFI); (b) the Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI); (c) the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA); and (d) the value of chi-square, df and associated p value.

It should be noted that although there is no single correct or universally accepted calculation or method for determining sample size for SEM, there are some proposed “rules of thumb.” For instance, some statistics scholars have recommended using the ratio of observations to estimated parameters (N: q) as a guide. Bentler and Chou (1987) recommended a N:q ratio of 5 to 1. As we have 57 free parameters to estimate in both CFA and SEM models, our sample size is smaller than what the rules of thumb require. It is worth mentioning that the fit indices we used are biased against small samples suggesting a good fit. Specifically, while CFI and TLI tend to be downwardly biased, RMSEA tended to be upwardly biased (Shi et al., 2019). This means that all three fit indices are inclined to produce estimates that suggested a worse fit than their population counterparts (Shi et al., 2019), meaning that a good model fit revealed by our sample data would suggest that the model fit the population well (even better).

Results

CFA Results

Figure 2 depicts the CFA results for the measurement model. The model fit statistics revealed that the hypothesized model fit the data well (TLI = .96; CFI = .97; RMSEA = .06; χ² = 133.10, df = 95, p = .006). This measurement model did not yield any excessively large modification indices, suggesting that model modification is unnecessary. Factor loadings ranged from .48 to .92, above the conventional cutoff point of .40 for acceptable factor loadings for CFA. All indicators were loaded onto respective factors, justifying the four latent measures of organizational justice, organizational trust, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The correlation between these factors is low to moderate, varying from .20 to .56, except a high value (r = .87) between job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Figure 2:

Confirmatory Factor Analysis Results

SEM Results

Figure 3 presents the SEM results.² Table 3 summarizes the direct, indirect, and total effects of exogenous and mediating variables on organizational commitment. As illustrated in Figure 3, three of the paths are significant (as represented by solid lines), whereas the other three are not significant (as shown in dot lines). Goodness-of-fit statistics suggest a good fit of the model to the data (TLI = .96; CFI = .97; RMSEA = .06; χ² = 1,215.87, df = 120, p = .006).

Figure 3:

Structural Equation Modeling Results

Table 3:

Direct, Indirect, and Total Effects of Organizational Commitment (n = 128)

	Job satisfaction	Organizational commitment
Organizational justice
Total effect	.34***	.19*
Total indirect	.16**	.33***
Direct	.18	–.14
Specific indirect
Organizational trust	.16^*	.04
Job satisfaction	—	.15
Organizational trust and job satisfaction	—	.14**

Note. Standardized path coefficients were reported.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Although we hypothesized that organizational justice exerts both a direct and an indirect connection to organizational commitment, the relationship between organizational justice and commitment is mostly indirect through organizational trust and job satisfaction (β = .33; p < .001; see Table 3). Contrary to our expectation, organizational justice is not a significant direct predictor of organizational commitment (β = −.14; p = .08). Nonetheless, as shown in Table 3, organizational justice significantly affects organizational commitment (β = .19; p = .04). As speculated, organizational justice is significantly linked to organizational trust (β = .33; p < .001). Officers who perceived more excellent institutional justice express higher levels of trust in supervisors. However, greater trust in supervisors is not significantly related to organizational commitment (β = .13; p = .17), making the effect of organizational trust on organizational commitment primarily indirect through job satisfaction (β = .14; p < .001).

While organizational justice fails to exert a significant, direct linkage to job satisfaction (β = .18; p = .06), it has a significant, indirect effect on job satisfaction through organizational trust (β = .16; p = .003). As we expected, higher degrees of officers’ job satisfaction are accompanied by more substantial organizational commitment (β = .84; p < .001).

Finally, we expected the two mediating variables to be connected, with organizational trust shaping job satisfaction. The results support such an expectation that officers with higher perceived supervisor trustworthiness report higher job satisfaction levels (β = .50; p < .001). Together, organizational justice’s effect on organizational commitment is mainly indirect, through first organizational trust and then job satisfaction.

Discussion

Drawing upon survey data garnered from a Nigerian police officer sample, this study assesses how the employee–organization relationship may directly and indirectly shape officers’ citizenship behavior of organizational commitment. We found that positive employment relationships can be initiated by an organization’s fair treatment of its employees, which, in turn, can advance rank and file’s occupational attitudes of commitment valued by the police. Specifically, although Nigerian officers’ feelings about being treated fairly by the organization do not directly predict their willingness to commit to the force, organizational justice is indirectly linked to organizational commitment through the mechanisms of organizational trust and job satisfaction. Our findings display a clear route from organizational justice to organizational commitment by first going through trust-in-supervisors and then through job satisfaction.

While theoretically sound and confirmed by organizational studies, a direct connection between an organization’s fair treatment of its employees and employees’ evaluations of their supervisors’ trustworthiness has received sporadic attention in the criminological research. Our findings confirm such an association by showing that Nigerian officers with a stronger sense of organizational justice are more inclined to view their supervisors as trustworthy. As organizational justice is not directly predictive of the second mediating variable, job satisfaction, the direct relationship between organizational justice and organizational trust becomes essential in transmitting the positive outcomes resulting from fair treatment of officers by the police force to satisfaction with police work.

Interestingly, expressing a trustworthy view of supervisors has no direct impact on officers’ commitment to their organization. Instead, a trustworthy relationship with supervisors is directly related to a higher level of job satisfaction, contributing to a higher degree of organizational commitment. Our findings suggest that the positive linkage between organizational trust and job satisfaction found in other professions applies to the policing setting. Job satisfaction is an important underlying psychological mechanism that transforms the perception of organizational trust to organizational commitment. In sum, both organizational trust and job satisfaction collectively mediate the relationship between organizational justice and commitment.

A few limitations and directions for future improvement associated with our study should be noted. First, our study sample came from a single state of Nigeria. Our sample also contained a higher proportion of frontline supervisors, limiting our findings’ generalizability to rank and file as supervisors tend to display more favorable attitudes toward organizational justice, trust, and organizational commitment. More diverse and random samples from all ranks and different regions should be considered in future research to enhance the study sample’s representation. Second, although our sample of 128 officers is relatively small for SEM, the approach was used as it allowed a better assessment of the mediating effects of organizational trust and job satisfaction than the traditional regression analysis. Besides, the fit indices are good, and the significant effects are interpretable. A larger sample size would be preferable in future research. Third, although we used a multiple-item scale to measure organizational commitment with good internal reliability, the composite may not adequately reflect, for instance, all three types of commitment (i.e., affective, normative, and continuance commitment). As different types of commitment are influenced by various aspects of job satisfaction (Nalla et al., 2020), future research should capture these potential variations by working relevant questions into the survey instrument. Finally, our mediating variable, organizational trust, only taps into supervisor trust and management trust. The third form of organization trust, coworker trust, should be incorporated into future studies to adequately represent the concept.

Although Nigerian officers are subjected to a highly disadvantaged working climate, our findings suggest that enhancing organizational justice is a promising way to cultivate organizational commitment. If police leaders want to encourage organizational commitment among rank and file, then a culture of organizational justice that stresses respect, neutrality, voice, and accountability should be intensely cultivated and promoted. The psychology literature has long acknowledged that training leaders on organizational justice principles can foster organizational citizenship behaviors (see Skarlicki & Latham, 1996). Recent studies have shown that procedural justice training programs are instrumental in promoting police officers’ and supervisors’ acceptance of key elements of procedural justice, generating more positive police–citizen interactions, and reducing the use of force and citizen complaints (Dai, 2020; Skogan et al., 2015; Wood et al., 2020). Police departments should work closely with police scholars, organizational psychologists, and human resource specialists to design and implement similar training programs targeted at police administrators and supervisors. These training programs’ goal is to instill participative and transactional leadership styles and open and fair management practices into police managers. Effective program implementation over time is likely to cultivate a culture of organizational justice within police agencies. Greater attention should be given to fair treatment that can particularly foster trustworthy relationships and job satisfaction as both are essential paths toward stronger organizational commitment. Police leaders ought to have firm determination and dedication to promote organizational justice practices that would benefit frontline officers and advance the entire agency’s interests.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Ivan Y. Sun

Yuning Wu

Macpherson U. Nnam

Notes

Ivan Y. Sun is a professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. His research interests include police attitudes and behavior, public opinion on legal authorities, and crime and justice in Asian societies. His most recent publications on policing have appeared in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Police Quarterly, and British Journal of Criminology.

Yuning Wu is a professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Wayne State University. She currently conducts research on public perceptions of crime and justice, policing, and victimization. Her recent research has appeared in journals such as Justice Quarterly, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Crime & Delinquency, and Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.

Smart E. Otu is a professor in the Department of Criminology and Security Studies at Alex Ekwueme Federal University. His area of specialties includes prisons, police and policing, crime analysis, public perceptions on crime, and human rights violations. His current research has appeared in journals such as International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology; Psychology, Crime & Law; and Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice.

Gilbert C. Aro is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike Ikwo (AEFUNAI), Ebonyi State, Nigeria. He holds a PhD in political science with emphasis in international relations. His other areas of research interest include peace and conflict studies, electoral studies, and methodology.

Ikechukwu Charles Akor is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, AEFUNAI, Ebonyi State, Nigeria. He is on the verge of completing his PhD program in the Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria Nsukka, with emphasis on political economy. His other areas of research interest include government and politics, gender studies, and international relations.

Macpherson U. Nnam is currently the head of Department of Criminology and Security Studies, AEFUNAI, Ebonyi State, Nigeria. He earned his BSc in sociology and anthropology and MSc and PhD in criminology, with specialty in activist/critical criminology and organized crime, and subspecialty in kidnapping, terrorism, and radical social movements. His other areas of research interest and cognate expertise include, but are not limited to, qualitative research, policing, security studies, analyses of crime, drug studies, and crime theory-building and theory-deconstruction.

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