Interactional justice, leader-member exchange, and employee performance: Examining the moderating role of justice differentiation

Abstract

Past research suggests that interactional justice plays a pivotal role in facilitating high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX), with downstream implications for employee performance. However, the broader context in which these effects unfold has received scarce attention. Drawing from deontic justice and social exchange theories, we suggest that interactional justice differentiation is an important contextual moderator of the link between interactional justice and LMX. Specifically, we argue that high interactional justice differentiation attenuates the link between interactional justice and LMX, in turn influencing the effects of interactional justice on employee task and creative performance. Results from two studies employing both experimental and multisource, multilevel survey designs provide convergent support for the hypothesized model. We conclude by highlighting several key theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Combining Associations Between Emotional Intelligence, Work Motivation, and Organizational Justice With Counterproductive Work Behavior: A Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (PAMS) Approach

“…While LMX's role as a potential mediator of workplace misbehaviors has been investigated (e.g., He et al, 2017), most studies emphasize contextual-level or job-level predictors (e.g., He et al, 2017;Sharif and Scandura, 2017). However, less is known about the effects of individuals' dispositional differences on LMX (e.g., Maslyn et al, 2017;Hao et al, 2019).…”

Why and When Empowering Leadership Has Different Effects on Employee Work Performance: The Pivotal Roles of Passion for Work and Role Breadth Self-Efficacy

“…The overall conceptual model is depicted in Figure 1. In this research, we focus on both task performance and creative performance as the outcomes of empowering leadership because they are recognized as the two most vital outputs of employees that are required by organizations in today’s business world (He, Fehr, Yam, Long, & Hao, 2017) and because they have been widely studied in the empowering leadership literature (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015). In total, our study makes several theoretical contributions.…”

An integrative ethical approach to leader favoritism

“…Interactive relations exist between distributive and procedural justice, as negative outcomes (distribution) lead people to examine the procedure (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Cohen‐Charash & Spector, 2001). Interactional justice relates to aspects of the communication process, such as politeness and respect (He, Fehr, Yam, Long, & Hao, 2017; Tyler & Bies, 1990). Employees’ support for their leaders is heavily based on judgments of fairness, and studies show that a leader is influential mainly in judging procedural and interactional justice (Cropanzano & Byrne, 2000; Folger & Konovsky, 1989).…”