The Indirect Effect of Employee Entitlement: A Career Stage Perspective

Abstract

The moderating role of career stage on employee entitlement and the mediating role of organizational justice on the relationship between employee entitlement and outcomes of work engagement and counterproductive work behaviours were examined with a sample of 624 Canadian government and North America employees. Contrary to expectations, career stage did not significantly impact levels of employee entitlement. Likewise, full scale organizational justice was not found to be a significant mediator; however, some of the subscales were. Distributive, procedural, and interpersonal justice demonstrated a significant mediation of the effect of employee entitlement on work engagement; procedural and interpersonal justice demonstrated a significant mediation of the effect of employee entitlement on counterproductive work behaviour. Findings suggest the importance of facets of organizational justice in mediating the effect of employee entitlement and career stage plays no significant role in the development of employee entitlement. This paper would not have been possible without the boundless support of my family, supervisor, friends and colleagues. For my wife, thank you for the unwavering support throughout this often-trying experience. For my sons, thank you for understanding why I could not always make it to those planned outings. For Dr. Janet Mantler, I am very appreciative of the patience, guidance, support and mentoring. You have helped me become a more focused researcher and capable writer. For Dr. Bernadette Campbell, thank you for providing advice and guidance as part of my prospectus committee. For the Carleton Psychology Department administrative staff, your prompt and accurate guidance through the administrative process was invaluable.

Employee Entitlement: Is There A Universal Approach That We Can Use in the Organizational Settings?

“…It is worth mentioning that employee entitlement in her research has been analyzed from the perspective of others, not from the perspective of a particular individual (self-reported). Lawlor (2017) assumed that there is no mediation effect of organizational justice on the relationship between employee entitlement and CWBs, but there is a significant mediation effect for the subscales of procedural and informational justice. In this particular case, the study was conducted using the self-reported scale of employee entitlement, although CWBs were not divided into behavior that may be directed towards the organization or coworkers.…”