Organizational justice, employees' ethical behavior, and job satisfaction in the casino industry

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to examine the antecedents and consequence of casino employees' ethical behavior. In particular, it proposes that both distributive and procedural justice have positive influences on such behavior, which in turn positively affects workers' job satisfaction. The paper aims to help casino management pinpoint areas for enhancing and promoting employees' ethical behavior so as to benefit industry stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire was designed based on a literature review and preliminary conversations with 37 casino employees. These were distributed to frontline casino employees working in the slot and table games departments. Exploratory factor analysis and path analysis were employed to test the proposed model.

Findings

The paper shows that casino employees' ethical behavior was positively influenced by both procedural and distributive justice, with the former a slightly stronger motivator. Of the three proposed determinants of casino employees' job satisfaction, distributive justice had the most strongly positive effect.

Practical implications

This paper suggests that action could be taken by management to enhance employees' perception of both distributive and procedural justice to motivate ethical behavior. Furthermore, casino managers should be aware that distributive justice plays a more important role than procedural justice and ethical behavior in enhancing casino employees' job satisfaction. In making decisions, they should consider outcome fairness to demonstrate distributive justice.

Originality/value

Currently, to the best of the authours' knowledge, there is no study linking both distributive and procedural justice with employees' ethical behavior and job satisfaction within a single framework. In addition, there is no research evaluating how organizational justice influences employees' ethical behavior when interacting with customers. This paper fills this gap.

Citation

Chen McCain, S., Tsai, H. and Bellino, N. (2010), "Organizational justice, employees' ethical behavior, and job satisfaction in the casino industry", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 22 No. 7, pp. 992-1009. https://doi.org/10.1108/09596111011066644