Does personality affect the individual's perceptions of organizational justice? The mediating role of organizational politics
Benchmarking: An International Journal
ISSN: 1463-5771
Article publication date: 8 July 2021
Issue publication date: 8 March 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The personality of an individual plays a vital role in the way an individual perceives organizational politics and justice in the workplace. However, there is meager research on how an individual's personality affects the perceptions of organizational politics and justice. This study endeavors to fill this gap by analyzing the mediating role of organizational politics perceptions on the relationship between Big Five personality dimensions and organizational justice by controlling various demographic variables. The study also proposes a benchmarking model that the policymakers can use to create positive organizational justice perceptions.
Design/methodology/approach
In this cross-sectional research, the data were collected through a multi-stage random sampling technique from 493 faculty members working in four public universities of Punjab, India. Out of 493 employees, 76.9% of the employees were assistant professors, 12.0% were associate professors and 11.2% were assistant professors. 51.5% of the employees were female, and 48.5% of the employees were male. To test the proposed hypothesized relationships, a structural equation modeling technique was used.
Findings
Results of the structural equation modeling showed that openness to experience, conscientiousness and extraversion have a negative relationship with perceptions of organizational politics. However, their relationship with perceptions of organizational justice is positive. Neuroticism has a positive relationship with perceptions of organizational politics, whereas it has a negative relationship with perceptions of organizational justice. Results also showed that high perceptions of organizational politics have a negative effect on employee's perceptions regarding organizational justice. The mediation analysis results showed that perceptions of organizational politics mediate the relationship between an individual's personality and perceptions of organizational justice.
Originality/value
There is a scant amount of research available that considers Big Five personality dimensions and organizational politics as the antecedents of organizational justice. Hence, the current study tries to fill this research gap by proposing a research model on antecedents and consequences of perceptions of organizational politics based on the cognitive-affective processing system (CAPS).
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the editorial board and the respected reviewers for evaluating and accepting the paper.
Funding: No funding is received for this research.
Conflicts of interest: On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Availability of data and material: The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Ethical approval: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Citation
Aggarwal, A., Nobi, K., Mittal, A. and Rastogi, S. (2022), "Does personality affect the individual's perceptions of organizational justice? The mediating role of organizational politics", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 997-1026. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-08-2020-0414
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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