Low organisational justice and heavy drinking: a prospective cohort study

Anne Kouvonen ^1*, Mika Kivimäki ², Marko Elovainio ³, Ari K.P. Vaananen ⁴, Roberto De Vogli ⁵, Tarja Heponiemi ⁶, Anne Linna ⁴, Jaana Pentti ⁴ and Jussi Vahtera ⁴

¹ University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
² University College London, United Kingdom
³ National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health, Finland
⁴ Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Finland
⁵ International Centre for Health and Society, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Universi, United Kingdom
⁶ National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES), Finland

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: anne.kouvonen{at}nottingham.ac.uk.

Accepted 15 June 2007

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate whether low perceived organisational injustice predicts heavy drinking among employees. Methods: Data from the prospective occupational cohort study, the 10-Town Study, related to 15 290 Finnish public sector local government employees nested in 2432 work units, were used. Non-drinkers were excluded. Procedural, interactional and total organisational justice, heavy drinking (>=210 g of absolute alcohol per week) and other psychosocial factors were determined by means of questionnaire in 2000-2001 (phase 1) and 2004 (phase 2). Multilevel logistic regression analyses taking into account for the hierarchical structure of the data were conducted and adjustments were made for sex, age, socio-economic position, marital status, baseline heavy drinking, psychological distress and other psychosocial risk factors such as job strain and effort/reward imbalance. Results: After adjustments, participants who reported low procedural justice at phase 1 were about 1.2 times more likely to be heavy drinkers at phase 2 compared with their counterparts with high justice. Low perceived justice in interpersonal treatment and low perceived total organisational justice were associated with an elevated prevalence of heavy drinking only in the socio-demographics adjusted model. Conclusions: This is the first longitudinal study to show that low procedural justice is weakly associated with an increased likelihood of heavy drinking.

Keywords: alcohol consumption, heavy drinking, organisational justice, psychosocial factors

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