Combined effects of uncertainty and organizational justice on employee health: Testing the uncertainty management model of fairness judgments among Finnish public sector employees

Abstract

We examined whether the combination of uncertainty (lack of work-time control, and negative changes at work) and organizational justice (i.e., justice of decision-making procedures and interpersonal treatment at work) contributes to sickness absence. A total of 7083 male and 24,317 female Finnish public sector employees completed questionnaires designed to assess organizational justice, workload and other factors. Hierarchical regression showed that after adjustment for age, income, and health behaviors low procedural and interactional justice were related to long sickness absence spells. In accordance with the uncertainty management model, these associations were dependent on experienced work-time control and perceived changes at work.

Introduction

Organizational justice is a construct defining the quality of social interaction at work (Greenberg, 1990; Konovsky, 2000;Lind & Tyler, 1988). The term ‘organizational justice’ refers to the extent to which employees are treated with justice at their workplace (Moorman, 1991). Organizational justice has been mainly divided as a distributive, procedural and interactional component (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001; Folger & Konovsky, 1989; Greenberg, 1986; Konovsky, 2000). These components of justice have been used as a theoretical framework in a wide range of contexts (e.g. Elovainio, Kivimäki, & Helkama, 2001; Folger & Konovsky, 1989; McFarlin & Sweeney, 1992; Moorman, 1991; van den Bos, Vermunt, & Wilke, 1997).

In the present study we focused on the procedural and the interactional component of organizational justice. The procedural component indicates, among other things, whether decision-making procedures: include input from affected parties; are consistently applied; suppress bias; are accurate; are correctable; and are ethical (Leventhal, 1980). The interactional element refers to treating individuals with politeness and consideration by supervisors when procedures are implemented (Bies & Moag, 1986; Tyler & Lind, 1992).

Organizational justice has been shown to play an important role in the health and well-being of employees (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Elovainio et al., 2001). It has been associated with job dissatisfaction, retaliation, workplace aggression, lower work commitment and withdrawal (Folger & Konovsky, 1989; Jawahar, 2002; Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, & Taylor, 2000; McFarlin & Sweeney, 1992; Moorman, 1991). Previous research also suggests that low perceived justice is related to factors that influence susceptibility to illness, such as elevated unfavorable serum lipids and negative feelings (Räikkönen, Matthews, Flory, Owens, & Gump, 1999; Richards, Hof, & Alvarenga, 2000). Low justice has also been shown to increase risk of mental distress, psychiatric disorders, sickness absence, and poor self-rated health status (Boer, Bakker, Syroit, & Schaufeli, 2002; Elovainio, Kivimäki, & Vahtera, 2002; Kivimäki, Elovainio, Vahtera, & Ferrie, 2003a; Kivimäki, Elovainio, Vahtera, Virtanen, & Stansfeld, 2003b; Tepper, 2001; Zohar, 1995). The idea, proposing that perception of injustice is caused by discrepancy between efforts and rewards, resembles assumptions behind most of the classic occupational stress theories (Vermunt & Steensma, 2001).

A recent explanation for the strong effects of experiences of organizational justice on human reactions was offered by van den Bos, Wilke, and Lind (1998), who proposed that fairness matters to people, because it helps them to deal with uncertainty. This uncertainty model is based on the previous theory called fairness heuristic theory (Lind, 2001; Lind & Earley, 1992; Van den Bos & Van Prooijen, 2001) suggesting that people especially need fairness judgments when they are concerned about potential problems associated with social interdependence and socially based identity processes. The tension between the benefits of interdependence on the one hand and the risks associated with interdependence on the other has been termed the fundamental social dilemma.

This dilemma is concerned with the question of whether one can trust others (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler & Lind, 1992; Smith, Tyler, Huo, Ortiz, & Lind, 1998). According to fairness heuristic theory, if people do not have information about the authority's trustworthiness, procedural fairness serves as a heuristic substitute in the process of deciding how to judge the trustworthiness. As a consequence, fairness heuristic theory suggest, that when people do not have information about authority's trustworthiness, they will react more positively towards the outcome they received from the authority when they believe that the authority had been employing fair as opposed to unfair procedures. On the other hand, this theory also suggests that when people do have direct, explicit information about authority's trustworthiness they are less in need of procedural fairness as a heuristic substitute and less strong fair process effects should occur.

According to a more generalized uncertainty management model of fairness judgments, people become especially attentive to the information they need to form fairness judgments when they find themselves in unclear or unpredictable situations (van den Bos, 2001; van den Bos & Lind, 2002; van den Bos & Miedema, 2000). Solid, firmly constructed fairness judgments either remove uncertainty or alleviate much of the discomfort that uncertainty would otherwise generate. Furthermore, when forming fairness judgments people make predictable leaps of judgment to resolve uncertainties they encounter within the fairness judgment process. According to van den Bos and Lind's (2002) uncertainty management model, fairness is important for people because fairness judgments are an effective and readily available device for handling the various uncertainties they face. Following this, it is reasonable to assume that perceived injustice in an uncertain situation represents a greater health risk than in a more certain and predictable situation.

According to the uncertainty management model, situations, whether social or not, that provoke feelings of uncertainty, doubt, or confusion provide the stimulus for seeking and using fairness judgments. The key element is the salience of either the unpredictability of future events or the inconsistency between important cognitions, experiences, or behaviors. In previous conceptions of the uncertainty management model, the range of uncertainty-provoking, unpredictable situations was very broad. In the current paper, we tried to specify this somewhat and, on the basis of previous literature, argue for operationalizing the work-related uncertainty through two sources: lack of control over working times, and recent negatively experienced changes at work.

The concept of control refers to power or mastery of the environment as a means for maintaining homeostasis, which may be reduced in stress situations (Fisher, 1989). Controlling aversive situations make individuals believe that the consequence is created by their own response (Miller, 1979), thus increasing predictability and reducing uncertainty. Thus, control implies the power to reverse, attenuate or remove the source of threat. Competent decisions that enable the individual to control a potentially threatening situation are fundamental aspects of homeostasis, and are likely to reduce feelings of uncertainty (Fisher, 1989).

A form of control that has been shown to relate with health at work is control over working times, that is autonomy with regard to work-time (worker control over the duration, position, and distribution of his/her work-time) (Ala-Mursula, Vahtera, Kivimäki, & Kevin, 2002; Alfredsson, Spetz, & Theorell, 1985; Hammar, Alfredsson, & Theorell, 1994). Compared to other forms of job control (Karasek, 1979), which refers to multiple dimensions of control within work (opportunities to participate and use skills), the dimension of work-time control is located at the work/non-work interface. According to Frese (1989), the different dimensions of control may bear a varying relevance on health across individuals and across time. Low work-time control may hamper the successful combination of work-life demands with unavoidable non-work responsibilities, thus creating a sense of uncertainty and unpredictability reaching beyond a working day.

A recent meta-analysis has linked flexible scheduling, control over the beginning and end of a workday, with lower absenteeism (Baltes, Briggs, Huff, Wright, & Neuman, 1999). Low control of work-time at the occupational level has been linked with an increased risk of hospitalization and cardiovascular disease (Alfredsson et al., 1985; Hammar et al., 1994). A recent cross sectional study showed an association between perceived low work-time control and poor health among women, but not among men (Ala-Mursula et al., 2002).

Important sources of uncertainty in modern work life include continuous and rapid changes. According to the findings of Vahtera, Kivimäki, Pentti, and Theorell, (2000a) and Vahtera, Kivimaki, Uutela, & Pentti (2000b) and Kivimäki, Vahtera, Pentti, and Ferrie (2000), negative changes in the psychosocial work environment have detrimental effects on the health of employees. Their results showed that a combination of poor psychosocial work characteristics and an adverse change in some other psychosocial factor, such as predictability of the work environment or possibilities for participation in decision-making, was associated with the greatest risk of subsequent illness. We suggest that perceived negative changes in the work environment reflect a state in which employees are not able to affect things in predictable ways and, in this way, negative changes constitute one source of uncertainty at work.

In sum, we hypothesized that organizational injustice is a type of job stressor, which affects psychological, physical, and behavioral reactions (Elovainio et al., 2002). Furthermore, we argued that the relationship between low justice and strain may be moderated by uncertainty-related aspects of the situation (van den Bos & Lind, 2002), such as low work-time control or negative changes. Several experimental studies indicate that uncertainty or lack of control and negative changes do not just affect people's perceptions of what they consider to be fair but also affect people's reactions to perceived fairness (Lind, 2001; van den Bos, 2001). This seems to provide supportive evidence for the idea that uncertainty or lack of control may intensify the relationship between organizational justice experiences and psychological, physical, and behavioral reactions.

Evidence from real-life situations and organizations is, however, scarce (Lind & van den Bos, 2002). In the current study, we examined whether both the procedural and interactional components of organizational justice became stronger predictors of employee health when a situation was perceived as uncertain (i.e., when work-time control is low, or when people perceive changes at work as being mainly negative). For the reasons mentioned above, we hypothesized that workers exposed to both low certainty and low justice (either procedural or interactional justice) would have the highest relative risk for sickness absence than other workers (Fig. 1).

Hypothesis 1

Procedural and interactional justice are related to a higher rate of sickness absence in men and women.

Hypothesis 2

The association between justice and health is stronger in uncertain situations characterized by low work-time control, and recent negative changes at work.

In previous studies a stronger health effect of injustice among women compared to men have been reported (Elovainio et al, 2001; Kivimäki et al, 2003b) and that is why we tested all models separately in men and women.