Understanding the connection between organizational justice, emotions and employee strain

People who experience injustice at work often hide the negative emotions that result and fake positive emotions in their place. This process of emotion management-called emotional labor-produces emotional dissonance, which has been linked with undesirable work outcomes such as job burnout and turnover intentions. This paper investigates a theoretical model that merges two different literatures: one that has shown relationships between organizational justice and emotions, and another that has shown relationships among emotions, emotional dissonance, and resulting outcomes such as burnout and turnover. Taken as a whole, the model proposed and investigated in this paper demonstrates the mediating influence of emotion management when low fairness perceptions lead to job burnout and ultimately, turnover. One hundred and sixty-seven participants completed surveys, and analysis of their responses supported many of the hypotheses proposed in this paper. Specifically, the data indicated that organizational justice was inversely related to negative emotions and that negative emotions were positively related to emotional dissonance. Emotional dissonance showed a strong association with burnout and burnout showed a strong association with turnover intentions. The model demonstrates how the experience of unfairness at work leads to the instantiation and suppression of negative emotions, which subsequently create a sense of emotional dissonance in the perceiver. This emotional dissonance can further contribute to the feeling of burnout and intentions to quit. In addition to the hypothesized theoretical model, a set of alternative models were also evaluated to determine if emotional dissonance and burnout acted as full or partial mediators. Theoretical contributions of these findings and future directions for research are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

Colorado State University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Authors dc:creator

• Mazurkiewicz, Mark D., author
• Byrne, Zinta S., advisor

• burnout
• emotional labor
• emotions
• organizational justice
• strain

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.

Language dc:language.iso

eng, English

Identifier URI

https://doi.org/10.25675/3.018294

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mountainscholar.org:10217/237864