Does procedural justice climate increase the identification and engagement of migrant workers? A group engagement model perspective

PurposeMigrant workers often suffer from social exclusion in the workplace and therefore identify less with their organization and engage less with their work. To address this issue, the authors integrate research on migrant workers with research on the group engagement model to create a model for understanding and enhancing migrant worker engagement. This allows us to provide insight into how organizations can design their human resource management systems and practices to increase the work engagement of migrant workers.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a survey study with over 4,000 employees from more than 500 workplaces in Australia to test the model.FindingsThe results of the multilevel analysis indicate that a procedurally fair work environment increases organizational identification, which in turn is associated with higher work engagement. The results also indicate that procedural justice climate is more important for migrant workers and increases their organizational identification and engagement.Originality/valueTo increase work engagement of migrant workers, organizations can establish a procedurally fair work environment in which cultural minorities experience unbiased policies and procedures, are able to express their opinions and participate in decision-making.

Procedural justice and voice: a group engagement model

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact on employee voice from formal vs informal sources of procedural justice: group responsiveness and interactional justice, and to test how this impact may vary according to employees’ traditionality. Design/methodology/approach Dyadic data were collected from 261 employees and their supervisors. Results of the analyses offered support for the hypothesized moderated mediation model where group responsiveness and interactional justice would influence employee voice through enhanced organization-based self-esteem, and where such influence would be moderated by traditionality. Findings The findings showed that when there was a high level of group responsiveness, low traditionalists spoke up more, but when there was a high level of interactional justice, high traditionalists spoke up more. Originality/value By adopting the group engagement model, this study presented an alternative to the conventional perspective from uncertainty management theory about justice and voice, and tended to the neglect of fairness as an antecedent of voice by investigating how employees’ engagement in voice can be affected by their experience with different sources of procedural fairness information.

Interactional Justice and Employee Silence: The Roles of Procedural Justice and Affect

In order to explore further the contingent influence mechanism of interactional justice on employee silence, we investigated how procedural justice moderates the interactional justice– silence relationship directly and indirectly through affect, drawing on the group engagement model and affect theories. We analyzed data collected from a survey completed by 272 Chinese subordinate–supervisor dyads and found that procedural justice strengthened the interactional justice–silence relationship both directly and indirectly through positive affect, and that positive affect had a stronger moderating effect on the interactional justice–silence relationship than did negative affect. However, negative affect did not mediate the moderating effect of procedural justice on the interactional justice–silence relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The Group Engagement Model: Procedural Justice, Social Identity, and Cooperative Behavior

The group engagement model expands the insights of the group-value model of procedural justice and the relational model of authority into an explanation for why procedural justice shapes cooperation in groups, organizations, and societies. It hypothesizes that procedures are important because they shape people's social identity within groups, and social identity in turn influences attitudes, values, and behaviors. The model further hypothesizes that resource judgments exercise their influence indirectly by shaping social identity. This social identity mediation hypothesis explains why people focus on procedural justice, and in particular on procedural elements related to the quality of their interpersonal treatment, because those elements carry the most social identity-relevant information. In this article, we review several key insights of the group engagement model, relate these insights to important trends in psychological research on justice, and discuss implications of the model for the future of procedural justice research.