In this study, the scores of young nurses’ job performance were higher than those of Wang et al. [52]. This difference may be due to the fact that our study participants originated from prefecture-level city hospitals, whereas all of their study participants were medical staff at the grass-roots level in townships, or it may be that China’s COVID-19 epidemic was more severe at the time of their survey, which had an impact on the participants’ job performance. The perceived organizational justice scores of the young nurses in this study were lower than the findings of Senay Kebede et al. [53] for employees of the Revenue and Customs Department. This may be due to the fact that there has been an emphasis on healthcare over nursing in the country, and young nurses believe that their resource allocation and remuneration packages are unreasonable, thus leading to a lower level of perceived organizational justice. Compared with the findings of Chai et al. [54], the participants in this study scored higher on organizational climate, which may be due to the fact that all of their subjects were nurses in the intensive care unit, who were exposed to patients who were usually sicker and had a higher nursing workload, and therefore the organizational climate was more serious than in other departments in the hospital. In addition, the job embeddedness scores of the young nurses in this study were slightly lower than those in He et al.’s [55] study, which we hypothesized to be due to the fact that most of their study subjects were concentrated in economically developed regions such as Shanghai and Beijing, where enterprises tend to have a more sound management model and pay more attention to humanistic care, which, to a certain extent, enhances the sense of belonging to the organization and identification, and therefore have a higher job embedding level.
We found that there is a significant positive relationship between perceived organizational justice and young nurses’ job performance, and the higher the level of perceived organizational justice of young nurses, the higher the level of their job performance, which is consistent with the results of a previous study [16]. The result also reveals that we should create a fair and just working environment for young nurses, for example, hospital management staff should focus on communication with young nurses to achieve procedural fairness and distributive fairness, etc., in order to improve their sense of organizational fairness.
This study demonstrated that organizational climate is a mediating variable between young nurses’ perceived organizational justice and job performance, confirming Hypothesis 1. Young nurses with a high level of perceived organizational justice will have a more positive organizational climate, which will not only lead to greater satisfaction with their work but also to a greater willingness to comply with organizational rules and regulations [56, 57], resulting in higher motivation and work engagement [58, 59], which in turn leads to higher levels of job performance. Therefore, hospitals should consider more from the perspective of young nurses, increase the openness and transparency of management, and provide young nurses with channels to participate in the management of the organization so as to improve their sense of organizational justice. In addition, the head nurses of each department should strengthen the internal communication of the department, carry out diversified group activities to enhance the collective consciousness and organizational identity of young nurses, and create a positive organizational atmosphere, so as to achieve the purpose of improving the job performance of young nurses.
The results of this study confirmed that job embeddedness is a mediating variable between perceived organizational justice and young nurses’ job performance, validating Hypothesis 2. The level of job embeddedness of young nurses increases with the level of perceived organizational justice, which is consistent with the results of previous studies on other populations [60, 61]. And the higher the level of job embeddedness, the closer the young nurses are connected to their colleagues and the hospital [62, 63], which facilitates the enhancement of their work performance through teamwork. Therefore, hospital management should pay attention to the dual role of perceived organizational justice and job embeddedness, not only to create a fair and just working environment for young nurses but also to pay attention to their career development, provide young nurses with diversified training opportunities and promotion paths, link young nurses’ individual career development goals with the hospital’s development goals, and stimulate their motivation to deepen the young nurses’ job embedding level.
This study also found that job embeddedness is a mediating variable between organizational climate and job performance among young nurses, and Hypothesis 3 was confirmed. This may be due to the fact that a good organizational climate creates a sense of belonging and irreplaceability within young nurses towards the hospital [64, 65, 66], and these feelings deepen an individual’s job embeddedness, which enhances their intrinsic motivation to work and increases their motivation and work efficiency [67], which ultimately manifests itself in high levels of individual job performance. Therefore, it is necessary for hospital administrators to deepen young nurses’ connection with their colleagues and units, help them set career goals that are consistent with the direction of the hospital, and provide them with appropriate material and psychological rewards.
In addition, this study found that perceived organizational justice can have an impact on young nurses’ job performance through the chain-mediated effects of organizational climate and job embeddedness. This result suggests that young nurses with high levels of perceived organizational justice have more positive perceptions of the hospital and organizational climate [68] and are more inclined to develop stronger ties with their colleagues, leaders, and the hospital [39], which can contribute to enhancing their job satisfaction and work motivation [69] and improve job performance. On the contrary, young nurses who perceive a low level of organizational justice will be dissatisfied with the atmosphere of the work environment in which they live [70], which may make them resistant to establishing harmonious relationships with other nurses and the organization, which is detrimental to the improvement of job performance.
Relevance of clinical practice
As the backbone of the nursing workforce, young nurses are prone to burnout when faced with heavy clinical nursing work, leading to a decline in the quality of nursing services, and in severe cases, even the intention to leave or leave the profession. However, the global demand for nursing services is increasing. Therefore, it is particularly important to improve the job performance of young nurses. In order to improve the job performance of young nurses, we give some suggestions with the results of this study.
First of all, for nursing managers, it is necessary to establish a scientific performance appraisal system to make a scientific and accurate assessment of the performance of young nurses. They also need to establish a good communication and feedback mechanism, strengthen communication with young nurses, pay attention to the needs of young nurses, ensure that procedures and information are fair and give nurses more power to participate in decision-making, in order to improve their perception of organizational justice.
Second, hospitals can provide a supportive working atmosphere for young nurses by improving the working environment and providing employee benefits. Each department should also hold regular group activities to cultivate the spirit of cooperation among young nurses, so that they can obtain positive emotional experiences from group cooperation, which is conducive to making young nurses perceive a more harmonious and positive organizational atmosphere. In addition, hospitals should pay attention to the cultivation of young nurses’ professional identity, regularly carry out relevant courses and training, and also recognize and encourage the performance of young nurses, help them to make good career planning, so that young nurses can make clear the path of their career development.
Finally, the whole society should give more respect and recognition to nurses and the nursing profession, so as to deepen the job embedded level of young nurses. In a word, in actual clinical management, leaders should assess the perceived organizational justice, organizational climate, and work embeddedness of young nurses in a timely manner, and develop targeted intervention programs to improve the performance of young nurses.
Limitations
This study has some limitations. Firstly, the subjects of this study are all young nurses in Henan Province, so the results may not be generalizable, and in the future, we can select young nurses from different regions to conduct more studies. Second, we used a self-administered questionnaire for data collection, so the results may be subjective, and in the future, we can choose some more objective methods or combine them with qualitative research in order to make the results of the study closer to the real situation. Finally, this study only reveals the effect of perceived organizational justice on job performance and the mediating role of organizational climate and job embeddedness, and in the future, the mediating mechanism of other variables between the two can be studied in depth, in order to further enrich the model of perceived organizational justice affecting job performance.