Organizational justice and its impact on job satisfaction: Evidence from transportation industry

Article history: Received: July 9 2019 Received in revised format: July 19 2019 Accepted: August 25, 2019 Available online: August 26, 2019 Organizational justice (OJ) has a significant impact on employees' job satisfaction which means the importance of caring and using it in any organization. OJ shows the importance of showing clear interest regarding the procedures related to work such as clearing the rights and duties for employees, providing the employees with opportunities to complain about the decisions, representations of information related to work, decisions and alternatives. Numerous studies are available on this, but Jordan scenario is different due to Arab economic and political conditions. Middle East is recognized due to richness of oil and transportation of oil to other parts of the world. Therefore, the performance of employees directly affects the whole world if the oil industry under performs. The proposed study of this paper is a quantitative survey that empirically verifies whether organizational justice has significant influence on job satisfaction. Data are collected from employees of logistic sector of Jordan city and they are analyzed by multiple regressions through SPSS. The results indicate that organizational justice has a significant impact on employees' job satisfaction. The distributive justice has no impact on job satisfaction which means that there is no effect of delegating authorities and sharing them with employees and no impact of distributing equal opportunities and work schedules on job satisfaction. The procedural justice had an impact on job satisfaction, which means the importance of showing clear interest regarding the procedures related to work. The effect of interactional justice on job satisfaction is found to be relatively high. The study recommends the managers to encourage working by team sole and build good relationships with all the workers, helping the employees to evaluate themselves and seeking to solve the disputes and conflicts fairly. © 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada


Introduction
Organizational justice is the examination of fairness within organizational parameters and emerges through work in social psychology focuses at insight at fairness aspects of social interactions (Memon et al., 2016). Any institution is normally seeking to formulate a vision and achieve an appropriate mission to present the goals of the organization. Organizations work on appropriate strategies, policies and different tactics in order to achieve their objectives. Human resources is one of the most important of parts of the organizations, so the institutions try to put some efforts to strengthen their employee satisfaction and the success of any organization is measured by the extent of rehabilitation. To achieve a high degree of actual performance, most organizations put their efforts employee performance (Johnson et al., 2011). The right to gain access to the ruler and the search for ways is to achieve this job satisfaction and performance of the staff to work in the positive trend institutions. In order to improve employee satisfaction and to increase the performance, employee satisfaction plays essential role for the development of any firm (Brown, 2009). The organizational justice is one of the important topics in the field of management and it has received increased attention. Organizational justice is in the scientific endeavor to bridge the winning gap between members of the organization and the desired objectives. It also creates a driving link to ensure that the administrative staff spread a positive regulatory environment in terms of fair regulation (Abdi et al., 2013).

Organizational justice
In general, organizational justice can be defined as employee's perception of justice concerning different practices and activities of the organization (Johnson et al., 2011). According to Taylor, organizational justice refers to employees' perceptions of fairness of the distribution of justice and distribution of outcomes such as reward, wages, etc. by decision-makers (Eryılmaza et al., 2016). Organizational justice appears in various processes of the work environment including organizational activities and programs, pay, reward or promotion opportunities, and interpersonal interaction (TWAISSI, 1998). Studies on organizational justice mostly intensify on distributive, procedural and interactional justice. In this context, Greenberg's classification of organizational justice is worth mentioning (Greenberg, 1990). According to Greenberg, (1990), individuals make use of two intermediary determinants: social determinants and structural determinants. Structural determinants are based on the perceived justice of allocation of resources and procedures conduct denuder organizational practices, such as, performance assessment, waging and the settlement of managerial conflicts. Social determinants focus on individuals' behavior. Therefore, while structural determinants are the rules and environmental context which influence on decision making structural determinants, social determinants are concerned with the existing relationships among individuals. While Greenberg divided distributive justice into interpersonal and configurable to social and structural determinants, he proposed two sub-divisions for procedural justice as informational and systemic justice (Johnson et al., 2011). In this study, OJ has three dimensions including distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice and informational justice.
In the literature, there is a dispute on whether interactional justice is a separate concept, or it comprises the social aspect of procedural justice. While research has viewed interactional justice as subcomponent of procedural justice, Abdi et al. (2013) argued that it is a separate type of justice. As can be seen, in the literature, there is no consensus on the types of organizational justice. The studies focus on distributive and procedural dimensions of justice, whereas there are some serious debates on interactional justice. The perception of justice has long been considered as explanatory variable in organizational research (Johnson et al., 2011). Organizational justice describes the individuals' (or groups') perception of the fairness of treatment received from an organization and their behavioral reaction to such perceptions (Johnson et al., 2011). In the extant literature, justice has been conceptualized based on three dimensions: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice.

Distributive justice
It refers to the perceived fairness of the outcomes. The studies conducted on distributive justice in organizations have focused on employees' perceptions of fairness of organizational outcomes (MEMON, 2013). Hardy and Ford (2014) define distributive justice as the allocation of resources among individuals, whose proportional shares are determined to the specific functional rules and provisions under certain standards. Interpersonal acquisitions such as tasks, goods, wages, promotions, opportunities, rewards and punishment constitute the subject of distributive justice. Distributive justice, which refers to individuals' perceptions of fairness of the distribution of outcomes, gives an idea about whether the individual's acquisitions are fair, appropriate and ethical (Diamantopoulos & Siguaw, 2006). Individuals may perceive their outcomes (income, premium, promotion, social rights, etc.) as fair or unfair when they compared with others. As a result, they may believe that they are treated un-fairly. This belief influences their attitude that is predisposition behavior, and then, their behavior may change towards the direction of their attitude (Saidon, 2012). Distributive justice has three important principles of equity, equality and need; The principle of equity means that one's rewards should be equal to another's contributions. In other words, if an employee works overtime and puts more effort, he/she deserves to make more money compared with part-time employees (all else equal). Hence, the supervisor's equal payment both to the employee working overtime and the part-time employee is against the principle of equity. According to the principle of equality, all employees should be given equal opportunities for access to rewards, regardless of their individual characteristics (race, gender etc.).
As an example, let's assume that there are two vacant positions in the foreman position of a business enterprise and the human resources (HR) supervisor is responsible to interview two female and two male employees having equal competence ratings in order to fill some positions. At the end of the interview process, if the HR supervisor makes his/her choice in favor of two male employees for gender discriminative reason, though their competence other qualifications are the same; the two female candidates will think the supervisor has violated the principle of equal allocation (Lin, 2007). The Principle of Need: This means that resources should be allocated according to the employee's need. In other words, employees, whose economic status is worse than others should be paid more salary. For instance, a female employee with two children should be paid more compared with a single female employee (all else equal). Otherwise, the employee with two children will think the organization has violated the principle of need in the distribution of justice. While initial studies of distributive justice were mostly conducted in the field of sociology and psychology based on Freeman's (1984) approaches, subsequent studies focused on the effects of employees' negative perceptions of distributive justice on job performance and attitude toward their job (Olalere, 2013). Hashim (2012) found that employees' perceptions of unfairness has a negative impact on job performance and quality of the job and that their OCB is replaced by nervous behavior.

Procedural Justice
It refers to the perceived fairness of the means used to determine those outcomes (Cheng & Chen, 2016). Organizational justice researchers have conceptualized justice perceived from procedures and policies used in decision-making in the work environments procedural justice (Hayes, 2013). In other words, such perceptions are related to the fairness of methods, policies and procedures employed indecision-making rather than the fairness of outcomes. According to Hayes (2013), these perceptions associated with methods and policies. On the other hand, Wan (2016) stated that procedural justice refers to how decisions for the distribution of outcomes are made: It is also related to subjective and objective situations. Greenberg theorized that one of the two central factors within interactional justice is a class of procedural justice called informational justice.
The other major class of procedural justice under Greenberg's framework is systemic justice. The said types of justice, which Greenberg suggested as sub-dimensions of procedural justice, have been analyzed as interactional justice by other re-searchers. Informational justice is the social side of procedural justice. Informational justice focuses on the explanations provided to people about the procedures that concern them (Vinzi et al., 2011). The said dimension of justice, which is called formal procedures (United Nations Development Programme, 2016), gives employees a voice in the decision process. Wan (2016) found that when a supervisor provides an explanation related to the refusal of an employee's request, the recipient feels less disapproval toward the supervisor and perceives greater fairness of the decision-making process than when no explanation is given. Therefore, the rejection of employees' requests and suggestions can be perceived as a fair process, if a reasonable explanation or information is given (Wan, 2016).
Additionally, in another study, it was found that feedback given in the form of performance appraisal scores is perceived by employees to be fairer than non-explanation or non-submit of performance appraisal (Tharenou et al., 2007). Systemic justice refers to procedural justice by structural means. This dimension deals with decision makers' means of implementing policies and practices used in the decision-making process. Systemic justice refers to ensuring procedural justice using structural methods. As procedural justice refers to the employees' perception of fairness in the processes that resolve disputes and allocate resources, this type of justice is closely related with the procedures pursued by supervisors and leaders (Shahbaz et al., 2019c). Accordingly, a study clearly revealed that procedural justice is in a stronger relationship with trust in management compared with distributive justice (Patel, 2012). Valuing employees' opinions and suggestions during various organizational processes and decisions is an important aspect of leaders. Hence, leaders not only get help from their subordinates, but they also show that they value their opinions and their voices are heard (Sekaran, 2006).Therefore, procedural justice is rather related to perceived leadership justice. Studies reveal that if subordinates' opinions and suggestions are not sought and considered, employees perceive the decisionmaking process as unfair. Patel (2012) proposed six procedural justice rules for supervisors to ensure that procedures are perceived by employees as fair: Employees should be involved in the decision-making process which would influence on them. Opportunities must exist to modify, or reverse decisions made throughout the allocative process. The allocative process must be based on as much good information and opinion as possible. Allocative procedures should be consistent across people and stable overtime (Patel, 2012). Self-interest and bias should be prevented throughout the allocative process. Procedures must be compatible with fundamental moral and ethical values of the individuals involved and the work environment (Brown, 2009).
The existence of these rules favorably affects the individuals' perceptions of justice. Whitten et al. (2012) argued that along with these rules, ensuring procedural justice is a prerequisite for distributive justice. Voice is one of the strongest mechanisms of procedural justice. Giving voice to those affected by decisions means their contribution to the decisionmaking process (Whitten et al., 2012). It is a fact that individuals' perception of justice on decisions and outcomes is high, when they are given the opportunity to voice their preferences and opinions during the decision-making process. Likewise, involving employees in the procedure formation process is a sign of care and respect felt for them (Hart, 2014). Seuring and Müller (2008) found that encouraging employee opinions and suggestions in the decision-making process (albeit non-instrumental), is regarded as a right to have a voice by employees. Moreover, a meta-analysis found that instrumental (opinions and suggestions affecting the decision) and non-instrumental (opinions and suggestions not affecting the decision) voice is a determinant of employees' job satisfaction and performance (Seuring & Müller, 2008).

Interactional Justice
It refers to the fairness of interpersonal treatment (Johnson et al., 2011). Therefore, the distributive justice is concerned with ''ends'', and the procedural justice with ''means''. Interactional justice refers to the perception of the quality of treatment an employee receives when policies and procedures are implemented in the workplace. Interactional justice refers to the supervisors' or decision makers' means of explaining and implementing their procedures. It describes the interaction between recipients that are affected by decisions and the allocators of distribution. Brown (2009) defines interactional justice as "the quality of interpersonal treatment employees experience when procedures are enacted". According to Johnson et al. (2011) "Interactional justice is the perceptions of justice relating to the explanations provided to people that convey information about why procedures were used in a certain way or why outcomes were distributed in a certain fashion". Individuals working in organizations expect supervisors to extend equal treatment to all members. They seek fair interaction with the organization. Supervisors or allocators, who treat some with respect and other with disrespect, are not perceived as fair. Therefore, justice is built as a result of supervisors' treatment towards their subordinates with respect and dignity (Hashim, 2012).
Interaction justice consists of two sub-dimensions: interpersonal and informational justice. Interpersonal justice deals with the extent to which employees are treated with respect, politeness, and dignity by their supervisors. Verbal and passive forms of aggression, such as yelling, bullying, and humiliation have a negative impact on subordinates' perceived justice (Vinzi et al., 2011). Interpersonal justice is the social side of distributive justice. The treatment of employees with dignity, respect and sincerity affects employees' perceptions of interaction justice. Studies reveal that individuals consider the treatment they receive as an antecedent of their perceived justice (Shahbaz et al., 2018). Employees' perception of supervisors' behavior as fair during interpersonal interaction emerges as interactional justice. It is known that supervisors' equal, polite and consistent treatment is one of the antecedents of the subordinates' (Saunders et al., 2009). The expectancy theory of motivation states that motivation is influenced by the belief that effort will lead to higher performance (expectancy) and belief that higher performance will lead to better rewards (instrumentality) that are valued (valence) by the employees. Since distributive justice is about the fairness of the outcomes, it has a strong link with instrumentality. Thus, we can observe that distributive justice perceptions of employees will have an influence on their motivation. The employees will have certain beliefs and attitudes about the way that the organization will make and implement decisions. In situations where the beliefs of how decisions should be made and how they are made are different, the employees may experience cognitive dissonance and as a result the employees will feel uncomfortable that may lead to job dissatisfaction. Many studies have analyzed the relationship between these two forms of organizational justice and their effects on various work-related variables including job satisfaction (Johnson et al., 2011). For example, Shahbaz et al. (2019a) used six organizational outcome variables including job satisfaction and procedural justice had a greater influence on five of the variables (such as job satisfaction) compared with distributive justice.

Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction refers to employees' attitudes or opinions toward the job itself or the relevant environment and to their overall emotional response to their job roles (Rasi et al., 2014) and it is one of the most effective indicators of vocational happiness (Sarstedt et al., 2013). Memon et al. (2016) defined job satisfaction as ''individual's positive emotional reaction to particular job''. High employee satisfaction is important to managers who believe that "an organization has a responsibility to provide employees with jobs that are challenging and intrinsically rewarding" (Johnpaul, 2016). Job satisfaction can affect many other variables such as turnover intentions (Alkelani, 2018). Most previous studies have focused on occupational characteristics, including income, job characteristics, work-family conflict, stress, and leadership (Knol et al., 2018), but more researchers are turning their attention to the influence of individual factors on job satisfaction recently (Brown, 2009). Fairness and impartiality towards all concerned are based on the principles of evenhanded dealing. Equity implies giving as much advantage, consideration, or latitude to one party as it is given to another (Shahbaz et al., 2019b). Along with economy, effectiveness, and efficiency, Equity is essential for ensuring that extent and costs of funds, goods and services are fairly divided among their recipients (Green Jr et al., 2012).

Research Framework
Although researchers addressed the subject of job satisfaction and organizational justice in many studies, but these studies are not in the context of Jordanian industry, especially in the field of educational services sector interest. Commitment among individuals cannot be achieved unless there is a confidence in the administrative leadership in achieving organizational justice, Therefore, the researcher tries to shed light on the study of these variables enhances the concept of organizational justice and job satisfaction. In the researched organization and eliminate the confusion about. Current research is to highlight these variables by answering the following questions:  What are the concepts of organizational justice, job satisfaction, and the nature of their relationship?  Do dimensions of organizational justice influence on job satisfaction?
The importance of the study stems from the importance of the subject of organizational justice, which is the administrative threads and witnessed a growing interest in recent times because of its psychological effect, which casts a shadow over workers by improving their performance and increase productivity as well as achieving the objectives of the organization researched and thus achieve their goals.

Framework development
This study examines the validity of hypotheses and model, and the research hypotheses are set to be as follows: The Organizational Justice has a significant positive relationship on the overall job satisfaction as follows,  There is a significant impact of the Distributive justice on job satisfaction.  There is a significant impact of the Procedural fairness on job satisfaction.  There is a significant impact of the Interactional justice on job satisfaction.

Previous Studies
Although there are many previous studies about organizational justice and job satisfaction in the Arab and foreign environments, these studies examined the job satisfaction from different angles and aspects according to the environment. Through access to these studies, researcher found that they did not address the subject of organizational justice and their impact on job satisfaction. The researcher also found few studies that have studied the effect of organizational justice on job satisfaction for workers in both the public and private sectors and at the Arab level, whether foreign or the novelty of the subject of organizational justice. Samuels (2006) performed a study on job satisfaction among the Palestinian Ministry of Local Government staff. The study aimed to identify the level of job satisfaction among workers in the Palestinian Ministry of Local Government in the light of variables such as monthly income and the potential and the tools and the relationship between superiors and subordinates and benefits provided by the Ministry, and also detected the extent of the differences in the level of job satisfaction according to age, gender, educational qualification, marital status and duration of the experience variables. The study recommended giving material incentives great importance and application of the principle of justice and equality during distribution, and attention to the possibilities and tools in the ministry as well as the security and safety of their workers, and shorten the number of hours of work and training sessions and the work of moral incentives for workers. Podsakoff et al. (2016) performed a study on the extent of employees in the UNRWA in the Gaza Strip institutions of staff satisfaction with compensation and motivation systems. The study aimed to identify the level of satisfaction of the employees for compensation and incentive to operate under different compensatory systems in the international relief agency in the Gaza Strip. The study found that job satisfaction degree with the international relief agency staff were low. Ibrahim (2014) investigated organizational loyalty and its relationship with personal characteristics and the desire to leave the organization and the profession. The study aimed to research and investigate in the organizational loyalty to the nurses in the hospitals of the Ministry of Health in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They found that there was no relationship between age and organizational loyalty, and the lack of an inverse relationship between the desire to leave the profession and organizational loyalty. Ting et al. (2015) measured the level of job satisfaction among workers in the Palestinian universities in the Gaza Strip. The study aimed to identify the trends working in the Palestinian universities in the Gaza Strip towards their work and attempted to measure the level of job satisfaction for workers at the universities. The study found there is an average of satisfaction among workers in the Palestinian universities in the Gaza Strip. Flynn et al. (2010) performed an investigation to measure the level of satisfaction with the profession to the teachers of schools of higher primary stage of government in the provinces of Gaza. The study found the presence of statistically significant differences in the level of satisfaction differences for the profession in a sample study is due to Gender and academic specialization. Studies recommended working to raise teachers' salaries, which contribute to raising the degree of satisfaction with their profession, and encourage teachers to find material and moral incentives, such as offering bonuses, as well as to improve the conditions of the profession and its conditions (Shahbaz et al., 2018b). Zwain (2012) measured job satisfaction among directors of departments in the ministries of the Palestinian Authority in the provinces of the north of Palestine and aimed to study job satisfaction and to identify all of the variables such as age, educational qualification, years of experience, functional class and the extent of their influence on the level of job satisfaction. The study recommended to increase incentives and promotions for managers and hold training courses to increase the level of their performance and skills (Zwain, 2012).

Methodology
The study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some a sample of population considered in this survey. The organizational justice scale is developed by Punniyamoorthy et al. (2013) and Shahbaz et al. (2019aShahbaz et al. ( , 2019b. This questionnaire has been widely used to measure procedural justice, distributive justice and interactional justice. This scale has been frequently used among Chinese and has good validity and reliability. Responses are made on a 5-point Likert scale. In the current study, the Cronbach alpha coefficients for the procedural, distributive and interactional justice scales were 0.82, 0.77 and 0.86 respectively.

Reliability Test
Cronbach Alpha test was used to find out instrument reliability. The value was = 0.92 for the entire questionnaire. which is good, because it is more than 70%. Statistical techniques: "SPSS" was used in order to analyze the collected data through the questioner. Fig. 2 demonstrates the personal characteristics of the participants.

Gender
Age Job experience Management level Fig. 2. Personal characteristics of the participants According to Fig. 2, nearly 80% of the participants in our survey were male. They were mostly aged less than 30 and had good job experience. Finally, most of them were regular staff and about 70% of them hold a bachelor's degree of science. Table 1 demonstrates the mean and standard deviation of the scores given to different variables.  Multiple Regressions is used to test the hypothesis. Table 2 indicates that F calculated value is significant at (0.05) level. This means that the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, therefore, there is an impact with a statistical significant for the independent variables on the job satisfaction with high Pearson correlation 0.607.
The first sub-hypothesis: The effect of distributive justice H01: Distributive justice influences on the job satisfaction. Simple Regression is used to test the hypothesis. The results of Table 3 indicate that F calculated value is not significant at (0.05) level. This means that null hypothesis is accepted and the alternative hypothesis is rejected; therefore, there Distributive justice has no meaningful effect on the job satisfaction.
The second sub-hypothesis: The effect of procedural justice H02: Procedural justice influences on the job satisfaction. Simple Regression was used to test the hypothesis. Table 4 indicates that F calculated value is significant at (0.05) level. This means that null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, therefore, procedural justice influences on the job satisfaction with moderate Pearson correlation 0.472.
The Third sub-hypothesis: The effect of interactional justice H03: Interactional justice influences on the job satisfaction.

Table 5
The results of testing the third sub-hypothesis R R Square F Sig.
.582 .338 12.262 .002 Simple Regression was used to test the hypothesis. The results of Table 5 indicate that F calculated value is significant at (0.01) level. This means that null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, therefore, interactional justice influences on the job satisfaction with moderate Pearson correlation 0.582.

Conclusion
Through the results of this survey, it turned out that organizational justice has a significant impact on employees' job satisfaction which means the importance of caring and using it in the associations. The distributive justice has had no impact on job satisfaction which means that there is no effect of delegating authority and sharing it with employees and no impact of distributing equal opportunities and work schedules that suit time, abilities and interests of workers on their job satisfaction.
The procedural justice had an impact on job satisfaction. This shows the importance of showing clear interest regarding the procedures related to work such as (clearing the rights and duties for employees, providing the employees with opportunities to complain about the decisions, representations of information related to work, decisions and alternatives). The interactional justice's impact on job satisfaction is the hugest. We recommend the managers to encourage working by team sole and build good relations with all the workers, helping the employees to evaluate themselves and seeking to solve the disputes and conflicts among them fairly.