Relationships between organizational justice, identification with organization and work unit, and group-related outcomes

This research examined the differential antecedents and consequences of organizational identification and work-unit identification. Specifically, we hypothesized that organization-focused procedural justice and distributive justice would be positively related to organizational identification, whereas supervisor-focused interactional justice would be positively related to work-unit identification. A further hypothesis was that organizational identification would relate to organization-focused outcomes (turnover intentions and extra-role behavior toward the organization), and work-unit identification to work-unit-focused outcomes (extra-role behavior toward the work unit). Our results from a sample of 160 employees of a research institution supported these hypotheses. In addition, we found some evidence that organizational identification and work-unit identification differentially mediated the relationships between organization-focused and supervisor-focused justice, and organization-focused and work-unit-focused outcomes. We discuss our findings in terms of their implications for social-identity research on organizational identification, and for research on organizational justice.