Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 214-234)

Thesis (M.Psych.Org.) - University of Queensland, 2007. / Includes bibliography.

La prévention des risques psychosociaux et la promotion de la qualité de vie au travail a suscité un fort intérêt ces dernières années. Cependant, les mécanismes psychologiques qui expliquent ces liens ne sont pas encore suffisamment affirmés. Afin de mieux comprendre les mécanismes en jeu, notre travail de recherche s’est centré sur la justice organisationnelle dans une perspective théorique et appliquée. Notre objectif principal a été d’apporter une contribution efficace aux connaissances sur les liens entre le management juste et les états affectifs, l’engagement, le burnout et d’autres variables en lien étroit avec le bien-être et les attitudes positives au travail. Concrètement, nous avons souhaité apporter des preuves empiriques pour une application du management juste à la prévention du burnout au travail. Notre travail a consisté à mettre à l’épreuve un modèle relationnel au moyen de 4 études. D’abord, deux études corrélationnelles ont été menées, l’une sur le climat de justice et l’autre sur des événements spécifiques de justice. Les résultats de ces deux premières études montrent que les perceptions de justice sont bien associées au burnout et à l’engagement au travail par la médiation des affects positifs et négatifs. Ensuite, deux études expérimentales ont été menées afin de vérifier les relations de cause à effet entre les perceptions de justice et les états affectifs. L’une des études a porté sur des scénarios comme vecteur des perceptions de justice et la dernière étude a été menée dans des organisations via des formations aux encadrants d’équipe afin de valider les résultats en contexte naturel et faire naître une réflexion sur l’application des formations au management juste. Les liens mis en évidence par ces études ont permis de développer une meilleure compréhension des effets de justice dans le vécu émotionnel, cognitif et comportemental sur le plan de la recherche mais aussi d’affiner les réflexions sur la prévention de la santé au travail. / The prevention of psychosocial risks and promoting the quality of working life has attracted great interest in recent years. However, the psychological mechanisms behind these links are not yet sufficiently affirmed. To better understand the mechanisms involved, our research has focused on organizational justice in a theoretical and applied perspective. Our main goal was to make an effective contribution to knowledge about the links between the right management and affective states, commitment, burnout and other variables closely with the well-being and positive work attitudes. Specifically, we wanted to bring empirical evidence to a fair application of management in the prevention of burnout at work. Our job was to test a relational model with 4 studies. First, two correlational studies have been conducted, one on climate justice and the other on specific events of justice. The results of these early studies show that perceptions of justice are associated with burnout and commitment to work through the mediation of positive and negative affect. Then, two experimental studies were conducted to verify the relationship of cause and effect between perceptions of justice and affective states. One of the studies focused on scenarios as vector perceptions of justice and the last study was conducted in organizations through training to team supervisors to validate the results in natural context and give birth to a reflection on the Application training at the right management. The links highlighted by these studies were used to develop a better understanding of the effects of justice in the emotional experience, cognitive and behavioral in terms of research but also to refine the reflections on the prevention of occupational health.

Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse ont pour but de mettre en lumière certains enjeux de justice organisationnelle qui émergent dans le cadre des évaluations annuelles du personnel de l’Armée de l’air. A travers plusieurs approches méthodologiques qualitatives et quantitatives, nous montrons dans un premier temps comment la justice distributive prédomine lorsqu’il s’agit pour les militaires de rendre compte de leur sentiment de justice globale lors des notations. Nous élargissons ensuite ces considérations à une série de variables en lien avec le travail, l’organisation et le leadership. Nos résultats montrent que c’est essentiellement autour du chef et de son commandement que se jouent les principales problématiques de justice. Enfin, nous avons reconduit les mêmes investigations après que le système de notation dans l’Armée de l’air ait changé. Nous montrons que l’incertitude autour du nouvel outil d’évaluation a tendance à revaloriser l’importance du sentiment de justice procédurale, tandis que la focalisation sur le chef comme objet du sentiment de justice des militaires a tendance à s’atténuer. / The studies conducted in this thesis aim to highlight certain issues of organizational justice which emerge in the annual evaluations conducted on French Air Force personnel. Based on several quantitative and qualitative methodological perspectives, we first demonstrated how distributive justice prevails when it comes to military personnel reporting their perception of overall justice during evaluation periods. We then expanded these considerations to a series of variables related to the work, the organization and the leadership of this personnel. Results show that the major justice issues revolve essentially around the authority figure and leadership.Finally we conducted the same investigations after the air force’s personnel evaluation system changed. We demonstrated that the uncertainty surrounding the new evaluation tool tends to strengthen the role of perceptions of procedural justice, while mitigating focus on the authority as an object of justice.

The current study analyzes the official policies and everyday practices of the youth non-governmental organization System and G, located in Komotini, Greece. Through a combination of Critical Policy Analysis, Interviews and Participatory Observation, this Thesis provides a broad image of the organization’s internal culture, with great emphasis on the relations among its members. The results showed that the organization’s philosophy, causes and corresponding policies have emerged from its founders’ personal life experiences, which motivated them for social offer to people with fewer opportunities, developed through cooperation with other youth workers, equally motivated to help people in need, and changed with the contribution of volunteers – also people with fewer opportunities – with innovative ideas and ambition to bring social change. As a result, an intersectional culture has grown in the organization, which is characterized by diversity, emotional proximity, mutual support and solidarity.             The study also analyzes the organization’s social stratification and power relations, which are characterized by equality among all its members, making trainers and volunteers feel that their voice is heard and appreciated. Therefore, the organization succeeds in the achievement of all forms of organizational justice (procedural, distributive, interactional). What is more, important decision-making within the organization requires the equal participation of trainers and volunteers alike, while when it comes to decisions with an impact on local society, the organization gives its members the opportunity to express their opinion and design social policies through cooperation with local entrepreneurs, politicians and other decision-makers. In this way, organizational and social change are achieved and promoted. The future of the organization includes its members’ ambition to spread the methods and results of non-formal education to other regions and countries, and I consider myself lucky and honored to be part of this effort.

The purpose of this research is to identify the forces that impact the intention of employees to misuse the Internet at the workplace, called cyberloafing. Although cyberloafing literature has suggested several antecedents that predict cyberloafing such as job attitudes, organizational characteristics, work stressors, locus of control (Blanchard & Henle, 2008; Henle & Blanchard, 2008; Liberman, Seidman, McKenna, & Buffardi, 2011), this research adopted attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and organizational citizenship behavior to predict the intention to cyberloaf. Additionally, this research adopted organizational justice and the mechanisms of general deterrence theory as moderating variables to better understand the relationship between attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, organizational citizenship behavior, and the intention to cyberloaf. We believe it is essential to investigate the antecedents of cyberloafing to help predict its existence and occurrence. The existing research, which examined employees' abuse of the Internet, remains greatly atheoretical; thus, it supplies limited insights to researchers as to why cyberloafing continues to take place (Lim, 2002). It is important to recognize what motivates employees to engage in cyberloafing for organizations to implement specific polices and intervention programs to limit or deter its occurrence. This is necessary, as employees' abuse of the Internet can negatively affect an organization through decreased profitability, reduced productivity levels, and exposure to a diverse range of legal liabilities (Liberman et al., 2011). The results of the study showed that an employee's attitude and subjective norm can significantly predict his or her intention to engage in cyberloafing. Both of the dimensions of general deterrence theory (punishment severity and certainty) significantly moderated the relationship between attitude, subjective norm, and the intention to cyberloaf. Additionally, punishment severity significantly moderated the relationship between perceived behavioral control and the intention to cyberloaf. From this study, we concluded that cyberloafing is a social phenomenon that needs to be studied further to fully comprehend the organizational contexts, motivational factors, and consequences. Our study should be analyzed as a positive step toward learning the key components that can influence employees' intentions to abuse the Internet in the workplace.

This study attempted to expand previous research on employee retaliation against abusive supervision by evaluating both overt and covert retaliatory behaviors and the different mechanisms behind these behaviors. Initial confirmatory factor analysis did not find substantial support for a two-factor retaliation construct, but this may have been a result of the nature of behavioral retaliation items that composed the measures. Correlational analyses did not demonstrate clear discriminate validity between overt and overt retaliation; additionally, regression analyses did not find support for high performing or highly political skilled employees retaliating primarily through one form of retaliation. Highly political skilled and high performing employees performed less retaliatory behaviors overall when experiencing high amounts of abusive supervision. Although initial analyses did not support the distinction between overt and covert retaliation, mediation analyses did find some support for differential pathways. Specifically this investigation found that the relationship between abusive supervision and overt retaliation was mediated by feelings of hostility towards employees’ supervisors, whereas the relationship between abusive supervision and covert retaliation was mediated by perceptions of interactional injustice. Overall, this investigation provides mixed support for the distinction between overt and covert employee retaliatory behavior.

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / Organisations of every industry are changing continuously. A pervasive response to this experience is some form of downsizing. Chew and Horwitz (2002) state due to globalisation, organisations have increasingly adopted cost/ competitive measures to increase performance. Organisations inevitably seek to survive these pressures by downsizing. According to Tzafrir, Mona- Negrin, Havel and Rom Nagy (2006), downsizing is known to be defined as a company trying to increase its competitiveness, efficiency and productivity by decreasing the number of workers in the organisation. Drummond (2000) states that there is extra pressure put onto the remaining workers for productivity after the layoff process. It must be acknowledged that managers should be seen as both an employee and a supervisor. Managers therefore have to implement the change when the process occurs and deals with the reactions of him/herself and that of the subordinates (Wiesenfeld, Brockner, Petzall, Wolf & Bailey, 2001). To gain a competitive advantage, organisations must pay attention to their managers who are responsible for driving organisation’s processes and outcomes. Rana, Garg and Rastogi (2011) state that organisations need to attend to factors that influence managers’ performance and job satisfaction, such as perception of organisational justice. Managers’ perception of organisational justice is imperative, as subordinates mimic the behaviours and attitude of their managers (Wiesenfeld et al., 2001). The aim of this study is to investigate what impact the downsizing process had on the perception of organizational justice of survivor middle managers. The differences between middle managers’ age, gender, year of service or tenure, marital status and education level were taken into account. The study was conducted in different departments of a large Automotive Retail organisation where downsizing has taken place. A biographical questionnaire and a questionnaire designed to measure perceptions of organisational justice after downsizing (Niehoff and Moorman Organisational Justice Questionnaire), was administered to gather the data. The sample of one hundred and forty-four respondents consisted of male and female middle managers. Convenience sampling was utilised to select the sample. Statistical analyses involved both descriptive and inferential statistics. ANOVA and T-Test were the tools that were used to analyse the data. Findings indicates that there was a statistical significant difference in middle managers’ perception of organisational justice based on gender, age, tenure, marital status and education level in the Automotive Industry.

Recent studies found that organizations have been investing significant capital in developing teams and employees in geographic areas where labor and resources are considerably cheaper. Furthermore, organizations are moving core operational activities such as research and development and back-office processes to globally distributed teams. However, several factors that are inherent to these virtual teams can have a negative impact on employee perceptions and engagement; specifically, the physical and temporal differences between employees and their supervisors, the lack of meaningful social interaction intrinsic to working relationships, and cultural biases that can be fostered when close, daily interactions is not there to help bridge the dissimilarity. When strategies are not in place to mitigate these deficiencies, it can cause virtual employees to disengage emotionally and intellectually from the organization, or lead them to feel justified in working against the best interest of the company. Past research indicates that although deviant behavior in the workplace is not new, transgressions committed by employees have been increasing significantly every year. Beyond the focus of why employees are motivated to act against the organization, to what extent do the recent changes to the organization’s structure influence this type of behavior through their actions at the macro (organizational) and micro level (leadership). In addition, there is a related phenomenon that has aided the transformation of the workplace – namely, the ubiquity of technology. In the context of workplace deviance, established research has documented an increasing trend of employees utilizing company technology as a medium and amplifier when harming the organization. It is important to understand whether technology has facilitated or hindered workplace deviance by virtue of the technology itself (as a means), and as part of the new employee roles created by the evolving technology (i.e, virtual employees). Therefore, it is important to identify how individual attitudes and behaviors can be affected by an employee’s degree of virtuality. This study will add to the understanding of how social interaction and physical proximity, leadership and other perception factors contribute to the changes organizations are experiencing as their structure evolves and adapts to compete in the new global environment.