Fair Treatment, Job Involvement, and Turnover Intention of Professional Employees in Government: The Importance of Organizational Identification as a Mediator

Although fairness is critical to effective human resource management, little effort has been made to assess the role fairness plays in facilitating positive and preventing negative employee outcomes in government agencies. Using data collected through a survey of 764 professional employees from a large state agency, this study examined the relationship between perceived organizational justice and employees’ organizational identification, job involvement and turnover intention. The findings indicated that perceptions of procedural and distributive justice have positive effects on employees’ job involvement and negative effects on their turnover intention, though these relationships are mediated by identification with the agency. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.