Relationship between Distributive Justice, Pay Design Dimensions and Job Commitment within Malaysian Public Institutions of Higher Learning

This study was conducted to examine the mediating role of distributive justice in the relationship between pay design dimensions and job commitment. A survey research method was used to gather 583 usable questionnaires from academic employees who worked in Malaysian public institutions of higher education. The outcomes of testing a mediating model by using a stepwise regression analysis showed that the inclusion of distributive justice in the analysis increased the effect of pay design dimensions (i.e., pay structure and pay level) on job commitment. This study confirms that distributive justice does act as a full mediating variable in the pay design model of the studied organization. In addition, implications of this study for compensation theory and practice, methodological and conceptual limitations, as well as directions for future research are discussed.