The Effect of Personality Traits and Equity Sensitivity on the Employees’ Fairness Perception in the Lebanese Pharmaceutical Field

The pharmaceutical sector plays a fundamental role in supporting the economic development of a country. The performance of this sector is influenced by employees’ performance, which can be affected by the way employees perceive fairness at their workplace. Fairness perception can be affected by the equity sensitivity type and the personality traits of employees. The Lebanese context lacks studies that reveal the fairness perception of Lebanese pharmacists as a driver of retention at work and the relationship between fairness perception, equity sensitivity and personality traits in the pharmaceutical settings. For that, this study was conducted to survey the Lebanese pharmacists’ perception of fairness and the effect of equity sensitivity and personality trait. The paper reports on a questionnaire survey of pharmacists with 73% response rate. Results showed that participants were benevolent rather than entitled and displayed strong expression in all personality traits especially conscientiousness. Pharmacists showed low perception of distributive and procedural justice. The perception of informational justice was lower in entitled than other equity sensitivity types.  Pearson correlation showed a statistically significant positive weak correlation between openness to experience and procedural justice. Conscientiousness, on the other hand, revealed a statistically significant negative weak correlation with interpersonal justice. The informational justice was shown to be affected by personality traits and equity sensitivity types. Being benevolent, Lebanese pharmacists might be more patients-oriented than personal outcome-oriented and have greater tolerance for under-reward. Administrators are encouraged to ensure rewards based on justice to minimize the high cost of skilled-performers turnover of pharmacists.