Organizational injustices and negative behavioral reactions: the mediating role of emotions

While many studies have examined behavioral responses to situations of organizational injustice, very few have introduced emotions as mediating variables. In addition, this work was carried out in the northern countries and, to our knowledge, there are none from southern countries, such as Gabon. The purpose of this study is to remedy this. 215 Gabonese men and women, managers and employees from the private and public sectors responded to a 56-item questionnaire on organizational justice, anti-social behavior and finally two negative emotions (anger and shame in the face of humiliation). The results show that the four factors of organizational justice are positively correlated with each other, just as anger is positively correlated with shame. We also observe that each of the dimensions of organizational justice has significant positive links with anger and shame. Furthermore, if distributive justice is not correlated with any behavioral variable, each of the other three factors of justice have this type of link. Multiple regression analyzes also indicate that several dimensions of organizational injustice, like anger and shame, predict negative behavior. Finally, mediation analyzes show that anger and shame mediate several relationships between organizational justice and behavioral reactions. These results are compared with data from empirical studies carried out in northern countries. Practical implications and additional studies are finally proposed.