THE EFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE ON EMPLOYEE COUNTER WORK BEHAVIOR MEDIATED BY EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT; A CASE OF MANUFACTURING SECTOR EMPLOYEES

Employee counterwork behavior (CWB) is a negative behavior exerted by employees. Every year, organizations around the world suffer financially and operationally due to the employee involvement in CWB. In present study, we investigate this issue by using the organizational justice and employee engagement perspective. The study aims to test the effects of organizational justice on employee CWB and employee engagement. Additionally, we tested if employee engagement function as a mediator in organizational justice and employee CWB relationship. The study utilized quantitative and cross-sectional approach. Data was collected from manufacturing sector staff (n=212). Validity and reliability was established using the Confirmatory Factor Analysis performed by AMOS. Path analysis was performed for hypotheses testing. Our key findings are that organizational justice dimensions including distributive justice (Beta=-.086, P<.05); procedural justice (Beta=-.084, P<.05); and interactional justice (Beta=-.075, P<.05) has negative and significant effects on employee CWB. We also found that organizational justice dimensions including procedural justice (Beta=.073, P<.05); and interactional justice (Beta=.075, P<.05) has positive and significant effects on employee engagement while result for distributive justice turned out to be insignificant. We also found positive but insignificant effects of employee engagement on CWB (Beta=.032, P>.05). Additionally, we tested the employee engagement as mediator and found that employee engagement significantly mediates between distributive and procedural justice and employee CWB relationship. Based on these findings, we concluded that employee involvement in CWB is not only influenced by personality factors but also influenced by organizational related factors. Keywords: Justice, Engagement, Counter Work Behavior, Deviance, Manufacturing, Oman.