A Multilevel Model of Organizational Justice and Commitment: The Mediating Role of Team Trust and the Moderating Role of Leadership Style

Abstract

While we know that organizational justice influences individual commitment, little research has examined how shared perceptions of justice within work teams become individual attitudes. The paper constructs and demonstrates a time-lagged, multilevel model in which organizational justice is treated as a team climate that moderates the relationship between individual affective commitment and team trust. The model is grounded in Social Exchange Theory and Fairness Heuristic Theory. These perspectives imply that when employees perceive fair outcomes, fair processes, and respectful treatment, they use these indicators to assess the organization's reliability and the trustworthiness of other team members. Thus, team justice should enhance team trust, and team trust should, in turn, enhance employees' identification with the organization. Another argument presented in the article is that leadership style acts as a boundary condition. Transformational leadership is expected to enhance the advantage of a just climate on team trust by providing employees with a sense of meaning, reliability, and support. By contrast, transactional leadership might hinder this by focusing on short-term transactions and compliance. The paper presents a three-wave quantitative test design and a sample three-level structural equation analysis, with employees nested within work teams across various organizations, to demonstrate how this model can be tested. The illustrative analyses find partial mediation by team trust and stronger justice-trust links under high (transformational) leadership and weaker links under high (transactional) leadership. The work adds to the body of research on justice by integrating climate, trust, leadership, and time into a single framework. It provides practical advice to managers aiming to establish committed teams by being just and trusting.