Building affective commitment to organizationamong Chinese university teachers: the rolesof organizational justice and job burnout

Yongzhan Li

Received: 31 August 2012 /Accepted: 24 February 2014# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract In view of the benefit of improving employees’ organization commitment, itis important to study the major influencing factors of organization commitment.According to previous literature, organizational justice and job burnout have beenconsidered two major influencing variables of affective commitment; however, littleempirical research can be found to examine the relationship between job burnout,organizational justice, and affective commitment simultaneously among universityteachers in China. Thus, the main purpose of the current study was to examine theabove relationship in a cross-sectional design. The participants were 435 teachers fromfive universities in China. A series of structural equation modeling analyses wereconducted by using Amos 19.0. The results showed that organizational justice was astrong predictor of affective commitment. Specifically, interactional justice predictedaffective commitment the most strongly, whereas distributive justice, unexpectedly, hadno significant influence on affective commitment. Furthermore, both emotional ex-haustion and personal accomplishment were important partial mediators of the rela-tionship between interactional justice and affective commitment.

Keywords Affective commitment . Organizational justice . Job burnout . Universityteachers

One of the most central goals of organizational psychology is to develop an under-standing of attitudes and behaviors in work settings (Gilliland and Chan 2001). Inpursuit of this goal, a body of previous research has focused on the relationshipbetween perceived equity in exchange relationships at work, and a range of workoutcomes (e.g., Ambrose and Schminke 2009; Colquitt et al. 2005; Martin and Bennett1996; Moorman 1991). At the heart of equity theory lies the assumption that peoplepursue a balance between what they “invest” in a particular relationship (e.g., time,skills, and effort) and the benefits they gain from it (such as status, appreciation, and

Educ Asse Eval AccDOI 10.1007/s11092-014-9192-3

Y. Li (*)Pingdingshan University, 467000 Pingdingshan, Henan, Chinae-mail: liyongzhan@126.com

pay) (Adams 1965). Equity theory also assumes that the stress resulting from adisturbed balance between investments and outcomes leads people to attempt to restorethis balance. In order to obtain a more equitable balance, people can decrease theirinvestments in this relationship (e.g., through psychological withdrawal in the form ofdiminished commitment to the organization or depersonalization regarding the recipi-ents of one’s services). Thus, disturbance of this balance is expected to result innegative outcomes such as lack of organizational commitment and job burnout(Colquitt et al. 2001; Cropanzano et al. 2005a, b).

Regarding job burnout, as an important organizational variable, it has been linkednot only with organizational justice but also with organizational commitment (e.g.,Hakanen et al. 2008). However, up to now, little empirical research can be found toexamine the relationship between job burnout, organizational justice, and organization-al commitment simultaneously. What is more, as a large developing country, facing upto the situation of world development, China has declared that science and technologyare the keys of modernization drive, while education is its foundation. Attaching moreimportance to higher education, recently, Chinese higher education has been experienc-ing a great reform. In order to keep up with the education developed countries, Chinaneeds more university teachers with high level of organizational commitment.However, with the economic transition, inevitably, there are some problems in thedevelopment and implementation of educational policies and systems, particularly, inassessment and evaluation system of teachers’ professional title (Chen 2006; Shan2010). It goes without saying that this system is established for improving teachers’social status and their living conditions so as to mobilize teachers’ working enthusiasmand creativity. However, over time, this favorable system has more or less changedflavor during its implementation, that is, lack of fairness and impartiality. According toChen (2006), the human interference factors have great influence. Some people involvein backdoor dealings in the evaluation. Their strong social networks always make somejudges evaluate unfairly. In addition, big jury also results in laymen evaluatingprofessionals.

Given the importance of fairness, it is reasonable to assume that lack of fairness inevaluation of teachers’ professional title must have a negative impact on teachers’ workattitude and state.

Taking all these factors into account, the main purpose of the present study is toclarify the relationship between job burnout, organizational justice, and organizationalcommitment in Chinese higher education context through structural equation modeling.

1 Organizational justice and organizational commitment

Organizational justice perceptions have long been considered as explanatory variablesin organizational research (e.g., Adams 1965; Ambrose and Schminke 2009; Molineret al. 2005). Research on organizational justice has demonstrated that concerns aboutfairness can affect the attitudes and behaviors of employees (Ambrose and Schminke2009; Colquitt et al. 2005; Cropanzano et al. 2005a, b). In the first place, justicescholars focused on distributive justice, the perceived fairness of decision outcomes(Adams 1965; Leventhal 1976), and procedural justice, the perceived fairness ofdecision-making processes (Leventhal 1980; Thibaut and Walker 1975). As research

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continued, Bies and Moag (1986) introduced interactional justice to justice researchfield. According to these scholars, interactional justice refers to the interpersonaltreatment people receive during decision-making processes. More recently, interaction-al justice has come to be seen as consisting of two specific types of interpersonaltreatment, i.e., interpersonal justice and informational justice (e.g., Colquitt et al. 2001;Greenberg 1990, 1993). However, the latter two types of justice are often combinedunder the interactional justice heading (Bies and Moag 1986; Greenberg 1993), thus,this study still considered organizational justice as three dimensions, i.e., distributive,procedural, and interactional justices.

Despite still existing controversy on its dimensionality, organizational justice hasbeen linked meta-analytically to a variety of outcomes, including job satisfaction,organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and job burnout(Colquitt et al. 2001; Cropanzano et al. 2005a, b).

Organizational commitment is a multidimensional construct with various conceptu-alizations. Allen and Meyer (1990) identified three components of organizationalcommitment namely, affective, continuance and normative commitment, which werefound to be correlated but distinct (Meyer et al. 2002). Affective commitment describesthe extent to which an employee wants to be a part of an organization, and reflects thestrength of the employees’ emotional attachment to, identification with, and involve-ment in the organization (Allen and Meyer 1990). Employees’ emotional bond to theirorganization (i.e., their affective commitment) has been considered an importantdeterminant of dedication and loyalty (Rhoades et al. 2001). Previous research hasdemonstrated that organizational justice correlated more strongly with affective com-mitment than the other two components of commitment (Konovsky and Cropanzano1991; Meyer et al. 2002). Hence, in this study, we only selected affective commitmentcomponent to explore.

Organizational commitment (OC) is a widely researched and quite promisingrelational construct (Meyer 1997; Meyer and Allen 1997). OC has been used to predictorganizational efficiency and effectiveness (Beck and Wilson 2000; Gbadamosi andChinaka 2011), job satisfaction (Colquitt 2001; Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran 2005),motivation (Curtis et al. 2009), job performance (Conway and Briner 2012; Hunter andThatcher 2007; Vandenabeele 2009), turnover (Aydogdu and Asikgil 2011; DeConinckand Bachmann 2011), absenteeism (Chughtai and Zafar 2006; Samad and Yusuf 2012),and organizational citizenship behaviors (Ahmad et al. 2010).

Cropanzano et al. (2007) argued that employees’ perceptions of organizationaljustice have potential to create powerful benefits for organizations and employeesincluding greater trust and commitment. If employees perceive that they are beingtreated fairly by their supervisor, they will be more likely to reciprocate by holdingpositive attitudes about their work, their work outcomes and their supervisor (Wat &Shaffer 2005).

A great deal of research indicated that organizational commitment was, in part,shaped by perceptions of just treatment by managers and organizations (e.g., Colquitt2001; Crow et al. 2012; Fariba et al. 2013; Fulford 2005; Lind and Tyler 1988; Malikand Naeem 2011; Turgut et al. 2012). Colquitt (2001), for example, found that thejustice perceived by employees increased their positive perceptions and behaviorstoward the organization, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment. Inconsistent with the prior findings, Najafi et al. (2011) also concluded that educational

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experts of different universities reported higher commitment levels by the provision oforganizational justice. Employing a survey of 418 police officers in South Korea, Crowet al. (2012) examined the influence of organizational justice on police officers’commitment to their organization. In line with Colquitt (2001), the results also showedthat the officers’ perception of organizational justice was positively related with theirlevel of organizational commitment. In terms of the impact strength of justice dimen-sions, however, controversy always exists. For example, Lambert et al. (1993) sug-gested that procedural justice is a better predictor of organizational commitment whencompared with distributive justice. However, Lowe and Vodanovich (1995) found astronger relationship for distributive justice and organizational commitment than forprocedural justice. Within higher education setting, Malik and Naeem (2011) investi-gated 463 faculty members and found that distributive and procedural justice hadsignificant positive impact on organizational commitment of junior faculty whereassenior faculty experienced improved commitment on the provision of distributivejustice only. Masterson et al. (2000) provided evidence that interactional justiceperception was most strongly related to supervisor-related outcomes (e.g., job satisfac-tion) whereas procedural justice perception was most strongly related to organization-related outcomes (e.g., organizational commitment). While Crow et al. (2012) foundthat perceptions of procedural and interactional justice had indirect impact on theofficers’ organizational commitment through distributive justice.

2 Organizational justice and job burnout as predictors of affective commitment

According to Maslach et al. (2001), job burnout is a three-dimensional syndrome ofemotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment.Emotional exhaustion refers to feelings of being depleted of one’s emotional resources.This dimension is regarded as the basic individual stress component of the syndrome(Maslach et al. 2001). It is the central quality of burnout and the most obviousmanifestation of this complex syndrome. Depersonalization refers to negative, cynical,or excessively detached response to other people at work. Reduced personal accom-plishment refers to feelings of decline in one’s competence and productivity and toone’s lowered sense of self-efficacy (Maslach 1998).

There is specific evidence relating organizational justice to burnout at the individuallevel (Cropanzano et al. 2005a, b). Lambert et al. (2010) revealed that both distributiveand procedural justice had a statistically significant inverse association with burnout. InOccident, the research in teachers’ job burnout is relatively early and rich, however, inChina, this kind of research is late, and there is very little empirical research amonguniversity teachers. Regarding the relationship between job burnout and organizationaljustice, Xiao (2007) investigated 258 P.E. teachers from 13 universities in Hubeiprovince of China, and found that P.E. teachers’ perceptions of distributive andprocedural justice increased their personal accomplishment, while their perceptions ofdistributive, procedural, and interactional justice reduced their depersonalization andemotional exhaustion. Zhong (2011) carried out a study on the relationship betweenworking stress, organizational justice, and job burnout among vocational collegeteachers. The sample included 492 teachers from 12 universities in south China. Theresults showed that organizational justice was negatively correlated with job burnout

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(r=−0.388). Zhang et al. (2012) investigated the rural primary and secondary schoolteachers in China and found that organizational justice predicted negatively the emo-tional exhaustion, but positively predicted personal accomplishment.

Although the dimensions of organizational justice are potentially related to burnout,research generally has supported the predominance of procedural and interactionaljustice over distributive justice in explaining burnout (Moliner et al. 2005; Schminkeet al. 2000).

It is noteworthy that job burnout is not only closely related to organizational justicebut also closely related to organizational commitment. Although few theories can befound to explain the relationship between job burnout and organizational commitment,a body of research has found that increased burnout diminished the level of commit-ment significantly (e.g., Aslam and Safdar 2012; Hakanen et al. 2008; Jung & Kim2012). In terms of Chinese university teachers, however, very little research can befound to examine the above relationship. For example, sampling 467 P.E. teachers froma regular university in Anhui province, Qin (2009) found that emotional exhaus-tion and depersonalization negatively related to affective commitment andcontinuance commitment, while personal accomplishment positively related tonormative commitment. Through investigating 377 teachers from a university,Ling (2008) found emotional exhaustion had a remarkable inverse correlationwith continuance commitment and normative commitment; depersonalizationhad a remarkable inverse correlation with normative commitment and affectivecommitment.

According to the above review, it is reasonable to infer that job burnout should act asa mediator between organizational justice and affective commitment. However, up tonow, little research was found about this mediating effect of job burnout except Li(2008). Li (2008) examined the mediating effect of job burnout by means of linearregression analysis, rather than structural equation modeling. The results showed thatemotional exhaustion and depersonalization were partial mediators between distributivejustice and affective commitment. Meanwhile, emotional exhaustion and personalaccomplishment were partial mediators between procedural justice and affective com-mitment. As for depersonalization, it partially mediated the relationship betweeninteractional justice and affective commitment.

3 Research hypotheses

On the whole, a great deal of research was conducted on organizational justice andwork attitudes of employees. Most of these studies were carried out in western cultureparticularly in business context and so far limited relevant literature is available ineastern culture particularly in higher education context. On the basis of the abovetheories and findings, considering the importance of higher education, we soughtevidence among university teachers following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1 The three types of justice (distributive, procedural, interactional) willeach be significantly related to affective commitment.

Hypothesis 2a Emotional exhaustion acts as a partial mediator between each types ofjustice (distributive and procedural justice) and affective commitment.

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Hypothesis 2b Personal accomplishment acts as a partial mediator between proce-dural justice and affective commitment.

Hypothesis 2c Depersonalization act as a partial mediator between interactionaljustice and affective commitment.

In order to illustrate intuitively the relationship between the study variables involvedin the hypotheses 1 and 2, two corresponding research models (see Figs. 1 and 2) weredeveloped.

4 Method

4.1 Research design

In view of limited research funding and time, this research adopted a cross-sectionaldesign to explore the relationship between the study variables.

4.2 Participants and procedure

Given the relatively loose organizational structures of Chinese universities and univer-sity teachers’ irregular work schedules and unfixed work places, following Laka-Mathebula (2004), the current study adopted the convenience sampling to obtain thestudy sample, rather than other sampling methods such as simple random sampling,stratified random sampling, and cluster random sampling. Although the representative-ness might be discounted, convenience sampling was effective for distributing andcollecting questionnaires. Finally, a sample of 435 teachers from five regular compre-hensive universities (among which, one university is the top one, the other four areranked between 4 and 12 in Henan province) in Henan province took part in the study.Of the respondents, 186 (42.5 %) were male, 249 (57.8 %) were female; the agesranged from 27 to 58 years (M=37.30, SD=7.56); 69.9 % were teachers with Masterdegree and 20.1 % with Doctor degree; 29.8 % were assistants, 49.6 % instructors, and21.6 % associate professors or professors.

Procedural

Justice

Distributive

Justice

Interactional

Justice

Affective

Commitment

Fig. 1 Model of the relationshipbetween OJ and AC

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4.3 Measures

Job burnout The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) Second Edition developed byMaslach and Jackson (1993) was used in the present study. This 22-item scale containsthree subscales: emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and (reduced)personal accomplishment (PA). Statements are rated on frequency of occurrence offeelings or attitude from 0 (never) to 6 (every day). EE is measured by a nine-item scale(e.g., “I feel emotionally drained from my job”) (α=0.89). DP is tapped by a five-itemscale (e.g., “I worry that this job is hardening me emotionally”) (α=0.66). Finally, PA ismeasured by an eight-item scale (e.g., “I feel I am positively influencing other people’slives through my work”) (α=0.81).

Organizational justice This structure was assessed by the Colquitt (2001) self-administered version of the Organizational Justice Questionnaire (OJQ) which exploresfour domains: procedural justice (7 items, α=0.93), with typical items such as “havethose procedures been free of bias”; distributive justice (4 items, α=0.93), with typicalitems such as “is your (outcome) justified, given your performance”; interpersonaljustice (4 items, α=0.92), with typical items such as “has (he/she) treated you withdignity”; informational justice (5 items, α=0.90), with typical items such as “has (he/she) explained the procedures thoroughly”. Responses were made on a Likert scaleranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), with higher scores indicating ahigher level of perceived organizational justice. Here, the current study integratedtogether the items of interpersonal justice and informational justice to assess interac-tional Justice, since previous research has demonstrated that interactional justiceactually consists of interpersonal and informational justices.

Affective commitment Teachers’ affective commitment was assessed with six itemsfrom the Meyer and Allen (1997) self-reported 18-item Organizational CommitmentQuestionnaire (OCQ). Responses were made on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 0

Affective

Commitment

Distributive

Justice

Procedural

Justice

Interactional

Justice

Emotional

Exhaustion

Personal

Accomplishment

Depersonalization

Fig. 2 Partial mediation model ofJB between OJ and AC

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(strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). The six items measuring affective commitmentinclude questions such as “I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career in thisorganization” (α=0.85).

4.4 Statistical analyses

To test hypotheses, we conducted a series of structural equation modeling analyses byusing Amos 19.0 (Arbuckle 2007). Of note, when structural equation modelinganalyses were conducted in this study, items of each scale were observed indicatorsfor each of the three factors (latent variables) of interests (i.e., job burnout, organiza-tional justice, and affective commitment). To evaluate model fit, several fit indices wereused: the relative chi-square (χ2/df), the adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI), thenon-normal fit index (NNFI), the root mean square residual (RMR) (Hu and Bentler1999), the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (Hu and Bentler 1999;Browne and Cudeck 1993), and the comparative fit index (CFI) (Bentler 1990). TheRMSEA with values of below 0.08 are assumed to be acceptable and below 0.05 asgood. Furthermore, the NNFI should be above 0.09, and the RMR with values less than0.08 are indicative of a well-fitting model (Hu and Bentler 1999). Although Byrne(1998) suggested that the CFI with values of above 0.90 to be indicative of good fit,others argued that it is too restrictive, particularly for multifactor rating scales for whichanalyses are conducted at the item level (see Marsh et al. 2004). Thus, CFI values in therange of 0.80 through 0.90 may also be considered as reasonable indicators of goodmodel fit. According to Browne and Cudeck (1993), generally, the values of AGFIshould be above 0.09, but the acceptable values of it can be relaxed to 0.8.

5 Results

5.1 Descriptive statistics

Means, standard deviations, correlations, and scale reliabilities are presented in Table 1.To be noted is that the correlations between procedural justice and distributive justice,between procedural justice and interactional justice, between interactional justice andpersonal accomplishment, and between emotional exhaustion and depersonalizationwere all larger than 0.50; While the correlations between emotional exhaustion andinteractional justice, between emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment, andbetween personal accomplishment, and depersonalization, were all smaller than −0.50.The above coefficients indicated that the three constructs (i.e., organizational justice,job burnout, and affective commitment) were correlated with each other. Nunnally(1978) recommended the Cronbach’s alpha of a scale should be greater than 0.7 foritems to be used together as a construct. Results of the current study indicated that allmeasurements have acceptable reliability values (α values from 0.87 to 0.92).

In addition, the exploratory factor analyses showed that for any instrument used inthe current study (MBI-ES, OCQ, or OJQ), all the indicators had significant loadingson their theoretically expected latent factors and no significant cross-loadings existed,suggesting acceptable construct validity.

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5.2 Structural equation modeling analyses

Table 2 displays the results of a series of SEMmodels by which we test our hypotheses.Model 1(M1)—the direct effect model of all dimensions of organizational justice onaffective commitment—had an acceptable fit to the data. Figure 3 presents completelystandardized path coefficients with their corresponding significance test for this first-order structural model. The goodness of fit for M1 is described in Table 2. The resultsshowed that M1 fitted statistically well to the data, χ2/df=2.10, RMSEA=0.05, RMR=0.04, AGFI=0.88, NNFI=0.92, CFI=0.95, all fit indexes were within the criterionvalues. The path from interactional justice to affective commitment was positively andstatistically significant, β=0.63, p<0.001, and so was the path from procedural justiceto affective commitment, β=0.16, p<0.05. Therefore, hypothesis 1, all the three typesof justice are related to affective commitment among university teachers, was partiallysupported in the current study because of the insignificant path from distributive justiceto affective commitment.

To test hypotheses 2a–2c, we simply mentioned the distinction between mediatorand moderator. According to Baron and Kenny (1986), in general, moderator variablesare often assumed to reduce or enhance the influence that specific independentvariables have on dependent variable, while mediator are often considered the mech-anism through which specific independent variables influence dependent variable. Inanalysis of variance (ANOVA) terms, a moderator effect can be represented as aninteraction. For example, choice may moderate the impact of incentive on attitude

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, correlations, and scale reliabilities (N=435)

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Distributive justice 10.72 4.43 (0.89)

Procedural justice 23.14 6.01 0.53** (0.92)

Interactional justice 27.20 6.17 0.57** 0.35** (0.91)

Emotional exhaustion 18.58 10.24 −0.43** −0.25** −0.57** (0.90)

Depersonalization 22.27 7.22 −0.32** −0.16** −0.48** 0.55** (0.89)

Personalaccomplishment

5.95 6.08 0.35** 0.11* 0.54** −0.54** −0.53** (0.87)

Affective commitment 20.61 4.15 0.43** 0.26** 0.49** −0.42** −0.33** −0.40** (0.92)

Cronbach’s αs are reported on the diagonal

*p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001

Table 2 Confirmatory factor analysis

df χ2 χ2/df RMSEA RMR AGFI NNFI CFI

M1 293** 613.80 2.10 0.05 0.04 0.88 0.92 0.95

M2 1064** 1,813.40 1.75 0.05 0.06 0.83 0.88 0.93

M3 1062** 1,793.17 1.67 0.04 0.06 0.84 0.89 0.94

**p<0.01

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change induced by discrepant action, and this effect is in turn mediated by a dissonancearousal-reduction sequence (cf. Brehm and Cohen 1962).

Model 2 (M2)—the partial mediation model of job burnout, with emotional exhaus-tion partially mediating two types of justice (distributive and procedural justice)/affective commitment relationship, personal accomplishment partially mediating theprocedural justice/affective commitment relationship, and depersonalization partiallymediating the interactional justice/affective commitment relationship—had an accept-able fit to data (see Fig. 2 and Table 2). However, inspection of the model’s diagnosticstatistics revealed that there were very high modification indices for the direct path frominteractional justice to emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment. Thus, wetested an alternative mediation model, model 3 (M3), in which two more paths (frominteractional justice to emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment) wereadded. To compare nested models, the most common index is the chi-squared differ-ence (Δχ2) (Bollen 1989). The difference of degree of freedom (Δdf) is also need to beobtained. Combining these two values, one must determine the significance of theΔχ2

withΔdf. If theΔχ2 is significant, the nested model with smaller value of χ2 fits betterto the data and is retained. M3 had a statistically significant better fit than M2,Δχ2

(M2–

M3)=20.23,Δdf=2, p<0.001 (see Table 2). Thus, M3, which is graphically representedin Fig. 4, was the best-fitting model. Hence, we found no evidence for hypotheses 2a,2b, and 2c, however, both emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment acted asmediators between interactional justice and affective commitment.

In order to make the above findings stand out more succinctly, a list of them wasdeveloped as follows:

1. Procedural justice is significantly related to affective commitment.2. Interactional justice is significantly related to affective commitment.3. Emotional exhaustion acts as partial mediator between interactional justice and

affective commitment.4. Personal accomplishment acts as partial mediator between interactional justice and

affective commitment.

.43

.63***

.16*

-.03

Procedural

Justice

Distributive

Justice

Interactional

Justice

Affective

Commitment

.62

.66

Fig. 3 The structure model of organizational justice dimensions’ effect on affective commitment. *<p 0.05;***p<0.001

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6 Discussion

Justice has long been claimed as “the first virtue of social institutions” (Rawls 1971, p.3), and plays an important role in effective functioning of organizations (Greenberg1990). The results of the present study revealed that, of the three factors of organiza-tional justice, interactional justice predicted affective commitment the most strongly.This meant during decision-making processes, the interpersonal treatment the teachersreceive from their organization significantly influenced the strength of their emotionalattachment to, identification with, and involvement in their university. According to thisfinding, university managers should treat teachers with fairness during decision-makingprocesses related to teachers. However, this finding was not in line with Mastersonet al. (2000) who found that procedural justice perception was most strongly related toorganization-related outcomes (e.g., organizational commitment) whereas interactionaljustice was most strongly related to supervisor-related outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction).Given the scales were originally developed within the American context, this discrep-ancy seems to indicate that occidental subjects more value procedural justice perceptionregarding the outcomes allocation and decision-making related to themselves thanChinese subjects. In addition, the subjects of Masterson et al. (2000) were companyemployees, while the participants in the current study were university teachers. Thedifference of occupational groups might influence the results. According to Becker(1960), occupational groups are subcultures with value systems of their own. Based onthis, it can be expected that the antecedents of affective commitment should be differentacross occupational groups, because each occupational group has its own value system.This result seems also to reflect the fact that in Chinese university context, theprocedure or routine for distributing or decision-making is largely identical betweendifferent universities, since it was generally regulated or enacted in advance accordingto the unified national laws and government documents. Thus university teachers do

.43

.66

.62

.41***

.10* -.20*

.24**

-.75***

.55***

-.59***

Affective

Commitment

Distributive

Justice

Procedural

Justice

Interactional

Justice

Emotional

Exhaustion

Personal

Accomplishment

Depersonalization

Fig. 4 The structure model for partial mediating effect of job burnout dimensions. *p<0.05; **p<0.0;***p<0.001

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not need to care more for procedure; instead, they more concern themselves with theinterpersonal treatment or human interference factors.

This study also showed that procedural justice was strongly related to affectivecommitment, while distributive justice has no significant influence on affective com-mitment. This provided evidence for the finding of Sweeney and McFarlin (1993) thatprocedural justice was a better predictor of organizational commitment when comparedwith distributive justice. Their explanation was that fair procedures let employees “feelthey will ‘get a fair shake’ from the company and its representatives should theyperform well in future, even if current rewards were unfair” (Sweeney and McFarlin,1993, p. 37). However, in the current study, the finding that distributive justice had nosignificant influence on affective commitment was not in line with the previousliterature. It seems that perhaps influenced by Chinese traditional culture, particularlyConfucianism, compared with their perceived fairness of decision-making processesand the interpersonal treatment they received, whether the outcomes (e.g., salary andpromotion) are fair or not is not very important for Chinese university teachers’affective commitment to their organization.

Affective commitment refers to the strength of employees’ emotional attachment to,identification with, and involvement in their organization. Employees with strongaffective commitment remain in the organization because they want to (Meyer andAllen 1997). As for university teachers, the committed teachers will be happy to spendthe rest of their career with their university, will really feel as if their university’sproblems are their own, and will feel their university has a great deal of personalmeaning for them. The current study further explored the formation mechanism ofteachers’ affective commitment. Applying structural equation modeling, we examinedthe mediating effect of job burnout between organizational justice and affectivecommitment. The results showed that both emotional exhaustion and reduced personalaccomplishment were partial mediators between interactional justice and affectivecommitment. However, not as expected, depersonalization was not a mediator betweenany dimension of justice and affective commitment. These results indicate that inter-actional justice can not only directly improve affective commitment, but also indirectlyinfluence affective commitment, that is, through reducing the levels of emotionalexhaustion and improving personal accomplishment to enhance affective commitment.Although affective commitment has a lot of antecedents, and the formation mechanismof teachers’ affective commitment should be very complicated, after all, the abovemediating effect gave us an idea about how to train and improve teachers’ affectivecommitment.

According to the above finding, Chinese university managers should pay moreattention to improve the teachers’ perception of interactional justice. Interactionaljustice has come to be seen as consisting of two specific types of interpersonaltreatment (e.g., Greenberg 1990, 1993). The first, labeled interpersonal justice, reflectsthe degree to which people are treated with politeness, dignity, and respect by author-ities or third parties involved in executing procedures or determining outcomes. Thesecond, labeled informational justice, focuses on the explanations provided to peoplethat convey information about why procedures were used in a certain way or whyoutcomes were distributed in a certain fashion (Colquitt 2001). According to these twoaspects of interactional justice, under Chinese culture background, university managersshould treat teachers with politeness, dignity, and respect. Moreover, university

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managers should also provide teachers with necessary information about the distribut-ing procedures. For example, in order to show respect to teachers, it is necessary foruniversity managers to extensively listen to opinions and suggestions from teachersduring decision-making and create more opportunities for teachers to participate inuniversity management. As university managers, they need remind themselves tocommunicate with subordinates and teachers with equal posture. Additionally, as akind of respect, truthfulness is also included in interactional justice (Bies and Moag1986). So university managers should be honest when they communicate with teachers,offering true information, rather than lies.

Of note, the results of the current study were not consistent with Li (2008) whoconducted an investigation in 10 enterprises in China and found all the three dimen-sions of burnout acted as mediators between some justice dimensions and affectivecommitment. This discrepancy probably is because of the difference in the investigat-ing time and region, of course, the difference in the sample and instrument should alsobe taken into account. For example, in terms of investigating region, the 10 enterprisesinvestigated by Li (2008) were from Fujian, a province in south China, while the fiveuniversities in the current study were from Henan, a province in north China. As forsample, Li (2008) selected the employees from Chinese state-owned and privateenterprises as respondents, while the respondents in the current study were universityteachers. Obviously, the living conditions, degree of education, values, and so on wereall different between these two samples.

6.1 Implications

This study examined reliability and construct validity of the three instruments, i.e.,Maslach and Jackson’s (1993) MBI, Colquitt’s (2001) OJQ, and Meyer and Allen’s(1997) OCQ. The results indicated that all instruments had acceptable reliability valuesand acceptable construct validity. Therefore, although developed by American re-searchers, the three questionnaires for measuring job burnout, organizational justice,and affective commitment also can be applied to Chinese subjects and had cross-cultural applicability.

Additionally, the current study contributed to the empirical research regarding theantecedents and consequences of organizational justice, organizational commitment,and job burnout within the context of Chinese higher education. Despite the fact thatorganizational justice, organizational commitment, and job burnout are all importantinfluential factors in the effective functioning of organizations (Greenberg 1990), therehas been few empirical research on them in an overall structural equation model. Asexpected, this study revealed the significance of organizational justice and job burnoutto organizational commitment, and particularly, the mediating effect of job burnoutbetween organizational justice and organizational commitment, thus, theoretically,enhanced our understanding of the relationship between organizational justice, organi-zational commitment, and job burnout.

As for practical implications, the findings of this study provided university managerswith insights into the formation of teachers’ affective commitment, as well as withtheoretical foundation for decision-making on human resources management (HRM).Previous research has shown that university teachers’ organizational commitmentpredicts a number of important organizational outcomes, including job performance

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and organizational performance (e.g., Chen and Francesco 2003; Vandenabeele 2009).Thus, to increase affective commitment is an effective way to improve universityperformance and teachers’ job performance. The results in the current study revealedthat teachers’ procedural justice and interactional justice positively affected affectivecommitment. Furthermore, the current study also corroborated the mediating effect ofjob burnout between organizational justice and affective commitment. According tothis result, university managers can take advantage of improving teachers’ perceptionof organizational justice to kill two birds with one stone, that is, not only to directlyincrease their affective commitment, but also to indirectly improve affective commit-ment through reducing job burnout.

6.2 Limitations and future research

Several limitations need to be addressed here. First, the current study used a cross-sectional design. The cross-sectional study means that the direction of causality cannotbe determined, because data were collected at a single point in time. That is, causalityamong the independent and dependent variables cannot be concluded.

Moreover, theoretically, self-reports are deemed appropriate to measure these con-cepts like job burnout and affective commitment, however, given all variables weremeasured from a single source, i.e., self-report, there is a chance of common methodvariance or bias to affect the results (e.g., Chan 2009; Podsakoff et al. 2003; Spector2006). In order to determine if the common method variance was a concern inthe present study, Harman’s single factor test was applied (Camelo-Ordaz et al.2010). The principal component analysis with varimax rotation revealed thepresence of three distinct factors with eigenvalue greater than 1.0, rather than ofa single factor. The three factors together accounted for 64 % of the totalvariance; the first (largest) factor did not account for a majority of the variance(26 %). Thus, no general factor was apparent. While this result does suggestthat common method variance is not of great concern, it does not preclude thepossibility of common method variance.

For future research, this study provided a conceptual foundation for research onChinese university teachers’ organizational commitment. Specifically, the current studyexamined two important antecedents of affective commitment, i.e., job burnout andorganizational justice. Future research can introduce other antecedents and conse-quences of affective commitment to the current model in order to look at a broaderorganizational environment related to affective commitment, including work engage-ment, organizational performance, actual turnover, organizational citizenship behavior(OCB), and so on. Moreover, in a study of nurses, Zellars et al. (2000) found thatamong the big five personality factors, only neuroticism predicted the MBI’s emotionalexhaustion scale, after controlling for the effects of sociodemographic and stressvariables. Burnout may exacerbate certain personality traits. It appears that the complexinteraction between personality traits and burnout has yet to be described and under-stood. What is more, perceived organizational support (POS) has long beenconceptualized in social exchange theory (SET) terms (Eisenberger et al.1990; Eisenberger et al. 2002). When POS is high, workers are more likelyto engage in higher organizational commitment (Settoon et al. 1996), andhigher job performance (Eisenberger et al. 2001).

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Given the predictability of POS and personality variables on organizational com-mitment, if future research also integrates POS and Big Five Personality into the currentmodel, may be lead to more exciting findings, and then give deeper and morereasonable explanations for affective commitment.

Of course, it is better to carry out, if it is possible, longitudinal studies to determinethe final causality between the studied variables.

7 Conclusion

In summary, this research investigated the relationship between organizational justice,job burnout, and affective commitment. It was found that as for organizational justice,interactional justice and procedural justice significantly influenced affective commit-ment, while distributive justice had no significant effect on affective commitment.Furthermore, the current study tested the mediating role of job burnout in the relationbetween organizational justice and affective commitment, and found both emotionalexhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment partially mediate the relationshipbetween interactional justice and affective commitment.

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