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Weekly UpdatesA study of 293 employees in fifty-four full-service restaurants in a major Korean city found that the restaurant employees were significantly more likely to participate in organizational citizenship behaviors when they viewed their managers as being fair in distributing awards and in their personal actions. Organizational citizenship behaviors are defined as being the many actions taken by restaurant employees that are above and beyond their specific job descriptions. Managers cannot directly demand such actions, but they can encourage employees through personal relationships and by demonstrating that they behave in a just fashion. According to the theory of leader-member exchange, when employees view their manager as being fair, they are more likely to perform citizenship actions.
In the aggregate, employees' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) promote organizational performance in many ways and thereby gain significance as market competition gets fierce. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships affect the service employee's OCBs. Following other research approaches, the structural equation model presented here hypothesizes the mediating roles of two forms of justice between LMX constructs and OCB constructs using the following constructs. The LMX forms are perceived contribution and affect, the justice constructs are interactional justice and distributive justice, and the OCB types are those directed toward supervisors and those directed at the organization. Based on an analysis of 293 responses collected from fifty-four full-service restaurants in a metropolitan city in South Korea, this study concludes that both forms of LMX significantly influence employees' perceptions of justice (that is, both interactional and distributive). Those perceptions, in turn, significantly affect the employees' tendency to engage in OCBs.
Keywords: leader-member exchange; justice perception; organizational citizenship behavior; full-service restaurant; Korea
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Without doubt, restaurant operators depend on the actions taken by frontline employees that are above and beyond the call of duty. These so-called organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are largely discretionary on the part of the employee and generally are not explicitly rewarded by the organization (Konovsky and Pugh 1994; Organ 1988). Nevertheless, OCBs are important to any food-service organization. They enhance coworker and managerial productivity, free up resources, help to improve the coordination of activities between team members, strengthen network ties to improve organizational learning, and enhance the organization's ability to attract and retain the best people (Organ, Podsakoff, and MacKenzie 2006). Especially in the food-service industry, given the experiential and interactive nature of services and the active role played by service employees, the employees' OCBs strongly influence customers' service experience and organizational success (cf. Walz and Niehoff 2000).
Bhal (2006) argued that in the context of the leader-member exchange (LMX), a high quality of interaction would lead the member to engage in extra role or citizenship behaviors, whereas a poor quality of interaction would lead the member to participate only in contractual or role-based behaviors. As we explain below, high-quality exchanges are characterized by trust and mutuality, while poor-quality exchanges are inflexible. She further suggested that justice is the underlying mechanism that links LMX with OCB (i.e., LMX [right arrow] justice [right arrow] OCB). Specifically, because justice is a matter of perceptual cognition (Bhal 2006), if LMX is to affect OCB, it should be through justice perceptions. Her argument is further supported by the LMX development process theory, which suggests that once the leader-member relationship stabilizes after initial stages, the quality of that relationship is likely to influence employees' perceptions of justice (Bhal and Ansari 2007).
Most previous research treated justice as an antecedent of LMX (i.e., justice LMX), but we think that the arrow should point the other way and, thus, that LMX drives justice. We wanted to test our revised model of LMX, justice, and OCB in restaurants. Beyond that, we wanted to fine-tune the concepts of LMX, justice, and OCB by employing two distinct constructs for each concept in one theoretical model. Thus, as the mediators between the LMX and OCB dimensions, our model includes two forms of justice (interactional justice and distributive justice) along with two dimensions of LMX (perceived contribution and affect), two dimensions of OCB (those directed at supervisors and those directed at the organization).
Background and Hypotheses
Social Exchange Theory
Both LMX theory and justice theory are rooted in social exchange theory (Blau 1964; Thibaut and Kelley 1959). Together with role-making theory (Graen 1976), social exchange theory explains how the quality of LMX and employees' perceptions of justice affect each other as the relationship between the leader and member evolves (Sanchez and Byrne 2004). Blau (1964, 91) offers the following definition: "Social exchange is voluntary actions of individuals that are motivated by the returns they are expected to bring and typically do in fact bring from others." According to social exchange theory, accepting something of value from another obligates the receiver to reciprocate. Over time, the role-making process augments voluntary exchange interactions by producing enhanced functional interdependence, based on trust and fairness (Graen 2003; Sanchez and Byrne 2004).
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
Extending the social exchange theory to the relationship of organization leaders and members and the quality of their interactions (Dansereau, Graen, and Haga 1975), LMX theory addresses the leader-member relationships of varying interaction qualities. In that regard, low-quality LMX relationships are salient in downward influence and role-defined relations. In other words, the boss dictates the work, and positions are strictly defined. In contrast, high-quality LMX relationships are strong in mutual trust, respect, liking, and reciprocal influence (Dansereau, Graen, and Haga 1975). The relationship develops through repeated role incidents at the role-taking, role-making, and role-routinization stages (Graen 1976; Graen and Scandura 1987).
Originally conceived as a one-dimensional construct focusing primarily on job-related interactions, LMX has been proposed as multidimensional based on the notion that roles and exchanges are multidimensional (e.g., Bhal and Ansari 1996; Dienesch and Liden 1986; Liden and Maslyn 1998). Dienesch and Liden (1986, 625), for example, proposed three "currencies of exchange," namely, perception of the amount, direction, and quality of work-oriented activity (perceived contribution); loyalty to each other (loyalty); and mutual affection for each other (affect). A more recent study by Bhal and Ansari (1996) found that only two of those three dimensions may be relevant when evaluating quality of interaction between the leader and member, those being perceived contribution on the job and affect in the dyad--in other words, the perceived contribution dimension of LMX (LMX-PC) and affect dimension of LMX (LMX-Af). We took this approach in our study, noting that Liden and Maslyn (1998) argue that the value of identifying distinct dimensions of LMX lies in their differing effects on employee perceptions and behaviors.
Organizational Justice
Organizational justice refers to perceptions of fairness in the workplace. Perceptions of justice are important to individuals and entities involved in some sorts of exchanges (e.g., Colquitt et al. 2001). Although closely related, interactional justice and procedural justice are generally treated as distinct constructs (Konovsky and Cropanzano 1991). Interactional justice perceptions heavily involve interpersonal process and, thus, are affected by the person carrying out the action (Bies and Moag 1986). Distributive justice is more a function of perceptions regarding the outcomes of a particular manager's activities.
Interactional justice. Bies and Moag (1986) proposed that the quality of interpersonal treatment during the execution of formal procedures or in the explanation of those procedures affects individuals' fairness perception apart from the procedure itself. They labeled this dimension of justice as "interactional justice." They further argue that interactional justice perceptions arise from beliefs about the sincerity, respectfulness, and consistency of the persons interacting. Such interpersonal elements distinguish perceptions of interactional justice from those of procedural and distributive justice (Aquino, Lewis, and Bradfield 1999).
Several researchers have proposed that interactional justice concerns are the most important (e.g., Mikula, Petri, and Tanzer 1989) and arouse the most intense emotional and behavioral responses (e.g., Bies and Moag 1986; Tyler and Bies 1990). Specifically, Poyner (1988) observed that employees are particularly bothered by abusive behavior on the part of their supervisors and coworkers, which they consider patently unjust. Similarly, the results of Aquino, Lewis, and Bradfield's (1999) study showed that perceived violations of interactional justice have the strongest effects on employees' behavioral outcomes. Those authors interpreted their results as revealing that interpersonal concerns are more salient to individuals when they form judgments of fairness than either procedural structures or distributive outcomes.
Distributive justice. Appropriate distribution of work-related resources and rewards provides an encouraging or motivational force for employees (Lee and Farh 1999). Perceptions of distributive justice result from employees' evaluations of fairness of such distributions as those of pay levels, work schedules, and work assignments (Greenberg 1990). Distributive justice has been understood through equity in social exchange (Adams 1963). To judge the fairness of distributive outcomes, employees would compare their rewards with those of comparable others through a lens of contributions made to earn those rewards. Such referents include not only coworkers but also those having similar attributes in other departments or even in other companies (cf. Organ 1988).
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