A Preliminary Test of a Proposed Path Model of the Direct Associations of Organizational Justice’s Relationship with Organizational Trust for Chinese Prison Staff

Organizational justice refers to the view that the employing organization treats employees in a fair and just manner. There are different schools of thought regarding the number of dimensions that compose organizational justice, but the current study included four: informational, interactional, procedural, and distributive. Organizational trust refers the view that an employee has confidence in the representatives of the organization. The current study included supervisor and management trust, as they are the two major types of organizational trust. The authors propose a path model where informational and interactional justice are positive direct predictors of both procedural and distributive justice, and procedural justice is directly and positively related to distributive justice. In turn, procedural and distributive justice are directly and positively associated with supervisor and management trust. Ordinary least squares analysis of survey data from 322 staff at two Chinese prisons supported the path model, except that procedural justice did not predict supervisor trust. As this is a preliminary study, more research, including more focused research, is needed to determine how organizational justice is related to organizational trust among correctional staff in different nations.