Interactive effects of multi-foci justice climates on teams’ psychological empowerment

Abstract

Psychological empowerment refers to the degree in which an employee feels that he controls events in the organization. This construct is studied on a group level as well, as a team members’ common experience. Team empowerment is a multidimensional construct that includes the collective belief about freedom, independence and discretion in decision-making (autonomy), teams’ effectiveness (potency), the importance and value of teams’ work (meaningfulness), and the contribution of the teams’ work to organizational performance (impact). Organizations are interested in empowering individuals and teams because empowerment relates to positive work outcomes. Justice climate, as an important component of the overall experience of the working environment, greatly determines psychological empowerment. The aim of this study is to verify the interactive effects of organizational, supervisory and peer justice climate on teams’ psychological empowerment. We analyzed data collected from 196 work teams from different organizations. Results of polynomial regression combined with response surface methodology show that with the increase of the level of congruence between multi-foci justice climates, teams’ psychological empowerment increases as well. Misalignment between different sources of justice climate, a situation in which one source is fair while the other is unfair, does not affect the team members’ joint perception of psychological empowerment. As long as the team perceives one source of justice as fair, the teams’ psychological empowerment is high, regardless of the injustice of another source. Although the cross- sectional study design does not allow inferring causality, the theoretical implications of the results for the application of the congruence theory in the organizational context in understanding the effects of (mis)alignment between different sources of justice climate, as well as the practical applicability of the results in human resource management, are discussed.