The moderating effect of negative affectivity in the procedural justice-job satisfaction relation

We examined the potential moderating effect of negative affectivity in the relation between perceptions of procedural justice and job satisfaction in two studies. In the first study, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of 232 individuals working for a Canadian public-sector organization that was being partially privatized. In the second study, we conducted a two-wave panel study of 173 university students participating in a co-operative education work term. In both studies, we found that the relation between procedural justice and job satisfaction was stronger for those who were low in negative affectivity than for those who were high in negative affectivity. These findings support the notion that employee dispositions influence the manner in which organizational factors are perceived. In addition, these findings suggest that fair procedures do not uniformly result in positive organizational outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction).