Does Organizational Justice Invariably Increase Satisfaction? The Moderating Role of Conflict

Stakeholder theory has often been criticized as being too generic. In order to refine our knowledge about some of its core concepts and their relationships, this study examines the nexus between organizational justice, conflict, and stakeholder satisfaction. Building on attribution theory, we hypothesize that the level of conflict moderates the relationship between the procedural, distributive, and interpersonal dimensions of organizational justice on the one and satisfaction on the other hand. Testing our hypotheses on survey data from 166 employees of Swiss electronics firms yields broad support for our theoretical account. We find that conflict positively moderates the effect of procedural justice on satisfaction, whereas it negatively moderates the effect of interpersonal and distributive justice on satisfaction. We discuss implications for stakeholder theory, the broader literature on organizational justice, and management practice.