More Flexibility, Higher Commitment: The Role of Perceived Organizational Fairness among Public Employees in the Republic of Korea

Abstract

Previous research on family-friendly policies has aimed to understand such arrangements as a managerial enabler for facilitating employees work-life balance. Yet, how these arrangements become widely diffused and eventually translate into positive organizational effectiveness may depend on how employees resolve their relational and professional uncertainty upon their latent opportunity to participate. In this context, this research first attempts to investigate the effects of individual-level organizational fairness perception on public employees participation in flexible work-schedule programs (FWP

flextime). Next, the paper addresses the question of whether such participation, along with the empirical degrees of FWP satisfaction, leads to higher levels of affective organizational commitment. Applying a multilevel logistic regression (Study 1) along with t-test/ANOVA and hierarchical linear regression models (Study 2 and 3), the research has shown that interactional fairness perception is in a positive association with public employees likelihood to have participated in FWP. Among the three sub-dimensions of organizational justice, positive impact of interactional fairness appeared the most robust

empirical results on procedural and distributive fairness perceptions have failed to meet the level of statistical significance. In addition, it appeared that those who have experienced FWP are more committed towards their home organizations, and that the degrees of FWP-satisfaction are also positively associated with the levels of affective organizational commitment. These results offer significant theoretical substance and practical implications for the literature on family-friendly policies. Organizational fairness must come to pervade workgroup functioning, and managerial considerations on these issues – specifically on interactional fairness – must be made when new trends of family-friendly policies begin to alter the extant traditional norms of office-hours. In order to further facilitate the diffusion of family-friendly arrangements, managers and executives alike should make justice principles central to intra-organizational communication, through which a higher level of affective organizational commitment can be attained.