ABSTRACT
Low levels of organisational commitment among university academic staff have taken a worrying trend. This is evidenced by frequent industrial actions, demotivation, poor students’ performances and so on.Hence, the influence of perceived organisational justice (distributive, procedural, interpersonal justice, and informational justice) on organisational commitment in the context of academic staff of universities in Edo State, Nigeria was examined in this study.
The specific objectives of the study were to examine the relationship between distributive, procedural, interpersonal justice and informational justice and organisational commitment of this category of employees. To achieve the objectives of the study,survey research design was adopted by surveying 313 out of 343 sampled academic staff in three selected universities: University of Benin {UNIBEN}, Benin City, Ambrose Alli University {AAU}, Ekpoma and Benson Idahosa University {BIU} in Edo State, Nigeria at a point in time using a structured questionnaire.
The main findings from the study revealed that distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice and informational justice have positive significant influence on organisational commitment. In light of these findings, the study recommended that administrators of universities should increase and sustain efforts in fairly rewarding academic staff according to their relevant education/qualification, skills, years of experience acquired, responsibilities, contribution, and performance. Moreover, university administrators such as members of the university governing council, the university senate, faculty, departmental heads etc should increase effort in promoting fair methods, policies and procedures used to reach decision outcomes or rewards such as in promotion, selection, pay, pay raise, bonuses. Also, the management and supervisors in these universities should constantly and fairly treat all academic staff with politeness, dignity, respect and also refrain from improper remarks and comments. Additionally, the study recommends that academic employees should be equitably provided with detailed, accurate, timely, and adequate information to perform their job.
