The relationship between work conditions and perceptions of organizational justice among library employees

Library employees hold perceptions about the fairness of the outcomes, processes, and interpersonal treatment in their workplaces. When employees feel the workplace is fair they are more likely to feel commitment to the organization, perform in-role and extra-role tasks, and experience job satisfaction. When employees perceive injustice in the workplace, research points to negative outcomes such as withholding work or even sabotage. To understand the antecedents of organizational justice, researchers carried out a national survey of librarians to compare the predictive power of perceived organizational support, job autonomy, job feedback, and job stress. Results indicate that increasing librarians' perceptions of organizational support and their autonomy, and providing meaningful and timely job feedback can increase overall perceptions of justice. Managers can enhance a climate of justice in their workplaces by developing strategies that target organization support, autonomy, and feedback to reduce a sense of injustice between and among employees. •Organizational justice and equity theory can be applied to libraries to identify new perspectives for management decisions.•Organizational justice considers employees' perceptions of fairness in the workplace.•Organizational justice predicts positive workplace outcomes.•Perceived organizational support, job feedback, and job autonomy positively predicted organizational justice perceptions.•Organizations can benefit from enhancing work conditions to create a stronger sense of justice.