Justice Perception And Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Of Employees In Small And Medium Enterprises (Smes) In Lagos State.

ABSTRACT

This study explores the empirical significance of justice perception and organizational citizenship behaviour of employees in small and medium enterprises in Lagos state, Nigeria. It also aims at establishing the moderating role of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, propensity to leave, and task performance, on the relationship between justice perception and organizational citizenship behaviour. The purpose of the study is to assist managers and operators of SMEs in Nigeria towards improving their human resource skills with a view to boosting the efficiency of their employees. A survey of 71 small and medium enterprises (selected from a population of 238 SMEs) in Lagos was undertaken by means of self administered questionnaire. Data were collected from 1420 employees who were randomly selected from the sampled companies. Responses from the survey were statistically analysed by use of descriptive statistics, Pearson product moment correlation, t-test, analysis of variance, Mann Whitney U test, and stepwise multiple regression analysis. The result of the tests revealed significant correlation among justice perception and organizational citizenship behaviour, which means that the rate at which people exhibit extra role behaviour will be determined by the rate at which they feel fairly treated by their organizations. The findings also revealed that when justice perception is paired with other variables (such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, propensity to leave, and task performance), the impact on organizational citizenship behaviour appears greater. In addition, the study revealed that justice perception alone may not exclusively account for workers’ citizenship behaviour. Hence, there is no one best variable to explain citizenship behaviour. Rather, it is a combination of several factors including justice perception. The implication of this study is that for Nigerian small and medium enterprises to make their impact like their contemporaries in the developed economies, they must be particularly interested in the way their employees perceive both the procedure through which decisions are made as well as the final outcome. In addition, managers must be interested in programmes which will improve their employees’ perception of fairness and also improve their citizenship behaviour. By this, the SMEs in Nigeria will make significant contribution to industrial development through enhanced productivity from their employees.