Organisational Justice, Experiencing Interpersonal Conflict and Employee Engagement: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

Abstract

Interpersonal conflict in a workplace is related to increased employee turnover rates, reduced creativity, and employee disengagement. Present study intends to examine how organisational justice can be related to lesser interpersonal conflict, i.e., task conflict, relationship conflict, and increased employee engagement. Data for the present study have been collected from 650 employees working in multinational corporations located in Gurgaon. Data collected have been validated using confirmatory factor analyses and hypotheses have been tested through structure equation modelling. Further, reliability and validity of data were confirmed. PROCESS has been applied to examine moderated-mediation. Results reveal that interpersonal conflict and employee engagement are negatively related, organisational justice is related to lesser conflict, organisational justice is positively related to employee engagement, and organisational justice is indirectly related to employee engagement through interpersonal conflict, but only when organisational justice is weak. The present study contributes to the existing literature by exploring that organisational justice may not only prevent conflict, but also affect how employees react when subjected to conflict. This study has been restricted to multinational corporations and Indian context only, which can be extended to other sectors and countries. This study contributes to the literature on employee engagement and the Job-Demand-Resource Theory by highlighting the moderating role of organisational justice. Present study confirms that organisational justice contributes to maintaining low levels of conflict as well as high levels of employee engagement.

Keywords: Organisational Justice, Task Conflict, Relationship Conflict, Employee Engagement

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