Perceived organisational justice and unethical work behaviour among hotel employees in Accra: the role of gender and marital status

Abstract

Ethics and organizational justice share common roots and patterns of development in that, employees’ ethical behaviours are influenced by the perceived fairness of the company’s policies, procedures and decision making. While this link has been established in many studies, whether this relationship is the same for different demographic groups has received little attention, particularly for the hospitality industry. This study, therefore, sought to examine perceived organisational justice and unethical work behaviours among hotel employees in Accra using gender and marital status as moderating variables. Data was collected from a sample of 379 employees of five four-star hotels in Accra. The moderated multiple regression technique, PROCESS by Hayes in SPSS was employed to test the significance of the moderating variables in the relationship between organisational justice and unethical work behaviour among hotel employees in Accra. The results showed that gender was significant in interactive justice effect on unethical work behaviours; while marital status was significant in distributive justice and procedural justice’ effect on unethical work behaviours among the hotel employees. The study recommends specific strategies for discouraging unethical workplace behaviours and encouraging organisational citizenship.