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Personality and Perceived Justice as Predictors of Survivors’ Reactions Following Downsizing 1
Author(s) -
Brennan Aoife,
Skarlicki Daniel P.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2004.tb02008.x
Subject(s) - psychology , hostility , social psychology , interactional justice , organizational citizenship behavior , personality , economic justice , organizational justice , organizational commitment , neoclassical economics , economics
Downsizing, when deemed unfair, can result in negative outcomes in terras of survivors’ job attitudes and behaviors. Little research to date has examined whether a survivor's personality moderates these reactions. The present study examines the roles of personality and organizational justice in survivors’ reactions to downsizing. Results show that angry hostility moderates the relationships between survivors’ perceived interactional justice and (a) their organizational commitment, and (b) their intention to quit following downsizing. Specifically, the relationship between interactional justice and both criterion variables was significant only when angry hostility was low. Self‐discipline was found to moderate the relationship between survivors’ interactional justice and their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) such that there was a significant positive correlation between interactional justice and OCB only for those employees who were low on self‐discipline. These findings are discussed in light of how supervisors could best manage downsizing.