Association between organizational justice and depressive symptoms among securities company workers

BACKGROUND: The organizational justice model can evaluate job stressor from decision-making process, attitude of managerial or senior staff toward their junior workers, and unfair resource distribution. Stress from organizational injustice could be harmful to workers' mental health. The purpose of this study is to explore the association between organizational justice and depressive symptoms in a securities company. METHODS: To estimate organizational justice, a translated Moorman's organizational justice evaluation questionnaire (Korean) was employed. Cronbach's α coefficient was estimated to assess the internal consistency of the translated questionnaire. To assess depressive symptoms, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale was used. The link between the sub-concepts of the organizational justice model and depressive symptoms was assessed utilizing multiple logistic regression models. RESULTS: The risk of depressive symptoms was significantly higher among workers with higher levels of all subcategory of organizational injustice. In the full adjusted model odds ratio (OR) of higher level of procedural injustice 2.79 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.58–4.90), OR of the higher level of relational injustice 4.25 (95% CI, 2.66–6.78), OR of higher level of distributional injustice 4.53 (95% CI, 2.63–7.83) respectively. Cronbach's α coefficient of the Korean version was 0.93 for procedural justice, 0.93 for relational justice, and 0.95 for distributive justice. CONCLUSIONS: A higher level of organizational injustice was linked to higher prevalence of depressive symptoms among workers in a company of financial industry.