I Scratch Your Back – You Scratch Mine. Do Procedural Justice and Organizational Identification Matter for Employees' Cooperation During Change?

Abstract

Employee cooperation is fundamental for accomplishing successful organizational change processes. Therefore, it is important to understand how employees' cooperation can be supported in the context of organizational change. Based on the group engagement model, we hypothesized how procedural justice affects organizational identification which in turn should have an affect on employees' cooperation (commitment to change, values-congruence fit, and change-supporting behavior) in the context of organizational change. To test the fit of the proposed model, structural equation models were calculated using both cross-sectional (N = 315) and longitudinal (N = 110) data of academic staff at a German university. Results indicated adequate data fit to our proposed model and revealed that organizational identification mediated the positive effects of procedural justice on affective commitment to change and values-congruence fit. The assumed mediating effect of organizational identification on the positive relationship between procedural justice and change-supporting behavior could only be supported using cross-sectional data.