Employees' perceptions of justice and workplace deviance: A moderated mediation model of ethical work climate and task type

Despite considerable prior research examining the negative influence of perceptions of organizational justice on workplace deviance across different contexts, little attention has been paid to the underlying mechanisms. This study attempts to fill that void by examining the mediating role of different types of ethical work climates and the moderating role of task type in the relationship between organizational justice perceptions and deviant work behaviour among public sector employees in Turkey. The findings show that organizational justice perceptions are negatively related to workplace deviance and that this relationship is mediated by benevolence and principle climates. We further demonstrate that the nature of the tasks employees performed provided an explanation for the strength of the positive impact of benevolence and principle climates on deviant work behaviour and that the indirect effect of employees' perceptions of justice on deviance (via benevolence and principle climates) was weaker when the task type was technical rather than non-technical