A study of negative emotion, perception of fairness and work attitude in the context of performance management system among the Malaysian general workers

This thesis describes the research work examining the emotional responses to performance management (PM) processes as the predictors of work attitudes in a Malaysian context. The workers’ perceptions of fairness are also tested for their mediation effects in this relationship. Building on the Affective Event Theory (AET) and the theory of organisational justice, two models are derived to understand the relationships among the chosen constructs. To achieve the research aim, this study has adopted mixed methods approach. The first phase of this study explored the negative affective events and the associated affective responses related to PM system. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions were organised to obtain insights from 22 Malaysian general workers of the manufacturing sector. Content analysis method was used to code and categorise the events. “Negative acts of management”, “Unsatisfactory reward” and “Negative acts of co-workers” emerged as the most important affective event categories among the participants. A total of 29 negative emotions were collected. The 10 most frequently-mentioned emotions were then developed into a measurement scale for the survey study in the following quantitative phase. The quantitative study investigated the relationships between negative emotions and work attitudes, as exemplified by acceptance of PM system, work engagement and turnover intention, via the mediation of perception of fairness using two models. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 345 Malaysian general workers, and SEM analysis was the main method to analyse the data. In summary, negative emotion (as an overall construct) predicted the workers’ acceptance of PM system, work engagement and turnover intentions. In addition, it was found that perception of fairness about PM system significantly mediated the relationship, fully or partially. When examining the discrete emotions individually, all 10 negative emotions significantly predicted acceptance of PM system and turnover intention, but only three negative emotions had shown to predict the workers’ work engagement. The moderator proposed by the AET, negative affectivity was not substantiated in this study. On the other hand, the control variable age, demonstrated significant correlation with the workers’ turnover intentions. This study contributes to the corpus of literature on affective events, workplace emotion and organisational justice in the context of PM system as well as the practical implication to the organisations. With future research recommendations highlighted end of the thesis, more comprehensive understanding of the causal predictive chain from affective responses to work attitudes can be achieved, particularly in the context of Malaysia