A percepção de justiça como antecedente do comprometimento organizacional: um estudo luso-brasileiro

The study aims at showing how perceptions of justice predict organizational commitment (affective, normative, continuance). Two samples comprising 229 individuals from Brazilian organizations and 236 from Portuguese organizations were collected. The data suggest the following: (1) the model of four dimensions of justice (distributive, procedural, interpersonal, informational) shows better psychometric properties than the three-factor model (in which the interpersonal and informational dimensions were aggregated in the interactional factor); (2) the justice perceptions explain between 23% (Portugal) and 28% (Brasil) of the variance of affective commitment, between 15% (Brazil) and 37% (Portugal) of the variance of the normative commitment, and between 1% (Brazil) and 6% (Portugal) of the variance of the continuance commitment; (3) the justice dimensions with higher predictive value for commitment are the procedural and the interpersonal; (4) normative dimension is explained by distributive, procedural and informational justice; (5) in general, people that feels fairly treated tends to denote stronger affective and normative bonds with the organization, and weaker continuance bonds; (6) these tendencies are common to the Brazilian and Portuguese samples; (7) organizational commitment can be better understood when the different bonds are combined in specific patterns. The study contributes to a better understanding of the motives by which people feels committed to their organizations. Its value is still more relevant due to the fact it combines data from two different cultures.