The relationship amongst nurses' perceived organizational justice, work consciousness, and responsibility

Nurses' perceived organizational justice is one of the factors influencing their social responsibility and conscientiousness. Social responsibility and conscience are major requirements for providing high-quality and standardized care.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship of perceived organizational justice with work consciousness and the social responsibility of the nurses.

The present cross-sectional study was performed on 380 nurses who had at least 1 year of job experience and willingness to participate in the study. The study was conducted in Zanjan province, Iran, in 2018. The study subjects were selected via stratified random sampling. The data were collected using an organizational justice scale, corporate social responsibility scale, and consciousness scale. Questionnaires were completed through self-reporting. The data were analyzed using partial correlation coefficient and linear regression analysis.

Research ethics approval (with the code of IR.ZUMS.REC.1397.47) was obtained from Zanjan University of Medical Sciences.

The results indicated that nurses felt injustice in all dimensions of organizational justice (2.66 ± .753). They feel the most sense of injustice in distributive justice (2.19 ± .798). In three dimensions, except the ethic dimension, the social responsibility was in a desirable range (2.79 ± .703). In two dimensions, work consciousness was in a desirable range. The results showed a significant and positive relationship between all dimensions of social responsibility and all dimensions of organizational justice (r = .072). However, no statistically significant relationship was observed between the dimensions of organizational justice and conscience (r = -.002).

Based on the obtained results, social responsibility and the work consciousness of the nurses are affected by organizational justice. Therefore, nursing managers are suggested to change their management styles to reduce the sense of organizational injustice in nurses and have long-term productivity.