Impact of Organizational Factors on Health Worker Turnover in Nigeria

This research paper investigates the impact of organizational justice and organizational environment on turnover intention among health workers in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The study involved 200 participants from three healthcare organizations. It used established scales to measure organizational justice, organizational environment, and turnover intention. The findings revealed that organizational justice significantly affects turnover intention, while organizational environment does not. There were no significant sex differences in justice perception, organizational environment, or turnover intention. However, significant differences were observed in justice perception and turnover intention among different categories of health workers. The research underscores the importance of organizational justice in retaining health workers and highlights the need for healthcare organizations to foster fair and equitable environments to reduce turnover rates. The study also discusses the implications of these findings for healthcare management and employee retention strategies.

www.sciedu.ca/rwe Research in World Economy Vol. 3, No. 1; March 2012
ISSN 1923-3981 E-ISSN 1923-399X28
Effect of Organizational Justice and Organizational Environment on
Turn-Over Intention of Health Workers in Ekiti State, Nigeria
Ademola B. Owolabi
Department of Psychology
University of Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria
Tel: [phone] E-mail: [e-mail]
Received: October 16, 2011 Accepted: January 25, 2012 Published: March 15, 2012
doi:10.5430/rwe.v3n1p28 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/rwe.v3n1p28
Abstract
This study investigated the effect of organizational justice and organizational environment on turn-over intention of
health workers in Ekiti State, Nigeria. A total of two hundred respondents were used for the study. It comprises one
hundred and two females and ninety-eight males. These respondents were drawn from three health organizations in in
ekiti state. Organizational justice was measured using Organizational Justice Scale developed by Niehoff and Moornan
(1993), organizational environment was measured by using Basic Psychological Needs Scale (BPNS) developed by Deci
and Ryon (2000) while turnover intention was measure using Turnover Intention Scale developed by Fichman, Jenkins
and Klesh (1979). The results revealed that organizational justice has a significant effect on turnover intention while
organizational environment has no significant effect on turnover intention. There were no sex differences in justice
perception, organizational environment and turn-over intention but there was a significant differences in justice
perception and turn-over intention among the various categories of health workers.
Keywords: Organizational Justice, Turnover Intention, Organizational Environment, Health Workers, Hospitality
Industry, Employees, Behavior, Justice Perception.
1. Introduction
The survival of any organization depends largely on the individuals working within the organization. The feeling,
thinking, attitude and behavior of these employees have a far reaching effect on whether the organization will achieve its
goals and objectives. The feelings of the employees and their perception of the organization determines whether they
will continue to work for the organization or not. As essential as the technical competence of employees is, it is not a
sufficient condition for the success of an organization. A study of organization shows that recruitment and benefits help
attracts candidates to an organization while positive organizational culture and environment are the main drivers for
employee satisfaction and retention. People are social beings and organizations therefore have to create settings in which
employees are able to interact socially. One concept that is fundamental to human social interaction is justice. Whether,
it is a promotion decision, the assignment of tasks, the allocation of rewards or just about any other type of social
exchange, matters of fairness are bond to arise. Employee’s perception of fairness in organization settings also known as
organization justice, influence their attitude and behavior consequently, their intention to stay or quit. Turn-over is
critical and costly (Bonn and Forbriger, 1992). For example, Hogan (1992) estimated that each incident of turn-over in
the hospitality industry is estimated to cost up to $2,500 in direct cost and $1600 in indirect cost. Therefore it is highly
important for management to create favorable environments that help to retain good employees.
Organizational justice as a term was coined by Greenberg (1987) and is defined as an individual’s perception of and
reactions to fairness in an organization. Organizational justice refers to the idea that an action or decision is morally right,
which may be defined according to ethics, religion, fairness, equity, or law. People are naturally attentive to the justice
of events and situations in their everyday lives, across a variety of contexts (Gopanzano, 2009). Individuals react to
actions and decisions made by organizations every day. An individual’s perceptions of these decisions as fair or unfair
can influence the individual’s subsequent attitudes and behaviors. Fairness is often of central interest to organizations
because the implications of perceptions of injustice can impact job attitudes and behaviors at work. Justice in
organizations can include issues related to perceptions of fair pay, equal opportunities for promotion, and personnel
selection procedures.

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Greenberg (1996) categorized various conceptualization of organizational justice around a taxonomy namely; a
reactive-proactive dimension and a process-content dimension. The reactive-proactive dimension focuses on employee’s
attempts to avoid or escape from a situation that is perceived as unfair. Some of the actions may be to force management
to treat employees equally or to engage in behavior that could compensate the employee’s mental distortion of unequal
treatment of finally leaving the organization. On the other hand, process-content dimension focuses on the process
through which decisions that are regarded as unfair by employee’s are arrived at.
The justice motive theory by Lerner (1980) believes that justice is the pre-eminent concern of human being and that
people allocate resources according to circumstances. According to this theory there are four factors usually considered
by people why taking decision about fairness which include, competition, parity, and equity and Marxian justice.
According to Sheppard, Lewick and Minton (1992), judging the justice of a decision, action or procedure requires
evaluating it against two principles namely; balance which comes to play when a person compares the reward he or she
receives with that received by someone else while comparing the value of their input and correctness which refers to the
rightness of the decision and encompasses elements of consistency, accuracy, clarity and procedural thoroughness. As
long as procedures are clear and consistently applied, employees will perceive them to be fair. It is not only the outcome
of a decision that is important to employee, the process of arriving at such decision is also very important. Intention to
leave organization is one of the major responses available to employee who feels he/she has been unjustly treated by the
organization.
Employees’ perceptions of injustice within the organization can result in a myriad of outcomes both positive and
negative. Outcomes are affected by perceptions of organizational justice as a whole or by different factors of
organizational justice. Commonly cited outcomes affected by organizational justice include trust, performance, job
satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), counterproductive work
behaviors (CWBs) absenteeism, turnover, and emotional exhaustion.
Unleashing the power of human potential in the work place through the creation of an involving and motivating
organizational environment has been described as a key source of competitive advantage for business organization
(Lawler 1992). A stream of literature has argued that when employees perceived the potential for satisfying their
psychological needs in the work place, they engage time and effort in the organizational work.
Organizational environment is a major factor that needed to be considered in every organization. Environment is that
which surrounds an individual. Our environment could either influence us positively by meeting our need adequately
and making us have a sense of satisfaction or negatively by exposing us to unpleasant conditions thereby leading us to
attempt a change. An organization cannot exist in isolation but will rather work with the overall environment. These
environmental factors that either directly or indirectly influence an organization can be divided into two viz; internal
environmental factors and the external environmental factors.
An organization internal environment refers to elements within the organization. Internally, an organization can be
viewed as a resource conversion machine that takes input from the external environment and converts them into useful
products, goods and services and make them available to customers as outputs. Those that makes up the internal
environment includes; current employees, management, trade unions and shareholders. The external environment on the
other hand consist of all the outside institution and forces that have an actual or potential interest or impact on the
organization’s ability to achieve its objectives. They include; competitive environment, technology environment,
political environment and the legal environment.
The rate of turnover of employees has various effect on the organization and the society at large (Mobley 1982). The
effects could either be positive or negative. Hence, a greater understanding of the process of labour turnover can increase
the degree of which organization and employees within organization can influence this effect (Chory and Westerman,
2007). Turnover “as an individual’s motivated choice behavior has widely been a studied outcome variable in industrial
and organizational psychology literature for almost fifty years now. Although not all types of turnovers are negative,
voluntary turnover that is dysfunctional and unavoidable can be very costly for any organization when considering the
amount of investment an organization made in the recruitment, selection, classification and training of personnel.
Turnover intention have been said to indicate the relation between job related attitudes. Identifying factors that therefore
contribute to dysfunctional turnover is important in order to take appropriate preventive actions. Generally turn-over is
the term used to describe the departure of employee from an organization. It is a problem that many managers and
leaders have to contend with in ensuring the survival of an organization. Most theorist that explain turn-over intention
maintain that employees leave their jobs when their needs are not met and an alternative jobs becomes available which

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the employee beliefs will satisfy more of his need. This study therefore is an attempt to investigate the effect of
organizational justice and organizational environment on employee’s turnover intention.
2. Hypothesis
The following hypothesis shall be tested:
 There will be a significant effect of organizational justice and organizational environment on turnover intention.
 There will be a significant sex difference on organizational justice perception, organizational environment and
turnover intention.
 There will be a significant difference in justice perception, organizational environment and turnover intention among
the various categories of health workers.
3. Methods
3.1 Participants
Two hundred (200) research participants were used for the study, ninety eight male and one hundred and two females.
Seventy five (75) participants were from the Ministry of Health, ninety five (95) from University Teaching Hospital and
thirty (30) participants from the School of Nursing all within Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. Participants were classified
into four ranks which are Doctors (61), Lab-scientists (29), Nurses (85) and others (52).
3.2 Measures
Justice perception was measured using Organizational Justice Scale by Niehoff and Moorman (1993). It is an eighteen
(18) item scale divided into three subscales which are distributive (5 items), procedure (5 items) and interactional
(8items). Participants used a 6-point scale to report their perception of how fair certain aspects of their Job are. The scale
Cronbarch alpha was. 95.
Environmental support was measured using the Basic Psychological Needs Scale (BPNS) by Deci and Ryan, (2000).
The work domain form has 21 items, which participants rated on a 7-point scale. The scale reliability was. 88.
Turnover intention was measured using Turnover Intention Scale developed by Fichman, Jenkins and Klesh (1979). It is
a 3 item inventory. The Scale has an internal consistency coefficient alpha of. 78.
3.3 Procedure
The questionnaire was administered to each workers separately. This method was chosen in order to generate adequate
responses from the workers. They were encouraged to read the instructions very carefully and ask questions on issues
which seems unclear. After the administration, the filled questionnaires were immediately collected from the
participants.
4. Results
The data collected was subjected to statistical analyses, the results of the analysis of data are present in the tables below
which include a 2x2 analysis of variance, a t-test table and a correlation matrix.
Hypothesis one which state that there will be a significant effect of organizational justice and organizational
environment on turn-over intention was tested using the 2x2 analysis of variance. The result is presented in the table
below.
<Table 1 about here>
The result shows a significant main effect of organizational justice on turnover intention. F(1,199)= 18.04 p<.01, there is
however no significant effect of organizational environment on turn-over intention and no interaction effect of Justice
and environment on turnover intention. F (1, 199) =.046 p.>.05.
Hypothesis two which state that there will be a significant sex differences in justice perception organizational
environment and turn over intention was tested using the independent t-test the result is presented in the table below
<Table 2 about here>
From the above table, the result reveals that there are no significant sex differences in organizational justice,
organizational environment and turn-over intention
The third hypothesis which says there will be a significant difference in organizational justice perception, organizational
environment and turnover intention among the various categories of health workers was tested using the one-way
analysis of variance. The result is presented in the table below.

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<Table 3 about here>
The above table shows that Nurses recorded the highest mean score on organizational justice perception compared to
other categories of health workers (F (2,198) =3.51, P>.05. it can also be observed that Nurses has the highest mean
score on turn-over intention as compared with other categories of health workers (F (2,198) =4.23, P>.05. There is no
significant difference among the various categories of health workers on the perception of organizational environment (F
(2,198) = 1.48, P<.05.
5. Discussion
This Study examines the effect of organizational justice, organizational environment on turnover intention. The study
shows that workers perception of justice is a great determinant of their decision to either stay or leave the organizations.
This is in line with Folger and Konovosky (1989) researches that stated that justice perception will greatly influence
turnover intention. The result from hypothesis I also states that there is no significant effect of environment on justice
perception. This however negates other researches that see a great significant relationship between work environment
and turnover intention.
Adams (1965) argued that social behavior is affected by beliefs that the allocation of rewards within a group should be
equitable, that is, outcomes should be proportional to the contributions of group members. In other words, equity theory
argues that people are satisfied when the ratios of their own inputs to outcomes (i.e., rewards) equal the ratios of inputs
to outcomes in comparison to others. Perceived inequity through this comparison feels unpleasant, and motivates people
to reduce those unpleasant feelings (Folger and Cropanzano, 1998)
In keeping with traditional equity theory research, contemporary studies have found that people tend to be less satisfied
with outcomes they perceive to be unfair than those they perceive to be fair (Cropanzano and Greenberg, 1997). Such
perceptions have been shown to result in poor performance (Cowherd and Levine, 1992; Pfeffer and Langton, 1993) and
high rates of withdrawal behaviors, such as turnover and absenteeism (Hulin, 1991; Schwarzald, Koslowsky, and Shalit,
1992)
It can also be observed that there is no significant effect of organisational environment on turn-over intention. This
finding is very surprising knowing that positive environment is critical to the satisfaction of the employee within the
organisational. For example, by Trace, Scott and Michael (2005) they found out that work environment that exist in the
work place affects the behaviour of employed workers. In their study it was discovered that both climate and culture had
both direct and moderating effect on behaviour of employee. The findings of the research work also are also supported
by Kristof (1996) and Netemeyer et al (1997), they found that a fit between the person and the environment is related to
several job responses. Silverthorne (2004) investigating Taiwanese organisation indicates that positive environment will
result in higher organisational commitment and lower turn-over intention.
The result also shows no significant sex difference in justice perception, organisational environment and turn-over
intention. A review of related researches on sex and turn-over intention showed mixed result. Some studies e.g Miller
and Wheeler (1992), Moncrief, Babakus, Cravens and Johnson (2000) suggest that females experiences higher turn-over
rate above male while other studies such as Donnelly and Quirin (2006), Xu, Veloski, Hojat and Fields (1995) found no
sex differences in turn-over intention.
Also while some studies e.g Miller (1998) have found sex difference in work environment perception other studies such
as Kirschenbaun (1991) have found no significant sex difference in work organisation experience of both male and
female. Duncan (1973) conducted a study where psychosocial and physical environments were compared with sex and it
was found that there were no differences between men and women and that the type of activity involved in was more
important than biological sex.
The result also reveals significant difference in justice perception and turn-over intention among the various health
workers with a higher perceived injustice and turn-over intention among the nurses. This is in support of Bolton (2004)
who discovered that nursing work has been deeply affected by government and management led initiatives to deliver
quality patient service at lower cost and that the radical changes in the health care environment may result in mounting
frustration among nurses. It is also a common knowledge in Nigeria that nurses feel deprived, cheated and marginalized
by not been treated equally as the medical doctors. This might have accounted for higher perception of injustice and
turn-over intention among nurses than other categories of heath workers.

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Table 1. A 2x2 ANOVA summary table showing the effect of organizational justice and organizational environment on
turnover intention.
Source Ss Df Ms F P
Organizational justice (A) 49.70 1 49.70 18.04 <.01
Organizational environment (B) .68 1 .68 .24 >.05
A X B .13 1 .13 .046 >.05
Error 540.09 196 2.76
Total 600.96 199

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Table 2. A t-test showing sex differences in justice perception, organizational environment and turn-over intention
Variable Sex N X SD Df t P
Organizational justice Male 98 35.71 .472 198 .184 <.05
Female 102 35.59 .483
Organizational environment Male 98 78.54 1.71 198 1.26 <.05
Female 102 76.86 1.67
Turnover Intention Male 98 10.04 2.63 198 1.79 <.05
Female 102 10.48 1.87
Table 3. A one-way analysis of variance table showing the differences in organizational justice perception,
organizational environment and turn- over intention among the various categories of health workers.
Variable Doctor Nurse Lab tech Others Df F P
Organizational justice 30.20 37.5 35.6 35.20 198 3.51 >.05
Organizational environment 70.51 69.80 71.52 70.69 198 1.48 <.05
Turn-over intention 8.62 11.28 10.26 8.78 198 4.23 >.05