Organization justice, knowledge sharing and employees' innovative behavior: evidence from the knowledge-intensive industry
| Date | 27 September 2023 |
| Pages | 1492-1510 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-04-2022-0211 |
| Published date | 27 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Toan Khanh Tran Pham |
Organization justice, knowledge
sharing and employees’innovative
behavior: evidence from the
knowledge-intensive industry
Toan Khanh Tran Pham
Graduate School, Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Abstract
Purpose –Encouraging employees to display innovative behavior at the workplace is the need of all
enterprises in this competitive era of the modern business environment. The study aims to explore the
mediating role of knowledge sharing in the relationship between organizational justice and innovative
behavior among employees working in the information technology (IT) industry in Vietnam.
Design/methodology/approach –The research model was tested on the data collected from 387 employees
working in IT enterprises with AMOS 22 software.
Findings –Confirmatory factor analysis implied a good model fit. The results show that knowledge sharing
mediates the effects of organizational justice with three main forms distributive, procedural and interactional
justice on innovative behavior.
Practical implications –The findings of this study provide valuable evidence and implications for the
executive of IT enterprise in boosting knowledge sharing, and innovative behaviors among the employees, in
improving their perception of justice in the workplace. This is particularly important due to the significant role
of knowledge sharing in organizational development.
Originality/value –This study pioneered the identification of the underlying mechanism of organization
justice –innovative behavior nexus by highlighting knowledge sharing as a mediator. Moreover, this study
takes a step beyond by suggesting a more complicated model that explored mediating two dimensions of
knowledge sharing.
Keywords Organization justice, Knowledge sharing, Innovative behavior, Information technology sector,
Vietnam
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In today’s turbulent business environment, innovation attracts more attention from academia
and industry because it enables one to create and attain competitive advantages (Janeswar
and Ranjit, 2020;Jada et al., 2019). Innovation occurs through creating and implementing
ideas at all levels in the organization. The innovation capability of the organization relies on
the innovative behavior of its employees. The crucial role of innovative behavior toward
success, competitive advantage and sustainable development is also widely explored (Jada
et al., 2019;Singh and Sarkar, 2019).
Due to its role, the study of factors at the individual level, at the organizational level which
prevents or promotes employees’innovative behavior in organizations, is getting more and
more attention. Among the contributors which impact innovative behavior, organizational
justice has an important position (Khaola and Coldwell, 2019). Organizational justice is
mainly defined as the perception of the employees about fairness in various aspects of the
organization (Pashkina and Plakhotnik, 2018). It is beneficial for both organizations and
individuals which comprises job performance (Swalhi et al., 2017;Khtatbeh et al., 2020), job
commitment and job satisfaction (Suifan et al., 2017;Pathardikar et al., 2022). The Social
exchange theory is considered the main theory to interpret the relationship between
organizational justice and innovative behavior (Janeswar and Ranjit, 2020).
ER
45,6
1492
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 30 April 2022
Revised 10 January 2023
3 July 2023
Accepted 8 September 2023
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 45 No. 6, 2023
pp. 1492-1510
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-04-2022-0211
However, previous studies have not reached a consensus on the impact of organizational
justice on innovative behavior (Khaola and Coldwell, 2019). For example, Janeswar and Ranjit
(2020) stated that organizational justice affects positively the innovative behavior of
employees in the Indian context, whereas Janssen (2004) found that organizational justice is
not the contributor to innovative behavior. Scholars indicate that the reason for this
equivocation is the existence of mediators in the relationship. Although mediators such as
intrinsic motivation, trust and job engagement are attracted in the literature (Liu et al., 2016),
the role of knowledge sharing has largely been ignored in the current literature. In today’s
knowledge and digital economy, to gain success and competitive advantage, employees have
to share and practice knowledge (Dalkir, 2017;Ahmad and Karim, 2019). Thus, the important
objective of this study is to investigate the mediating role of knowledge sharing in the
examination of organizational justice as the key antecedent that drives the innovative
behavior of employees.
Recognizing this gap in the previous studies, this study focuses on IT enterprises in
Vietnam. For around two decades, Vietnam’s IT industry has developed dramatically, driven
by low costs and high-quality labor. However, Vietnam IT enterprises face the challenge of
retaining their talented knowledge workers and encouraging them to share, transfer,
accumulate and diffuse their knowledge. It is believed that if employees receive fair treatment
from their organization, they are more excited to share their knowledge with their partners,
and thus organizational knowledge enhances. This may help organizations to improve
productivity, gain a competitive advantage and develop sustainably. However, justice may
include various organizational aspects of fairness in the employees’eyes. Moreover, the
presence of organizational fairness and knowledge sharing affect an overall image of an
organization and may result in positive publicity, thereby enhancing its opportunities for
attracting and retaining the best human capital. These arguments above demonstrate that
the notion of organizational justice and knowledge sharing is worth further study.
Our study also provides valuable insights and implications for the intellectual capital
community in Vietnam; in particular, IT company executives, concerning human resource
management policies that supp ort knowledge-sharing behav ior (Malik et al., 2020).
Furthermore, being at the forefront of knowledge, IT companies are more dynamic as
compared to firms belonging to conventional industries due to the ever-changing nature of
technologies. Thus, it is crucial for such enterprises to have a full understanding and manage
the constant flow of knowledge in the value chain (Ferreira et al., 2022).
Thisresearch attemptsto explore the mediatingrole of knowledgesharingin the relationship
between organizational justice and employees’innovative behavior in the information
technology sector in Vietnam. The conduct of this study hence contributes to the literature
on innovation managementand human resourcemanagement.First, these constru ctscan d iffer
acrosscultures, andanalyzing these withdifferent populationsis essential(Janeswar and Ranjit,
2020). Although there are some studies on these concepts, there still lacks a comprehensive
study that analyzed them all together. Second, previous research on innovative behavior
indicatedthat most of thestudies were exploredfrom the managerialperspective,neglectingthe
employees’side(Janeswar an d Ranjit, 2020;Knezovi
c and Drki
c, 2021). Also,this study indicates
firstthat three differentforms of organizational justiceare determinantsof innovativebehavior.
Furthermore, most of the previous studies were analyzed in Western countries. Thus, this study
aims to bridgethe research gap byinvestigating thesenexus in Vietnam –the Asian emerging
market,as no studies have beenconducted withinthis context. Moreover,Vietnameseculture is
a collectivistic society, which may have an important effect on employees’perception of justice
and attitudes toward knowledge sharing.
The remainder of this study is structured as follows. Section 2 is the literature review. Next
is the hypotheses development. The research methodology is provided in Section 4.Section 5
Organization
justice and
knowledge
sharing
1493
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