Organizational Justice in Arab Countries: Investigation of the Measurement and Structural Invariance

Abstract

Given the importance of comparing different groups in terms of perceptions of justice and justice effects, it is essential that the instrument used to measure perceptions behaves the same way across all groups. This study investigates the measurement invariance of the four-factor structure of organizational justice across nine Arab countries. Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis is used with 2,914 employees working in the public sector to represent the variety of cultures among the Arab nations. We assess organizational justice using a measure developed by Alkhadher and Gadelrab primarily for Arab cultural perspectives of justice. This study shows that the four-dimensional model of justice is valid across the nine countries at the configural, metric, and scalar invariance. Fit indices showed sufficient to optimal fit, and difference test values were not significant across the set of the increasingly constrained confirmatory factor models. According to these results, we conclude that comparisons could be made safely on the justice latent variable level across the nine Arab groups. Moreover, justice dimension intercorrelations were found to be moderate to high and independent of cultural groups.