Unfairness in stressful job environments: the contingent effects of perceived organizational injustice on the relationships between job stress and employee behaviors.

Adopting the transactional model of stress and affective events theory, we examine the boundary effects of injustice types (i.e., procedural and distributive) on the relationships between job stress and employee behaviors (i.e., creativity, organizational retaliatory behavior and organizational citizenship behavior). Using two sources of field data (N = 691) with independent measures for predictors (self-reports) and outcomes (peer reports), in the service sector of Pakistan, we tested our hypothesized model using Preacher and Hayes' bootstrapping method for testing moderator effects. The results of the moderation analyses reveal that job stress worsened employees' creativity, citizenship and retaliatory behaviors when injustice levels (procedural and distributive) were high. No support was found for the moderating effect of procedural injustice on the relationship between job stress and retaliatory behavior. In conclusion, this study addresses an important theme that has not previously been explored in a developing country context.