Organizational Justice Perceptions and Their Influence on Information Systems Development Project Outcomes
Vijay V. Raghavan, Toru Sakaguchi, Robert C. Mahaney · The Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application · 2008
ABSTRACT This study explores organizational justice perceptions of IS development project team members. Specifically, the effect of justice perceptions on efficiency, effectiveness, and elapsed time outcomes of IS development projects is studied using a survey method. The study uses three subscales of organizational justice, distributive, procedural and interactional, that are well known in the general management literature. The findings indicate that both distributive and interactional justice perceptions of team members positively influence the effectiveness and efficiency and procedural justice perceptions positively influence the efficiency and elapsed time outcomes of IS projects. We found that there is no moderating influence of employee type - whether the team member is in house or contract employee - on these relationships. INTRODUCTION Leaders of information systems development projects must often cope with conflicting interests and resulting tensions during the course of managing a project. It is important to recognize and deal with these tensions as part of critical project management activities (Lewis, Welsh, Dehler, and Green 2002). Such tensions often manifest in varied forms during the software development life cycle. Questionable resource allocations to different components of a project, manifestations of bottlenecks during software development, and difficulties arising from interdependencies of various components of a project are all expressions of these tensions. The need to actively manage tensions arising while managing projects has long been recognized (see for example, Butler 1973). Software project management is often studied from a content perspective. The systems development life cycle (SDLC) and studies focusing on its component activities epitomize this content perspective (see for example, Ahituv, Hadass, and Neumann 1984). While it is important to manage the activities of SDLC, it is equally important to view software development teams as any other group engaged in a creative effort. IS development projects are inherently complex because they deal not only with technological issues but also with organizational factors (Xia and Lee 2004). This study employs a managerial perspective to understand whether organizational justice perceptions of team members could influence project outcomes by creating an environment that fosters innovation and reduces tensions. Organizations could benefit from a clearer understanding of how to manage project-related activities to influence project successes (Aladwani 2002). Management literature discusses many styles of general management, such as transactional and transformation leaderships and theory X/theory Y (Lewis, Welsh, Dehler, and Green, 2002). In addition to these, organizational justice in the context of project management has been shown to impact team members' behavior (Niehoff and Moorman 1993; Moorman, Blakely, and Niehoff 1998; Tepper and Taylor 2003). We examine in this study whether organizational justice perceptions of project members could be influenced by the managerial behavior of project leaders. Traditionally, there has been a widespread recognition of the importance of the ideals of justice in social organizations. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to a variety of organizational activities ranging from a fair use of employment tests to just resolution of grievances and even democratic decision making in the work place (Greenberg 1990). An IS project leader, who is conscious of how organizational justice perceptions of team members could positively influence project outcomes, can alter his/her leadership style to ensure that the team members have positive justice perceptions. We view such leadership behavior as a facet of management style. Although there are many reasons for creation of close social exchange relationships, organizational justice appears to be an important one. Close social exchange relationships in organizations result in an obligation for the employee to repay the supervisor and this may influence improved performance. …