Performance management fairness and burnout: implications for organizational citizenship behaviors

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon organizational justice theory, we examine how perceptions of performance management fairness affect burnout and organizational citizenship behaviors among academic employees. Data from 532 academic employees from a university in Flanders (Belgium) were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Academic employees experience less burnout when performance management fairness is perceived as high. Performance management distributive and interactional fairness increase organizational citizenship behaviors by reducing burnout and supporting partial mediation. Higher education institutions should carefully design and implement performance management systems with fair outcomes, procedures and treatment of employees. Our findings stress the importance of fair performance management systems and offer new insights on how these systems affect employee outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance management
• organizational justice theory
• burnout
• OCB
• STEM
• SEM

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Robin Bauwens http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6894-3887

Mieke Audenaert http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9940-8203

Additional information

Funding

This entire study was conducted with a grant from the Ghent University Special Research Fund (BOF) [grant BOF.STA.2015.0032.01-BOF15/STA/049].