The mediating effect of organisational justice mechanisms on the relationship between leadership and trust

The focus of this research was to build on existing literature of leadership, organisational justice mechanisms and trust. This was done through specific focus on how different kinds of leadership styles, transformational leadership and transactional leadership, effects different types of trust, being affect-based trust and cognition-based trust, as mediated by organisational justice mechanisms, being distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice.

To investigate these complex relationships, and given the number of latent constructs proposed, the statistical technique used in this research was partial leased squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). This enabled the researcher to evaluate the strength and significance of relationships in this complex model.

Findings showed that distributive justice and procedural justice had no significant mediating effect between leadership style, being transformational leadership and transactional leadership, and the components of trust, being affect-based trust and cognition-based trust. However, it was found that interactional justice had a significant positive mediating effect between transactional leadership and the components of trust, being affect-based trust and cognition-based trust, but not for transformational leadership.

Given the context of the study, these findings further support the notion that it is the responsibility of leaders in an organisation to communicate effectively, clearly and transparently to their followers at all times and, in doing so, increase the level of perceived fairness which will then result in trust being built within the organisation. This in turn will allow employees to put themselves in positions of vulnerability, with the expectation that positive outcomes will be achieved.