Fair treatment, trust and student commitment to the university

Many organizational studies show the important role that trust plays in organizations. Trust enhances commitment to the organization, and commitment in turn has consequences for a variety of organizational outcomes such as... [ view full abstract ]

Many organizational studies show the important role that trust plays in organizations. Trust enhances commitment to the organization, and commitment in turn has consequences for a variety of organizational outcomes such as organizational citizenship behavior, performance, or turnover. On the other hand, it has been shown that organizational justice is extremely important for establishing trust.
Most of these studies focus on employees of organizations who stand in a well-defined exchange relationship with that organization. In contrast, the present paper focuses on the university. This type of organization is quite different from the workplace settings that were the target of previous research. The goods exchanged in higher education are different, and so are the corresponding rules and procedures. Further, this study is less concerned with university staff, but rather with students. Students are members of the organization, and at the same time the clientele. They are involved in an exchange relationship (e.g. exchanging effort for grades), but these relationships are far less well defined than the exchange relationships between economic organizations and their employees.
There are a few studies that show that justice plays an important role for success in educational organizations, with justice affecting teacher-student relations, class climate, and even grades (Dar and Resh 2003; Dalbert 2011; Horan and Myers 2009; Molinari et al. 2013; Peter and Dalbert 2010). Moreover, justice experiences in schools were shown to shape institutional and generalized trust (Resh and Sabbagh 2013). However, there are to our knowledge no studies that explore the interplay between trust, justice, and outcomes concerning university students whose scope is comparable to what is found in workplace studies. This interplay lies at the center of the present study. It focuses on the impact of organizational justice on trust in the university (TU), affective commitment to the university (AC) and student dropout.