درک عدالت رهبری تحول گرا و رضایت شغلی در سازمان های عمومی Perceptions of leader transformational justice and job satisfaction in public organizations

1. Introduction Public management scholars have acknowledged that leadership is a vital factor that ensures leader-follower emotional ties, employee job satisfaction ( JS), service delivery, and most significantly to grow an organization. While the presence of effective leadership has a positive effect on employees’ JS, despotic leadership does the inverse. More than ever, organizations are challenged by myriads of complexities, unpredictability and uncertainty (Mehrabani and Mohamad, 2015). These complexities are unprecedented in Nigeria with about 2,272,511 employees across the federal, state and local government civil service (Abah, 2015, Nigerian Bureau of statistics, 2016). Besides the complexities, leaders in public sector organizations are operating in period of turbulence and uncertainty (Powe, 2010). As such, leaders are required to make transformational choices that will affect the behaviors of employees. One of these choices is the demonstration of justice in their behaviors. Strong leadership becomes strategic and imperative in a dynamic environment. Although there are many models of effective leadership, transformational leadership (TL) is more likely to be effective in a period of change and uncertainty. This is because transformational leaders use charisma and affection to induce a vision-driven change in followers (Bass, 1985). The word “transform” means to change and improve something or someone. TL is defined as a “form of leadership intended to motivate and inspire followers to pursue higher-order goals through the transformation of followers’ attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors and to exert extraordinary effort in pursuit of organizational-relevant goals” (Bass, 1997). Leadership style can be demonstrated differently under rapid organizational change (Yaghi, 2017). Leaders who are transformational and fair are more likely to influence followers’ optimism, confidence, loyalty, commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors, and quality of work life (Gillet et al., 2013; Naseer et al., 2016; Top et al., 2015). Whereas, leaders who are not transformational and just tend to be autocratic, egoistic, limit participation in decision making, engage not only in self-serving and fraudulent behaviors, but also in socially excluded and morally corrupt activities (Naseer et al., 2016). In return, employees will question the low ethical behaviors and may reciprocate by reducing their performance, citizenship behaviors, and creativity. Therefore, it can be argued that in a fraudulent and uncertain public sector organization, employees’ JS and performance are increasingly dependent on leader’s transformational behavior.