Organizational Justice and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in a Post-Conflict Public Sector Context: Evidence from Nimruz Municipality, Afghanistan

Purpose: This study investigates the relationship between organizational justice—comprising distributive, procedural, and interactional dimensions—and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among municipal employees in Nimruz Province, Afghanistan. The purpose is to address the theoretical and contextual gap arising from the scarcity of empirical evidence on these constructs in non-Western, post-conflict public sector settings.Methodology: A cross-sectional, descriptive-correlational design was employed. The statistical population consisted of ۱۹۸ employees of Nimruz Municipality, from which ۱۳۰ participants were selected through simple random sampling based on the Krejcie–Morgan table. Data were collected using the standard Organizational Justice Questionnaire (Niehoff & Moorman, ۱۹۹۳) and the OCB scale (Podsakoff et al., ۱۹۹۰). Pearson correlation and simple and multiple regression analyses were conducted in SPSS.Findings: Organizational justice was positively and significantly correlated with OCB (r = ۰.۵۵۷, p < ۰.۰۰۱), explaining approximately ۳۱% of the variance (adjusted R² = ۰.۳۰۵). Procedural justice emerged as the strongest predictor (β = ۰.۴۶۳, p < ۰.۰۰۱), followed by distributive justice (β = ۰.۴۲۵, p < ۰.۰۰۱) and interactional justice (β = ۰.۲۷۱, p = ۰.۰۰۲). Stepwise regression revealed that procedural justice alone accounted for ۲۰.۸% of OCB variance; adding interactional and distributive justice increased the explained variance to ۳۶.۷%.Conclusion: The findings confirm the applicability of social exchange theory in a post-conflict public sector and highlight procedural justice as the most influential lever for fostering OCB. Municipal managers can enhance discretionary employee effort—even under severe resource constraints—by prioritizing transparent, impartial, and participatory decision-making procedures.

کلیدواژه ها:

Organizational Justice ، organizational citizenship behavior ، procedural justice ، distributive justice ، interactional justice ، Afghanistan ، Public Sector