The Effects of Selection System Characteristics and Privacy Needs on Procedural Justice Perceptions: An Investigation of Social Networking Data in Employee Selection
Privacy violations have been suggested as an important variable in procedural justice perceptions, but the nature of this relationship is not well understood. Privacy has been investigated as a precursor to overall justice perceptions, but to date no published research investigates the role of privacy in the Gilliland procedural justice model (1993), one of the most influential procedural justice models in the literature. This dissertation explored this relationship by applying the Gilliland model to a situation rife with potential privacy issues: the use of social networking site information in employee selection. As in Gilliland’s model, selection system characteristics altered procedural justice rule perceptions. These rule perceptions were then related to overall procedural justice perceptions of the selection system. It was also hypothesized that privacy concerns moderated the relationship between procedural justice rule perceptions and overall justice perceptions such that the relationship was stronger for those with lower needs for privacy. An alternative hypothesis, that privacy needs directly affect overall procedural justice perceptions, was also tested. For the full study, 1,318 participants’ responses to surveys on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk) were analyzed to assess their reactions to hypothetical employee selection scenarios with high or low justice for the following procedural justice rules: job relatedness content, opportunity to perform, reconsideration opportunity, and consistency of administration. The model was partially supported, with the manipulation of justice rules being related to perceptions of the associated procedural justice rules, which were then also related to overall procedural justice perceptions. Further, privacy concerns were related to overall procedural justice perceptions. The moderating role of privacy concerns on the relationship between procedural justice rule perceptions and overall procedural justice perceptions was not supported. A post hoc analysis revealed that the interaction between objective procedural justice and privacy concerns had a small effect on procedural justice perceptions. Practical implications, directions for future research, and limitations are discussed
