The impact of organizational justice on audit professionals’ job attitudes

Eunbin Whang and Sang-Lyul Ryu

Accounting Research Journal, 2026, vol. 39, issue 6, 933-961

Abstract: PurposeThis study aims to investigate how distributive, procedural and interactional justice influence job satisfaction and turnover intention among audit professionals. While prior accounting studies generally examine organizational justice as a composite construct or focus on selected dimensions independently, this study examines whether different justice dimensions operate through distinct pathways in shaping audit professionals’ job attitudes.Design/methodology/approachUsing survey data from 120 audit associates in large public accounting firms, the authors estimate a structural equation model linking all three justice dimensions to job attitudes. Bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence intervals assess the significance of indirect effects.FindingsDistributive justice influences turnover intention indirectly through job satisfaction, consistent with full mediation. Procedural justice directly reduces turnover intention, although its indirect effect through job satisfaction is not statistically significant. Interactional justice is unrelated to job satisfaction or turnover intention when modeled concurrently with the other justice dimensions. The findings suggest that organizational justice dimensions do not operate uniformly in audit firms and instead influence employee attitudes through distinct mechanisms.Practical implicationsThe findings highlight the importance of fairness-based human resource practices in public accounting firms. Transparent procedures and fair reward systems appear especially important for reducing turnover intention among audit professionals. The results also suggest that different forms of fairness may require different managerial responses rather than a uniform approach to organizational justice.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the accounting literature by examining distributive, procedural and interactional justice simultaneously within a single path model to identify their distinct relationships with job satisfaction and turnover intention. The findings demonstrate that examining justice dimensions separately provides insights that may be obscured when organizational justice is treated as a single aggregate construct.

Keywords: Job satisfaction; Turnover intention; Procedural justice; Organizational justice; Distributive justice; Interactional justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:arjpps:arj-07-2025-0253

DOI: 10.1108/ARJ-07-2025-0253

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