Organisational justice and deviance in academia: Is there a moderating effect of personality?

Orientation: Social exchange theory (SET) posits that employees reciprocate injustice with workplace deviance. However, studies reveal this may not always be the case because of the differences in employees’ personality traits.Research purpose: To examine the moderating role of Honesty-Humility, Emotionality and Agreeableness (H-HEA) of the HEXACO personality domain on the relationship between organisational justice (OJ) and workplace deviance among employees of selected public universities in South-West Nigeria.Motivation for the study: It becomes imperative to study workplace deviance behaviour (WDB) because of its costs and prevalence in the organisation. Hence, this study integrates the situational and individual antecedents of workplace deviance, using the HEXACO personality domain to moderate the relationship between OJ and personality.Research approach/design and method: The study adopted a quantitative approach; a survey was conducted among 572 employees of three public universities in Nigeria. Data collected were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling.Main findings: The findings revealed that WDB reduces with OJ and increases with injustice. Essentially, the moderating effect of E-HEXACO selected by the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is found to be insignificant.Practical/managerial implications: The study recommends that university management and government alike should ensure justice in the public universities as this helps to reduce WDB.Contribution/value-add: This study proposes that employees’ personality traits will determine whether they will reciprocate feelings of injustice with deviant behaviour. This study has contributed to the literature by examining the HEXACO personality traits, which are scarcely being examined in Nigerian literature.