The moderating role of gender on the impact of organizational fairness on employees’ intentions to leave

Purpose This study aims to investigate the moderating role of gender on the impact of perceptions of organizational fairness on the intention to leave. This study also examines the differences between female and male respondents in perceiving organizational fairness indicating implied inequalities. Design/methodology/approach This study took place in an office that represents a non-profit international organization as a part of the United Nations System and seeks gender equality, operating in Jordan, which is a non-Western context, under-researched and claimed to have prevalence gender inequality. A questionnaire comprising 16 core and four demographic questions was delivered to all 128 employees of the Jordanian office of an international non-profit organization, 100 responding with a 78.1% response rate. Using the SPSS for data analysis, the validity and reliability of the multi-item measures for distributive, procedural and interactional fairness were assessed using factor analyses and Cronbach’s alpha, respectively. The potential threat of common method bias was inquired into using the Harman single-factor technique. Correlations between variables were explored using the Pearson coefficient, while the hypotheses were tested using t-test and hierarchical regressions. Findings Data analyses revealed that gender negatively moderated the relationship between procedural fairness and intention to leave, as the impact was significantly stronger for males than for females. In addition, despite that no significant differences across genders pertinent to procedural and interactional fairness aspects were detected denoting the implied equalities in these aspects, an implied inequality across gender pertinent to distributive fairness was detected as female respondents perceived a lower level. Originality/value This study is among the few, if not the first, to explore gender’s moderating role in the relationship between the aspects of organizational fairness and intention to leave, using implied equalities to explain gender’s moderating roles.