Studying the Impact of Perceived Organizational Justice (POJ) on Employee Engagement (EE): An Empirical Study on the Mediating Role of Organizational Trust (OT)

Abstractthe purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which Perceived Organizational Justice (POJ) comprising of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice, affects Employee Engagement (EE) in Egypt’s manufacturing sector, and to investigate the mediating role of Organizational Trust (OT) in this relationship. The study seeks to address the existing gap in literature concerning the influence of fairness perceptions on engagement within the Egyptian manufacturing sector context, where socio-economic and cultural factors distinctly shape workplace dynamics. The study adopts a quantitative research methodology, employing structured survey instruments to collect primary data from employees in Egypt’s manufacturing industry. Measurement tools include Colquitt’s Organizational Justice Scale (2001) for POJ, Gallup’s Q12 Engagement Scale (2023) for EE, and Mayer and Davis’s Organizational Trust Scale (1999) for OT. The collected data are analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Regression Analysis to test hypothesized relationships and the mediating effect of trust. The findings reveal that all three dimensions of perceived organizational justice, distributive, procedural, and interactional, significantly and positively influence both organizational trust and employee engagement. Moreover, organizational trust is found to play a partial mediating role in the relationship between justice and engagement. The contribution of this study lies in its theoretical and contextual originality. It offers a culturally grounded examination of fairness perceptions in Egypt’s manufacturing sector, providing a framework for managers and policymakers to foster justice-driven engagement strategies. Keywords:Perceived Organizational Justice (POJ), Perceived Distributive Organizational Justice (PDOJ, Perceived Procedural Organizational Justice (PPOJ), Perceived Interactional Organizational Justice (PIOJ), Employee Engagement (EE), Organizational Trust (OT), Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB), Social Exchange Theory (SET), Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).