Organizational Justice in Research Experiences: examining a mediation model

Collaboration and teamwork are central to undergraduate engineering education, particularly early curricular experiences supporting professional formation and persistence. However, collaborative experiences are not uniformly positive and may differ for historically minoritized (URM) students. To examine these differences, this study examined the Mediation Model of Organizational Justice in Research Experiences (MMOJRE) within a career-forward general chemistry laboratory course for engineering majors (N = 201) using correlations and structural equation modelling. Organizational Justice was strongly associated with teamwork self-efficacy for both URM and non-URM students. However, for URM students, justice was related to psychological variables in limited ways, and engineering identity was the sole significant predictor of career commitment. In contrast, non-URM students’ career commitment was supported by multiple psychological pathways. MMOJRE links Organizational Justice to all psychological process variables, with no direct path to career commitment. MMOJRE offers a framework for examining how equity and collaboration interact in engineering environments emulating professional practice.