Oh, Didn't Anyone Tell You? the Importance of Intra-Organizational Information Sharing in Defence Organizations

Organizational justice, or the extent to which people perceive organizational procedures as being fair and equitable, is a fundamental organizational value and is widely regarded as being comprised of four dimensions: procedural, distributive, interpersonal, and informational.  Informational justice is paramount to the quality of information sharing within an organization, and is fostered by the truthful, timely, and comprehensive sharing of information regarding organizational decisions that affect employees. This type of organizational fairness has been shown to impact on personnel outcomes, such as job satisfaction and commitment, and ultimately to impact organizational outcomes such as performance and retention. In the study to be reported here, based on survey data from 6,503 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel, analyses were conducted to determine members’ perceptions of informational justice within the CAF, and the role of informational justice on key outcomes of interest.  Results indicated that informational justice was indeed highly related to a range of important factors, including overall perceptions of organizational justice, organizational and unit leadership, career management in the CAF, trust in the CAF, and employee psychological withdrawal. Moreover, meditational analyses indicated that military personnel’s perceptions of informational justice were related to outcomes such as commitment and leave intentions even after controlling for other key variables such as perceptions of overall justice and satisfaction with leadership, further emphasizing the importance of informational justice. Implications for information sharing within military organizations are discussed.