Organizational justice and teachers' turnover intention in primary and secondary schools: The importance of sustainable salary management

Summary

The research paper, "Organizational justice and teachers' turnover intention in primary and secondary schools: The importance of sustainable salary management" by Zhou and Ma (2022), investigated the complex relationship between organizational justice, salary satisfaction, and turnover intention among primary and secondary school teachers. The study aimed to understand how perceptions of fairness within the school environment and satisfaction with salary impact teachers' decisions to remain in or leave their profession. Published in *Sustainability*, the research highlights the critical role of fair treatment and competitive compensation in fostering teacher retention. The methodology employed a mixed-methods approach, utilizing both interviews and questionnaires to gather data from over 500 primary and secondary school teachers across Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces in China. This comprehensive data collection allowed for a nuanced exploration of teachers' perceptions. The collected data were subsequently analyzed using correlation and regression techniques to identify the relationships and predictive power between the variables. Key findings revealed that organizational justice significantly impacts turnover intention, accounting for 20% of the variance. Furthermore, salary satisfaction was identified as a partial mediator between various dimensions of organizational justice (procedural fairness, interaction fairness, and distributional justice) and turnover intention. This indicates that organizational justice not only directly influences turnover intention but also indirectly affects it by shaping teachers' satisfaction with their salaries. The study also found that teachers generally perceive a sense of unfairness across the three dimensions of organizational justice, with distributional fairness being the lowest, and their average salary satisfaction was below the midpoint, suggesting significant dissatisfaction. It was also observed that organizational justice had a greater impact on turnover intention than salary satisfaction, and older teachers exhibited a weaker intention to leave. The implications of this study are substantial for educational administrative departments and school managers, particularly in economically developed regions. The empirical data strongly support the need to enhance compensation management levels and implement sustainable and effective compensation policies and programs to reduce teacher turnover. By addressing issues of organizational justice and improving salary satisfaction, schools can create a more equitable and appealing work environment, thereby promoting a stable and dedicated teaching workforce. Additionally, the research provides valuable first-hand information that can be utilized for cross-country comparative studies on teacher compensation management in the field of education administration.