ORGANISATIONAL JUSTICE AND TEACHERS’ JOB COMMITMENT IN KWARA STATE PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS, NIGERIA

This study sought to investigate the relationship between organisation justice and teachers’ job commitment in Kwara State public primary s chools, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey of correlation type. Random sampling technique was used to select 72 schools out of 1,580 public primary schools in the three senatorial districts of the state. Fifteen respondents from each sampled school making a total of 1,080 respondents for the study. The instruments used were: “Organisational Justice and “Teachers’ Job Commitment Questionnaire”. The instruments were validated by experts in the Department of Educational Management. One thousand and eighty (1,080) copies of questionnaire were administered to teachers but nine hundred and seventy two (972) copies returned. Two research questions were raised and answered; one hypothesis was formulated to guide the study. Descriptive Statistics of mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while step-wise Multiple Regression was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings were that: the level of organizational justice was found to be average; the l evel of teachers’ job commitment was also found to be average; distributive justice and procedural justice have negative significant relationship with teachers’ job commitment while informational justice and interactional justice have positive and significantly correlate with teachers’ job commitment. The study concluded that both the informational justice and interactional justice will enhance and improve organizational justice as well as teachers’ commitment in schools. The study recommended, among other, that the head teachers should ensure consistency in applying rules, maintain accuracy in the use information, and safeguard against bias when dealing with teachers’ issues, Also, the head teachers should involve staff members in decision making that affect them and show dignity and respect when explaining decisions outcomes to concerned teachers.


INTRODUCTION
Primary education is the most important stage in the formal education.Education at this level forms the core and basic of the Nigerian education system and needs to be on track so that the goals for national development can be achieved.Federal Government of Nigeria.( 2014) in the National Policy of Education outlined a number of objectives for primary education such as to facilitate the personal development of pupils, secondary school preparation, social skills and cultural understanding, development of religion and moral values among others.The objectives are achievable with the sincere efforts and commitment from teachers.Effective teachers are always planning their activities in the school in order to improve students' achievement.However, the implementation of duties with casualness, little interest and no serious effort from teachers might result in the school objectives not being met.Zainudin, et al. (2010) pointed out that teachers' commitment is one of the most crucial factors in the success of educational goals.This is because teachers are directly involved within the educational process and they are responsible for equipping their students with knowledge and good manners.
It is not gain saying that the success of any educational institution lies in its ability to achieve goals by depending on the quality of the employees' performance (Lee, 2000).However, the performance of the individual is always affected by the justice practiced by the school heads.Therefore, organizational justice is another important factor associated with the success of every organisation including educational institutions.Organisational justice has been seen as a driver of employee's commitment in the purpose of achieving the goals of the organization (Rahman et al., 2016).In the same vein, Demirel and Yucell (2013) defined organisational justice as the assessment of individual employees on whether the organization treats them fairly or not in the pursuance of organizational goals.In an attempt to keep employees' commitment to the organisation, the organisation needs to be fair in its system regarding organisational justice (Akanbi & Ofoegbu, 2013).Organisational justice is one of the important determinants of employees' perceptions of organisational commitment.This is due to the fact that employees with high perception of organisational justice tend to show positive behaviour while those with negative perception tend to show behaviours like decreased effort and reduced commitment to their organisation (Cemal, 2014).In this sense, what is more significant in schools is for teachers to have accurate perception of the organisational justice.This perception is an important feature of social interaction.The term organisational justice originally coined by Greenberg in the 1980s and is believed to generally encompass three different components, namely; distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice.
According to Greenberg (1990), organisational justice theory relates to employees' point of view about justice in job-related matters.In this sense, organisational justice is concerned with the rules developed to distribute or to take decision on distribution of acquisition such as tasks, goods, services, rewards, punishments, organisational position, opportunities and roles among employees and societal norms that constitute the basis for these rules (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998).Roch and Shannock (2006) opined that many organisational attitudes and behaviour can be directly linked to employee's perceptions of justice.Issues like monetary resources allocation, recruitment and selection of employees in organisation, policy and decision making all require special attention in respect to organisational justice (Colquitt et al., 2005).Organisational justice is believed to be an important requirement for effective functioning of organisation.Thurston and McNall (2010) argued that fairness perception holds an important position in the decision and process as per human resource aspect like pay, benefits and other compensation issues, fairness in rewards received, decisions regarding the compensation process and the way this information is communicated to all the employees is important in formulating the responses about the compensatory system.
Recent research in organizational justice theory suggests that justice can be broken down into four empirically distinct dimensions: distributive, procedural, interactional and informational justice (Colquitt, 2001).This study also focused on the four dimensions of organisatioanl justice which are; the fairness of resources and reward distribution (distributive justice); the fairness in the procedures in establishing outcome distribution (procedural justice); the excellence of interpersonal treatment when certain course of action is put to practices (interactional justice); and the adequacy of information exchange explaining the reasons for such procedures being used in a certain way or how such results were established (informational justice).
Commitment is an important variable in organizational behavior research.Its importance can be understood from these characteristics of; intention to maintain membership of the organization, identification with organisation's goals and values, and willingness to exert extra efforts for the sake of organisation (Mcshane & Glionow, 2018).Commitment can be seen as an individual attraction and attachment to the work and organization's goal and values, therefore fostering active involvement in work and engage in organizational citizen behavior (Colquitt et al., 2013).Job commitment implies a willingness on the employee's part to put forth a substantial effort on the organisation's behalf and his or her intention to stay with the organisation for a long time (Wagner & Hollenbeck, 2010).Commitment is an influential variable; high commitment would lead to positive results for individuals, organizations and society (Werf, 2018).
In terms of teachers, teachers' job commitment is an important issue for teachers, but also for schools and students.It relates directly to issues of teaching and learning, school success, and well-being (Robbin & Judge, 2018).The key to the success of any organization depends on the commitment of employees towards that organization.Robbin and Judge (2018) posited that commitment towards an organization goes beyond formal membership, it includes the attitude towards the organization and willingness to pursue everything for the sake of the organization.Job commitment is distinguished from job satisfaction in that; commitment is an effective response to the whole organization, while the job satisfaction is an effective response to a specific aspect of the job (Alireza, 2014).

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The employees' perceptions of organizational justice may influence their attitudes and behaviours for good or bad which in turn have impact on employees' commitment, performance and school success.Ensuring justice in schools requires the heads to always obtain the correct information to make fair decisions and treat the staff equally.No person should be singled out for discrimination or ill-treatment, staff must be treated with dignity and respect and provide them with explanations for decisions that influence them.The importance of the head teachers engaging the staff in decision making process with positive contributions cannot be over emphasized.
Notwithstanding of these requirements by the head teachers, the researcher observed that there is still many head teachers in public primary schools, who are not fair in distribution of workloads and responsibilities, also not recommending the right teachers for promotions, giving little or no opportunity for staff contribution in decision making which probably has been contributing to the declining in the job commitment of some teachers in public primary schools in Nigeria.
A number of studies have been found in the research literature on organizational justice and teachers' job commitment in schools, for example, Jameel et al., (2020) examined the relationship between organizational justice and organization commitment among secondary school teachers in Iraq.The study was carried out neither in Nigeria nor in primary schools.Friday & Ugwu (2019) investigated the effect of organizational justice on employee commitment of selected private secondary school teachers in Nigeria.Though this work was conducted in Nigeria but the respondents for this study were the private secondary schools teaching staff.In another study, Karanja (2016) examined the effect of organizational justice on organizational commitment in public secondary schools and bank staff in commercial banks in Kenya.The study was not only carried in Kenya, but also focused on organizational commitment of both teachers and banks staff in Kenya.
Furthermore, Buluc and Gunes (2014) examined the relationship between organizational justice and organizational commitment in primary schools in Ankara, Turkey.This study was not carried out neither in Nigeria nor in Kwara State, thus, there is a geographical gap.However, from the literature reviewed no study had looked into the correlation that exists between the organisational justice and teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools.It is against this argument that the study sought to examine the relationship between organisational justice and teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between organisational justice and teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools, Nigeria.Specifically, the study wanted to: a) examine the level of organizational justice in Kwara State public primary schools; b) determine the level of teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools; c) examine the relationship between the organisational justice and teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools;

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The following research questions were raised to guide the study: a) What is the level of organizational justice in Kwara State public primary schools?b) What is the level of teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools?c) What is the relationship between joint organizational justice and teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools?

RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
HO: There is no significant relationship between organizational justice and teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools.

METHODOLOGY
The research design adopted for this study was descriptive survey of correlation type.This research design was considered suitable because it sought to establish the relationship between organisational justice and teachers' Job Commitment in Kwara State public primary schools.The population for this study consists of all the public primary school teachers in Kwara state as at 2020.According to Kwara State Annual School Census Report 2019/2020, there were 11,198 teachers in all the 1,580 public primary schools in Kwara State.The primary schools were categorised into the three senatorial districts in Kwara State using stratified random sampling technique.Three local government areas were selected from each of three existing senatorial districts using simple random sampling technique thereby making a total number of 9 LGAs out of the 16 LGAs in the state where there were 72 schools.Proportional sampling technique was used to select sample based on Krejcie & Morgan (1970) sample size determination table and 361, 341 and 346 teachers were selected from Kwara Central, North and South senatorial districts respectively.One thousand and forty eight (1,048) respondents were selected all together using random sampling technique.
The instrument used was structured questionnaire, designed by researcher.The questionnaire contained items that measured the organisational justice dimensions titled ''Organisational Justice Questionnaire'' (OJQ).and the teachers' job commitment tagged ''Teachers' Job Commitment Questionnaire'' (TJCQ).
Responses to each of the item by respondents was rated using a 4-point Likert Scale anchors labeled 1= Strongly Agree (SA), 2 = Agree (A), 3= Disagree (D), and 4 = Strongly Disagree (SD).
To ascertain the content and face validity of the research instruments, the draft was given to two experts in the Department of Educational Management, Faculty of Education, University of Ilorin, Ilorin for scrutiny and advice.Their comments and corrections were incorporated into the final instrument administered to the respondents.The reliability of the instrument was ascertained through the Cronbach' Alpha coefficient with all items being above benchmark of 0.70 which fulfilled the required standard for an instrument to be reliable (Garson, 2013).

Procedure for Data Collection
The researcher administered the questionnaire to the selected respondents with the help of two trained research assistants after consent of schools' authorities have been sought.Direct delivery and on-the-spot method of collection were adopted to ensure maximum retrieval of administered questionnaire.

Method of Data Analysis
The data collected for this study was subjected to analysis using relevant descriptive and inferential statistics.Two research questions were raised, research question 1 and 2 were answered with the use of descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation where the mean ranging from 1.00 to 2.00 is considered to be low and 2.01 to 3.00 is considered to be average while 3.01 to 4.00 is taken to be high.The hypothesis was tested with the use of Multiple Regression at 0.05 level of significance.All the analyses were done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).

Answering Research Questions
Two research questions were raised, research question 1 and 2 were answered with the use of descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation while the only hypothesis was tested with the use of Step-wise Multiple Regression.

Research Question 1: What is the level of organisational justice in Kwara State public primary schools?
In order to answer this research question, responses of the teachers to items on the level of organisational justice were collated.The data collected from the study were analysed as shown in Table 1.Table 1 shows the mean and standard deviation of the level of organisational justice in Kwara State public primary schools where the mean scores of informational and interactional justices were found to be 3.20 and 3.17 respectively and as such considered as high while distributive and procedural justices was found to be average a mean score of 2.26 and 2.14.Therefore, the grand mean of 2.69 clearly shows that the level of organisational justice in Kwara State public primary schools was average.

Research Question 2: What is the level of teachers' job commitment in Kwara
State public primary schools?
In order to answer this research question, responses of the teachers to items on the level of teachers' job commitment were collated.The data collected from the study were analysed as shown in Table 2.
Table 2 shows the mean and standard deviation of the level of teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools where the mean scores of affective, continuance and normative commitments were found to be 2.72, 2.71 and 2.60 respectively and as such considered as average.Therefore, the grand mean of 2.67 clearly shows that the level of teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools was average.

Hypotheses Testing
One hypothesis was postulated in the course of this study.It was tested using Multiple Regression at 0.05 level of significance.

Ho:
There is no significant relationship between organisational justice and teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools Table 3a presents the model summary of the regression analysis with R square value of .611.This indicates that, the independent variable (organisational justice) explained at least 61.1% of the total variability of the dependent variable (teachers' job commitment).The high percentage of explained variability is an indication of model adequacy.This implies that organisational justice determines the level of teachers' job commitment in public primary schools in Kwara State.Implicit in this result is the fact that the predictor variable accounted for 61.1% variation in teachers' job commitment.Further verification on the significant of the relationship of the predictor variable and teachers' job commitment is P<0.05.
Since P value is lesser than 0.05 significance level, the hypothesis is rejected.This means that, there is a significant relationship between organisational justice and teachers' job commitment in public primary schools in Kwara State.A study of Table 3b indicates that, the calculated F-value is 52.445 with a degree of freedom of 4/967 that is significant at 0.000.Since p value of 0.000 was lesser than 0.05 significance level, the hypothesis was rejected.The implication of this is that there is a significant relationship between organisational justice and teachers' job commitment in public primary schools in Kwara State.

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
This section gives detailed discussion of the findings from the research questions and the hypothesis tested.Table 1 on the level of organisational justice in Kwara State public primary schools revealed that the mean scores of interactional and informational justices were found to be 3.20 and 3.17 respectively and as such considered as high while distributive and procedural justices were found to be average mean scores of 2.26 and 2.14.Therefore, the grand mean of 2.69 clearly shows that the level of organisational justice in Kwara State public primary schools was average.The findings indicated that the teachers had positive perception of organizational justice in primary schools, which may be interpreted as head teachers treat the teachers fairly.This finding was consistent with the earlier study of Buluc and Gunes (2014) which revealed that the level of perception of primary school teachers with regard to organizational justice was moderate.But in contrary to the finding of Kutche (2019) who found that the justice practices by the principals in public secondary schools in Cameroon had not been fair, thus, the level of organisational justice perception by the teachers was low.
Findings from Table 2 on the level of teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools showed that the mean scores of affective, continuance and normative commitments were found to be 2.72, 2.71 and 2.60 respectively and as such considered as average.Therefore, the grand mean of 2.67 clearly shows that the level of teachers' job commitment in Kwara State public primary schools was average.According to the findings, primary school teachers also had moderate level of job commitment.This implies that teachers in public primary schools agreed they are happy being members of the school and they are committed to their works.This finding confirmed corroborates that of Karanja (2016) who found that teachers felt strong senses of belonging in their work place and happy being in teaching profession.Similarly, the finding was in line with the finding of Rahman et al., (2016) who concluded that if employees are treated impartially and fairly compensated then it will motivate and encourage them to invest their time, energy and experience in the organization.
The major findings of this study were discussed in congruent of findings of previous studies as related to the relationship that exists between organisational justice and teachers' job commitment in public primary schools in Kwara State.This study found that distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice and informational justice have significant relationship with teachers' job commitment.This means that an increase in an organisational justice has the strong possibility to improve teachers' job commitment.This finding is in line with previous studies such as Gichira et al., (2016); Gulluce at al., (2015); Buluc and Gunes (2014); Akanbi and Ofoegbu (2013) in their empirical studies revealed that there was a significant relationship between organizational justice and teachers' commitment.When teachers perceive their head teacher to be fair, respectful and unbiased in his or her dealings, they are likely to exhibit positive work outcomes such as commitment and dedication.
In addition, the study found that distributive justice and procedural justice had negative significant relationship with teachers' job commitment while interactional and informational had positive significant relationship with teachers' job commitment.The findings are consistent with that of Moosa, (2014) who found positive relationship between informational and interactional justice and employees' job performance.The study revealed that persistency in fair treatment by school heads and supervisors for managing interactivity will determine the teachers' productivity and quality of teaching.

CONCLUSION
From the discussion of findings, it was empirically discovered that organizational justice has significant relationship with teachers' job commitment.It is therefore necessary for any school head who intends to enhance the commitment of his teachers to uphold organizational justice.This would increase their level of job commitment that would benefit educational system as a whole.

RECOMMENDATIONS
The following recommendations were made based on the results of the finding: a) the head teachers should put in more efforts in ensuring that all the components of organization justice are given adequate attention in order to boost the level of organizational justice from being average to high; b) head teachers should equally ensure that the components of teachers commitment are worked on for improvement.This would make the commitment level to move from average to high; and c) the fact that there was a significant relationship organizational justice and teachers commitment, the school head should always strive to ensure justice in all ramifications in order to always secure and sustain teachers commitment.

Table 1
Mean and Standard Deviation of the Level of Organisational Justice

Table 2
Mean and Standard Deviation of the Level of Teachers' Job Commitment

Table 3a
Results of Stepwise Multiple Regression of Organisational Justice and Teachers' Job Commitment

Table 3b :
Regression Analysis of organisational justice and teachers' job commitment