Low organisational justice and heavy drinking: a prospective cohort study

Kouvonen, Anne; Kivimaki, Mika; Elovainio, Marko; Vaananen, Ari; De Vogli, Roberto; Heponiemi, Tarja; Linna, Anne; Pentti, Jaana; Vahtera, Jussi

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate whether low perceived organisational injustice predicts heavy drinking among employees.
Methods: Data from the prospective occupational cohort study, the 10-Town Study, related to 15 290 Finnish public sector local government employees nested in 2432 work units, were used. Non-drinkers were excluded. Procedural, interactional and total organisational justice, heavy drinking (>=210 g of absolute alcohol per week) and other psychosocial factors were determined by means of questionnaire in 2000-2001 (phase 1) and 2004 (phase 2). Multilevel logistic regression analyses taking into account for the hierarchical structure of the data were conducted and adjustments were made for sex, age, socio-economic position, marital status, baseline heavy drinking, psychological distress and other psychosocial risk factors such as job strain and effort/reward imbalance.
Results: After adjustments, participants who reported low procedural justice at phase 1 were about 1.2 times more likely to be heavy drinkers at phase 2 compared with their counterparts with high justice. Low perceived justice in interpersonal treatment and low perceived total organisational justice were associated with an elevated prevalence of heavy drinking only in the socio-demographics adjusted model.
Conclusions: This is the first longitudinal study to show that low procedural justice is weakly associated with an increased likelihood of heavy drinking.

Citation

Kouvonen, A., Kivimaki, M., Elovainio, M., Vaananen, A., De Vogli, R., Heponiemi, T., …Vahtera, J. (2008). Low organisational justice and heavy drinking: a prospective cohort study. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 65(1),

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008
• Deposit Date: Jan 24, 2008
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 24, 2008
• Journal: Occupational and Environmental Medicine
• Print ISSN: 1351-0711
• Publisher: BMJ Publishing Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 1
• Keywords: alcohol consumptions, heavy drinking, organisational justice, psychological factors
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1015368
• Related Public URLs: http://oem.bmj.com/; http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/iwho/