A SOUTH AFRICAN CASE STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERCEIVED FAIRNESS IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND EMPLOYEES’ PSYCHOLOGICAL EMPOWERMENT

Abstract

In South Africa, there is a concern with the public service that human resource management functions and practices are influenced politically and therefore not done fairly. For example, there are complaints on delays in appointments, too much bureaucracy, favouritism and nepotism in appointments, poor handling of performance appraisals, and lack of succession planning. The existence of these myriad complaints leads to the rise of questions such as: How do public service employees view all these allegations? Do their views about these allegations affect their feelings of psychologically empowered outcomes within their work environment? The objective of this study was to determine whether alleged unfair human resource management practices affect employees’ feelings of psychological empowerment in a government department in the Free State Province of South Africa. Borrowing from organisational justice theory, the researcher argues that unfair human resource management practices in the South African public service will lead to low employee perceptions of fairness (or justness) in the HRM practices of a government department, and this, in turn, leads to negative feelings of employee psychological empowerment. This theory was tested using four (4) emergent hypotheses and validated with empirical data collected from employees of the respective government department. The study was that: i) Employees viewed HRM practices as unfair although they felt psychologically empowered ii) Overall perceptions of fairness in HRM practices and employees’ feelings of psychologically empowered were partially related. These findings are presented and discussed within the context of the organisational justice theory. Recommendations for practice and further research are suggested.