Investigation of the relationship between hospital workers' ethical climate perceptions and procedual (operational) justice perceptions

ABSTRACT INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HOSPITAL EMPLOYEES' THE ETHICAL CLIMATE PERCEPTIONS AND PROCEDURAL (PROCEDURAL) JUSTICE PERCEPTIONS The ethical climate, which is effective on organizational attitudes and behaviors that affect work outcomes in business life, is a mechanism that includes organizational values that will give employees the opportunity to evaluate various alternatives on how to overcome ethical problems. Especially in hospitals, unethical behaviors can cause important consequences that can affect human life. It is not possible to consider and evaluate the perception of justice, which is an effective factor in achieving positive business results, independently of the ethical climate. From this point of view, this quantitative research aiming to determine the relationship between the ethical climate in hospitals and the perception of procedural justice of healthcare employee is structured with a relational screening model. Convenience sampling technique, one of the non-random sampling methods, was used in the research. The sample of the study consisted of 248 healthcare professionals working in the clinics and polyclinics of four hospitals in the city center of Elazig. The ethical climate perceptions of healthcare professionals were evaluated with the ''Ethical Climate Scale'', and their perceptions of procedural justice were evaluated with the ''Procedural Justice Scale''. In the analysis of the data, pairwise group comparisons were analyzed with the Independent Sample T test, and the differences between more than two groups were examined with One-Way Variance (ANOVA). In the evaluation of relation between the variables, Spearman correlation coefficient was used and simple linear regression analysis was also applied. It was determined that the ethical climate perceptions of the healthcare professionals participating in the study were 3.22±1.39 and their procedural justice perceptions were moderate with an average of 3.38±1.28. In addition, in the study, it was determined that there is a positive, strong and significant relationship between ethical climate and procedural justice. According to the regression model, the ethical climate has a 71.5% effect on procedural justice. It is important to keep the ethical climate perception high in hospitals so that employees feel a high perception of procedural justice.