The relationship between work alienation of elementary school teachers and their organizational justice perception

The purpose of this research is to analyze the correlation between work alienation of elementary school teachers and their perceptions on organizational justice according to some variables; additionally, this research tested whether perception on organizational justice predicts the level of work alienation or not. The target population of the research is approximately seventy thousand teachers who are working in public schools in İstanbul during the 2013-2014 academic year. Sampling of the research is done with four hundred and three teachers in twenty-four such schools. The data used in the research is gathered by using survey. Survey is composed of three parts. The first part of the survey includes the questions the researcher prepared to analyze the demographic information. The second part of the survey includes Elma's (2003) "Work Alienation Scale", while the third part includes "Organizational Justice Scale" developed by Niehoff and Moorman whose translation into Turkish, validity, and reliability is done by Polat (2007). The data is analyzed with SPSS program. During the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics like arithmetic mean, percentage, frequency and standard deviation have been utilized. T- test is used in comparing variations of gender, marital status and subject area in the dimensions that show normal distribution of work alienation and organizational justice perception. Mann Whitney-U test is utilized in the dimensions where normal distribution is not shown. In the dimensions that show normal distribution, in order to analyze whether age, education level, seniority and employment period variations matter or not, univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used while Kruskal Wallis-H test is used in the dimensions that do not show normal distribution. In order to examine the correlation between work alienation and organizational justice perception, Pearson Correlation analysis is applied. Additionally to identify whether organizational justice perception predicts alienation level, multi linear regression analysis, one of the explanatory statistical techniques, is used. According to the results of the research, teachers experience highest work alienation at "sometimes" level in the school alienation dimension, and lowest in "never" level at meaninglessness dimension. In the powerlessness dimension, subject teachers, teachers between the ages of 36-45 and teachers who have employment period of 13-18 years, experience more alienation. At the meaninglessness dimension subject teachers and teachers with 7-12 years of employment experience more alienation compared to others. Research results show that, organizational justice perceptions of teachers are most seen at the "high" level of the interactional justice dimension while least seen at "medium" level at the "procedural justice" dimension. At the "interactional justice" dimension, classroom teachers have more organizational justice perception. Additionally, research results demonstrate that the perception of procedural justice is an important factor in explaining work alienation in powerlessness form while interactional justice perception is an important factor in explaining work alienation in isolation form. Keywords: Work alieanation, organizational justice, elementary school, teacher, administrator