The moderating roles of organizational justice on the relationship between emotional exhaustion and organizational loyalty in airline services

Purpose - The purpose of this paper was to analyze the moderating role of organizational justice in the emotional exhaustion-organizational loyalty link. Emotional exhaustion resulting from an employee's emotional labor usually leads to negative outcome such as organizational loyalty. Following conservation of resources theory and social exchange theory, the authors argue that the relationship between flight attendants' emotional exhaustion and organizational loyalty is moderated by distributive, procedural and interpersonal justice. Design/methodology/approach - Data were gathered from a sample of 247 flight attendants in South Korea. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized relationship. Findings - The study results provide support for the moderating role of organizational justice such as distributive, procedural and interpersonal justice in the emotional exhaustion-organizational loyalty link. Originality/value - This study contributes to the extant literature by empirically validating the moderating effect and clarifying the role of three types of organizational justice simultaneously, which has not been addressed in previous research.