Organisational Justice and Employee Commitment in Emerging Economies Evidence from 54 Empirical Studies Across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East

Abstract

This systematic review synthesises empirical evidence on the relationship between organisational justice and employee commitment in emerging economies. It addresses fragmented findings in the literature and identifies how distributive, procedural, and interactional justice predict affective, continuance, and normative commitment across diverse cultural and sectoral contexts. The review introduces a contextualised justice-commitment framework that integrates cultural moderators and mediating mechanisms specific to developing countries. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a systematic literature search was conducted across Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Out of 390 candidate papers identified, 54 highly relevant empirical studies from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East met the inclusion criteria. Thematic synthesis was employed to analyse the extracted data. The findings show that procedural and distributive justice consistently predict affective and normative commitment, with procedural justice emerging as the strongest predictor. Job satisfaction, psychological capital, and perceived organisational support mediate the justice-commitment relationship, while power distance, collectivism, exchange ideology, and Islamic work ethics moderate it. Interactional justice shows mixed effects depending on cultural and sectoral context. Banking and healthcare sectors dominate the literature, whereas manufacturing, education, and the informal economy remain underexplored. Methodologically, the predominance of cross-sectional designs and self-report data constrains causal inference, and the geographical concentration in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Indonesia limits generalisability. Organisations in emerging economies should prioritise transparent procedures and equitable reward systems. Justice practices must be culturally adapted to local values, including tailoring procedural fairness for high power distance cultures and emphasising group-oriented justice in collectivist settings. This review is the first comprehensive synthesis focused exclusively on emerging economies and advances social exchange theory by showing how cultural values shape reciprocity norms in developing economies contexts.