1. Background
Today, social and economic systems have changed leading to many improvements in the field of science. These changes make necessities, new attitudes, and new needs. Generally, the specific characteristics of entrepreneurial organizations make the organization more responsive to use the opportunities (1). Entrepreneurship has been considered in the 21st century often as a way to achieve a high level of organizational performance (2). Dess et al. (1994) believe that almost all organizations and companies are working to achieve market opportunities. Entrepreneurs are pursuing this goal to establish. Without entrepreneurial behavior, organizations cannot achieve their goals. Organizational entrepreneurship is an overview of the organization that encourages creative strategic processes within the organization. Organizations cannot be entrepreneurs only by accepting the entrepreneurship word, but they must fully implement entrepreneurship management and all its dimensions to achieve entrepreneurship (3). Organizational entrepreneurship is a process in which an organization tries to explore and use new knowledge to achieve new business opportunities (4). Entrepreneurship also includes evaluating the products, processes, services, and strategies of the organization. It is accompanied by management styles such as leadership and employee attitudes to identify the factors affecting entrepreneurship that are important to the success of an organization (5). Schumpeter, who is the father of entrepreneurial science, defines entrepreneurship as a creative destruction process. In addition, he says entrepreneurship is a process in which an entrepreneur with organizational support can do his entrepreneurial activities (6). On the one hand, human resources are the most important source of an organization to which managers pay particular attention. On the other hand, organizational justice is one of the basic and essential needs of these human resources. First studies of organizational justice were in the early 1960s. Since 1990, a new phase of empirical studies on organizational justice has begun (7). However, the discussion of organizational justice (OJ) like entrepreneurship is a very important topic. Greenberg says OJ is created because of the fair and equitable treatment that organizations show toward their employees. This term was created by Greenberg through employee perceptions of fairness at work (8, 9).
The issue of OJ began with Adams' theory. Based on this theory, people work and compare their outcomes with the outcomes of the other employees. This treatment is based on the equal pay rule for equal work and for employees in an equal pattern that have the same rights in the work that they do (10). According to Greenberg (1987), OJ refers to employee perceptions of justice in the organization.
Mormon (1991) stated the term OJ is used to describe the role of justice, which is directly related to job opportunities (11). Generally, OJ includes three dimensions: distributive justice (DJ), procedural justice (PJ), and interactional justice (IJ). These dimensions are defined in different ways, but all of them are managerial decisions (12). The DJ dimension is related to the distribution of resources within an organization. It also includes allocating financial resources, non-financial resources, and giving privileges to employees who achieve organizational performance goals. These resources may be sensitive, such as salary, and may be insensitive, such as praising employees.
PJ as a kind of justice refers to employees' perceptions of justice in the procedures that lead to decisions. The focus of this dimension is on processes (13).
IJ as another kind of justice refers to the respectful behavior of supervisors and managers with employees and personnel (14).
In some texts, justice is divided into four dimensions. In addition to the above dimensions, there is another dimension named systemic justice (SJ), which is the perception of individuals and employees about the fair behavior of colleagues, supervisors, managers, and the fair procedures of the job (15).
Little research has been done on this topic. For example, the results of a study by Chashmi et al. (2013) indicated that there was a positive significant relationship between OJ and its dimensions and organizational entrepreneurship (OE). As a result, strengthening OJ and its dimensions will lead to the promotion of OE (16).
Generally, there are a few studies in this field, especially in health organizations. In addition, because of the importance of health organizations and the impact of these organizations on the health of the community, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between OJ and its dimensions and OE in selected military clinics to take steps toward providing high-quality services for military personnel and their families through increasing entrepreneurship and OJ.
2. Methods
This analytic-descriptive study was conducted at five selected military clinics in Tehran, 2017. The clinics were selected randomly from all military clinics in Tehran. The study population comprised 160 employees of the selected military clinics in Tehran requited through census method. The questionnaires were distributed to the employees and they were explained how to fill out the questionnaires. 160 questionnaires were distributed to all the personnel and only 147 questionnaires were filled out. All personnel working at the five selected military clinics were included in the study and the staff working out of the clinics for different training courses was excluded. In addition, the limitation of this study was the lack of full cooperation of research units for collecting the required data. The research hypothesis was that there is a correlation between OJ and OE among the personnel. The response rate of employees to the questionnaires in the selected clinics was 91.87%. Data were collected through two questionnaires. The first was a demographic questionnaire prepared by the researcher that included age, gender, job interest, marital status, work experience, and education level. The essential tools were OJ and OE questionnaires. The OJ questionnaire was designed by Nijouff and Norman in 1993. This questionnaire had 20 items and 3 dimensions (DJ, PJ, and IJ) on a five-point Likert scale: 1- completely disagree, 2- disagree, 3- neutral, 4- agree, 5- completely agree. Questions 1 - 5 were related to DJ, questions 6 - 11 to PJ, and questions 12 - 20 to IJ. The validity and reliability of the Nijouff and Norman questionnaire were calculated by Cronbach's alpha method in 1993, reporting the validity and reliability of OJ as 0.42 and 0.85, respectively. The validity and reliability of DJ were 0.46 and 0.78; the validity and reliability of PJ were 0.57 and 0.82; and the validity and reliability of IJ were 0.41 and 0.44, respectively. We used the Persian version of this questionnaire that was used in the study of Alimoradnori et al. (2017) (17, 18). In addition, we used a Marguerite Hill standard questionnaire for examination of OE. This questionnaire had 13 items and 4 dimensions (organizational verbs, individual attitudes, flexibility, and entrepreneurship culture) on a five-point Likert scale: 1- a lot, 2- sometimes, 3- neutral, 4- rarely and, 5- never. Questions 1 - 3 were related to organizational verbs, questions 4 - 6 to individual attitudes, questions 7 - 9 to flexibility, and questions 10 - 13 to entrepreneurial culture. The reliability of the Marguerite Hill questionnaire was calculated by Cronbach's alpha method, reporting the reliability of OE as 0.85. The reliability of organizational verbs was 0.74, the reliability of individual attitudes was 0.75, the reliability of flexibility was 0.77, and the reliability of entrepreneurship culture was 0.81. The validity of this questionnaire was also approved by the experts. Employees were volunteered to participate in the study. We used the Persian version of this questionnaire that was used in the study of Mohammadi et al. (2016) (19, 20). Finally, the data were analyzed using SPSS version 21 (IBM company) through descriptive statistics, ANOVA, Tukey, T-test, and Pearson test. Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, and mean and standard deviation) were used to summarize the data. Tukey, T-test, and ANOVA were used to examine the relationship between OE and OJ and demographic variables. Finally, Pearson test was used to examine the relationship between the two main variables of the study (relationship of OE with OJ and its dimensions). In this study, estimate error and significance level were 0.05 (α = 0.05).
3. Results
In this study, 85.7% of the participants were men and 14.3% were women. The highest frequency of participants was in the age group of 20 - 30 years (53.1%) and the lowest frequency was in the age group of older than 40 years (11.6%). The highest frequency in the level of education was related to bachelor degrees (53 people, 36%) and the lowest frequency was attributed to pharmacy degrees (3 people, 0.2%). 113 (76.9%) employees were interested in their job and 34 people (23.1%) were not. 94 (63.9%) participants were married and 53 people (36.1%) were single (Table 1).
| Frequency | Percentage | |
|---|---|---|
| Work experience, y | ||
| < 10 | 90 | 61.2 |
| 10 - 20 | 34 | 23.1 |
| > 20 | 23 | 15.6 |
| Interest in the job | ||
| Yes | 94 | 63.9 |
| No | 34 | 23.1 |
| Gender | ||
| Male | 126 | 85.7 |
| Female | 21 | 14.3 |
| Age, y | ||
| 20 - 30 | 78 | 53.1 |
| 30 - 40 | 52 | 35.4 |
| > 40 | 17 | 11.6 |
| Marital status | ||
| Yes | 94 | 63.9 |
| No | 53 | 23.1 |
| Education | ||
| High school | 30 | 20.5 |
| Undergraduate | 9 | 6.1 |
| Bachelor | 53 | 36 |
| Master | 10 | 6.8 |
| Ph.D. | 7 | 4.8 |
| GP | 26 | 17.7 |
| Dentist | 4 | 2.7 |
| Pharmacist | 3 | 2.0 |
| Expert | 5 | 3.4 |
A Summary of the Status of Demographic Variables
The variables of OJ and its dimensions and EO are described in Table 2.
| OE | OJ | DJ | PJ | IJ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean | 42.11 | 52.78 | 11.79 | 95.15 | 25.04 |
| Std. deviation | 7.95 | 11.58 | 3.90 | 4.15 | 6.66 |
| Minimum | 21 | 20 | 5 | 6 | 9 |
| Maximum | 104 | 91 | 22 | 28 | 41 |
A Summary of the Status of OJ and EO Variables
In Table 3, according to one-way ANOVA, there was a significant relationship between OJ and education, but there was no significant relationship between OJ and work experience and age variables. In addition, there was no significant relationship between OE and age, education, and work experience.
We calculated the differences between the groups in OJ and OE by Tukey test. According to the test, there was no significant relationship in the differences between the groups of education level, work experience, and age variables and OJ and OE (P < 0.05).
According to Table 3, the results of independent T-test showed that there was a significant relationship between OJ and job interest variable, and there was a difference between people with job interest and people who were not interested in their job (P < 0.05, t = 3.168). Nevertheless, there was no significant relationship between OJ and gender (P = 0.218, t = 0.743) and marital status (P = 0.168, t = -1.551). In addition, there was a significant relationship between gender and OE (p < 0.05, t = -0.589) and there was a difference between men and women. However, there was no significant relationship between OE and interest in job (P = 0.952, t = -0.492) and marital status (P = 0.148, t = 0.627).
A Summary of the Results of the Relationship Between Research Variables
The results of Pearson's test indicate that OJ and DJ had significant relationships with OE, but there was no significant relationship between PJ and IJ and OE (Table 4).
4. Discussion
The findings of the research among employees of selected military clinics in Tehran in 2017 showed that OJ had a positive significant relationship with OE. The more the employees' understanding of OJ and its dimensions is, the more the entrepreneurship will be. In addition, among the dimensions of OJ, only JD had a significant relationship with OE and there was no significant relationship between OE and other dimensions of OJ. However, the strengthening of OJ and its dimensions among employees of military clinics will lead to the strengthening of OE in the clinics. Some studies examined the relationship between OJ and job burnout, organizational commitment, employee productivity, trust, and employee performance. Heponiemi et al. (2007) investigated productivity and employees' OJ perceptions in long‐term care for the elderly and showed that there is a positive significant relationship between OJ and its dimensions and employee productivity (21). Ybema et al. (2016) examined the relationships between OJ, productivity loss, and sickness absence among older employees, indicating that among the dimensions of OJ, DJ and PJ could lead to lower productivity loss and lower absence in work in the 1-year period. Productivity loss increased DJ of appreciation at 1-year follow-up (22). Jin et al. (2015) investigated job burnout and OJ among medical interns in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China; there was a negative significant relationship between OJ and job burnout (r = -0.298, P = 0.000) among the participating interns. Emotional exhaustion and cynicism were more significant with OJ (23). Chen et al. (2015) investigated OJ, trust, and identification and their effects on organizational commitment in hospitals. The OJ perceived by nurses had a positive significant relationship with organizational trust and organizational identification. In addition, organizational trust and organizational identification had a positive significant effect on organizational commitment (24).
Fatt et al. (2010) suggested that there is a positive significant relationship between OJ and organizational commitment. Therefore, we can say that OJ can increase organizational commitment (25). Lam et al. (2002) showed that there was a positive significant relationship between OJ and job performance and two dimensions of PJ and DJ could affect job performance (26). The relationship of OJ with many other variables was also investigated, but the relationship between OJ and OE was not studied while some studies have been done on this topic.
The study conducted by Chashmi et al. (2016) indicated the significant relationships between OJ and OE. According to the correlation analysis, three dimensions of OJ had relationships with OE (16). The results of this study are in accordance with the Chashmi's study findings. In addition, the existence of a significant relationship between OJ and OE may lead managers and heads of military health centers to be more sensitive and try to determine the perception of OJ, goals, and the vision of the organization and design comprehensive plans for improving the efficiency of human resources. According to the application of the results of this research, it can be said that the authorities and planners in military clinics should conduct studies regarding OJ and OE. In addition, they can conduct comparative studies and use the results of this research to examine the impact of justice and entrepreneurship. In this study, there was a significant relationship between OJ and OE, which indicates that authorities should be more careful regarding this issue.
Finally, there are some useful suggestions based on results: the salaries and rewards of employees have to establish based on efforts and work criteria in the organization. Employees should express their opinions and feelings throughout the work. The job procedures have to be adopted without bias and they have to be designed according to standards.
