Abstract:
Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational justice are some
of the most important work attitudes studied in the work literature because of their direct
implications on work outcomes such as turnover, absenteeism, and job performance. In
the Middle East, the study of these work attitudes is rather limited to date. With recent
developments taking place in many Arab Gulf states labor markets- namely the
implementation of job localization or nationalization policies- the study of these work
attitudes represents a pressing and timely issue. The Sultanate of Oman is used as a case
in point to assess levels of organizational commitment (affective commitment and
continuance commitment), job satisfaction, and organizational justice (procedural and
distributive) among Omani and expatriate employees. The basic research questions
investigate whether or not there are significant differences in these three
conceptualizations among Omani and expatriate employees, and whether a relationship
prevails between each of organizational commitment, job satisfaction and perceptions of
justice. Based on questionnaire results distributed to 154 employees in Oman, and using
hierarchical regressions, the results show that while job satisfaction is significantly higher
for expatriate employees, continuance commitment is significantly more important
among Omanis. Further, procedural justice is reported to be significantly positively
related to affective commitment. Also, both distributive and procedural justice
significantly affect job satisfaction levels in the Omani labor market.
