The effects of procedural fairness and interpersonal trust on job tension in budgeting

Employees’ participation in organizational affairs may affect employee attitudes such as job tension. It is likely that these relationships may be indirect via some intervening variables. The interpersonal trust between the subordinates and their superiors has previously been identified as one of such variables. However, the empirical evidence indicates that interpersonal trust, by itself, is unable to explain fully the relationship between budgetary participation and job tension. This study hypothesises that the omission of procedural fairness as an intervening variable may be the reason for the failure of prior research to account for most of the effects between budgetary participation and job tension. The results, based on a sample of 152 managers, support the expectation that procedural fairness and interpersonal trust jointly are able to explain a substantial portion of the effects of the relationship between budgetary participation and job tension.