Extending the Multifoci Perspective: The Role of Supervisor Justice and Moral Identity in the Relationship Between Customer Justice and Customer-Directed Sabotage

The multifoci perspective of justice proposes that individuals tend to target their (in)justice reactions toward the perceived source of the mistreatment. Empirical support for target-specific reactions, however, has been mixed. To explore theoretically relevant reasons for these discrepant results and address unanswered questions in the multifoci justice literature, the present research examines how different justice sources might interactively predict target-specific reactions, and whether these effects occur as a function of moral identity. Results from a sample of North American frontline service employees (N = 314, Study 1) showed that among employees with lower levels of moral identity, low supervisor justice exacerbated the association between low customer justice and customer-directed sabotage, whereas this exacerbation effect was not observed among employees with higher levels of moral identity. This 3-way interaction effect was replicated in a sample of South Korean employees (N = 265, Study 2).