An analysis of the relationship among organizational justice, vocational belongingness and internal customer satisfaction of Turkish seafarers

Abstract

In this study, organizational justice perceptions of seafarers in relation to their job belongingness and satisfaction levels were investigated. The outcomes of organizational behaviour and the relationships among these outcomes are more important in maritime than they are in other sectors because of the demanding conditions of the life onboard which requires seafarers to work and live at the same place with the same people for a long time. The number of studies about the relationship among these three outcomes in the maritime sector is scarce, so this research is expected to fill a gap regarding this. The study was conducted with 398 Turkish seafarers. According to the results, positive organizational justice perceptions of seafarers have a significant effect on their vocational belongingness and job satisfaction levels, which will be called internal customer satisfaction levels of seafarers in this study. It is also found that internal customer satisfaction of seafarers has positive effect on their vocational belongingness. Although relations among various organizational outcomes in the maritime sector are significant due to their effective role on the smooth-going of the relations onboard, they have not been widely studied so far, so the further studies may focus on closing this gap with surveys administrated with a wider group of seafarers.