What could be more frustrating than a colleague receiving credit for a job you did? It is generally accepted that when facing unfair situations, the immediate reaction could be anger or negative emotions (Fox et al., 2001; Pérez-Rodríguez et al., 2019), but sometimes such conditions could have even worse effects on both individuals and organizations, like employee turnover intention or withdrawal (Conlon et al., 2005; Moon, 2017; Zhou et al., 2022). Nevertheless, if employees have a strong desire to keep working with the perpetrator of the injustice, or with the group of colleagues they admire, their reactions or consequences could not be so consistent or linear. In literature, the investigation of employees’ reactions more rarely takes into account the complexity of contradictory inner feelings that arise from a disjunction between people’s aspirations and desires and the actual possibility of realizing them. On the other hand, studies over the past three decades have provided important information about the negative effects of organizational (in)justice or unfairness (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2001), across cultures and countries, specifically on health and psychological well-being (Fischer, 2013; Silva and Caetano, 2016). Most of the literature recognizes that a perceived lack of organizational justice or fairness represents an important psychosocial risk factor particularly related to high levels of stress, that may even lead to coronary heart disease (Sara et al., 2018), inducing a profound negative impact on employee well-being. Hence, understanding the relationship between organizational justice and stress is vital for organizations aiming to enhance employee well-being and organizational performance. By identifying how organizational injustice can increase employee stress levels, organizations can develop targeted interventions and policies to promote a fair and supportive work environment, limiting the negative consequences for the whole organization. Accordingly, the purpose of this investigation is not only to explore the relationship between organizational justice and stress, but also to propose an explanatory mechanism for this link. Thus, the present study has two aims. First, testing the direct relationship between organizational justice and different outcomes of stress. Second, exploring how this relationship works, hypothesizing the mediating role of ambivalent identification between the justice-stress relationship, that is adopting the social identity perspective to empirically evaluate whether the mediator explains why the effect of organizational justice on stress happens.

To date, the field of organizational justice has produced different models of studying employee perceptions of fairness and their correlates (see, e.g., Greenberg, 1987; Greenberg and Colquitt, 2013; Cropanzano and Ambrose, 2015). Of particular concern for employee health is the relationship between organizational justice and work-related stress, which has been widely supported by empirical literature (see Cropanzano and Wright, 2011). For example, researchers found that low perceived justice was associated with sickness absence from work, in presence of poor self-rated health, and minor psychiatric disorders (Elovainio et al., 2002). Fox et al. (2001) used a theoretical job stress framework considering organizational justice as a fundamental job stressor that could lead to behavioral strain responses, such as counterproductive work behaviors, and negative emotions (Fox et al., 2001). The link between organizational justice and perceived stress was also found in a study by Judge and Colquitt (2004), who examined the mediational role of work–family conflict in this relationship. Another study on this link confirmed that two specific dimensions of organizational justice, namely, distributive and procedural, were related to a general measure of job stress (Lambert et al., 2007). The organizational justice models have also been applied to examine their association with stress-related disorders, like sickness absence (Head et al., 2007), but also burnout, and depression (Liljegren and Ekberg, 2009; Ndjaboulé et al., 2012; Eib et al., 2018). Overall, these studies provide evidence for the negative impact of organizational (in)justice on employee health and well-being, although much of the literature mainly focuses on mental health and psychiatric disorders (e.g., Elovainio et al., 2009; Ndjaboulé et al., 2012; Fischer et al., 2014). As a matter of fact, only a limited number of studies have examined the association between organizational justice and specific measures of work-related stress. Accordingly, based on the literature reviewed here, and the consideration that more attention should be paid to unexplored outcomes (Cachón-Alonso and Elovainio, 2022), the following hypothesis was posited:

With regard to the mechanisms that can explain the association between organizational justice and stress, there is still very little scientific understanding of this aspect. Although some research has explored this link using different theoretical frameworks (see, e.g., Pérez-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Murtaza et al., 2023), much of the perspective adopted considers employees as isolated agents within the organization in which they work, neglecting that they are immersed in social contexts. As Tajfel and Turner stated: “In our judgments of other people, […] in our work relations, in our concern with justice, we do not act as isolated individuals but as social beings who derive an important part of our identity from the human groups and social categories we belong to; and we act in accordance with this awareness” (Tajfel et al., 1984, p. 5). Building on social identity and self-categorization perspectives, we can thus explain why individuals interpret external stimuli as stressors, and what happens when they cannot rely on their internal resources – such as their strong identification with their organization – to cope with stress. According to this perspective, the organizational identity becomes part of individuals’ self-concept (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987), experiencing a particular type of social identity, that is, employee identification towards the organization (Ashforth and Mael, 1989), protecting individuals from developing stress responses (Steffens et al., 2017; Ciampa et al., 2019). Therefore, considering that the definition of ourselves varies as a function of contexts, employees’ social identity cannot become salient when injustice and inequity characterize the organization and people are treated unfairly. In such conditions, indeed, the sense of “we” or “us” may not raise stronger than the sense of “I” or “me,” undermining the process to define “myself” as a group member (in contrast to outgroup members). Consequently, when the contextual conditions are not favorable, i.e., in the presence of organizational injustice, individuals could develop conflicting emotions and cognitions toward the organization, simultaneously identifying with some aspects while rejecting other aspects of their organization that they do not want to integrate into their self-definition, developing contradictory and ambivalent attachments (Pratt, 2000; Kreiner and Ashforth, 2004). Ambivalent identities may be elicited in such situations because individuals must struggle between a context discouraging their social identity (or rather not fostering it), and their implicit desire for belongingness. The social need of belonging to the ingroup is indeed a primary inner motivator that comes from the need to enhance social self-esteem and to achieve collective self-actualization, which is not less important than the need for personal self-actualization and self-esteem (Leavitt, 1995; Haslam, 2004, p. 386). Moreover, Ashforth et al. (2014) argue that organizational dualities are particularly likely to provoke ambivalence because they simultaneously promote opposite norms, values, and beliefs about what is and what is not acceptable within the ingroup (e.g., competition versus cooperation). For example, when the management establishes a collective goal, but employees are not treated fairly receiving different honors and payoffs based on the boss’ preferences, this could implicitly spread the idea that cooperation for a common goal does not benefit the whole group. Consequently, a violation of the explicit norms settled by the management about, e.g., rewarding a completed task, can induce employees to compete against each other, instead of cooperating for a common goal. Such dualities are thus a potential way to develop and spread “paradoxes of belonging” (Smith and Berg, 1987): all those situations that we can call injustices or unfair conditions can easily undermine the sense of “us” of the group, inducing ambivalent feelings, particularly in employees who do not benefit from unequal treatments.

About the consequences of ambivalent identification on employee health, this relationship has not been thoroughly examined in previous research within organizational psychology, despite the literature offering some general models of potential adverse effects of ambivalence (Pratt, 2000; Rothman et al., 2017; Zhao and Zhou, 2021; Wu et al., 2023). For example, a study by Ciampa et al. (2019) revealed that ambivalent identification was positively associated with ego depletion and emotional exhaustion (Ciampa et al., 2019). More specifically, their results showed that the negative association between positive organizational identification and strain was significant and stronger for employees experiencing low levels of ambivalence, meaning that the presence of ambivalence decreases the likelihood that a clear identification may protect against stress reactions (Ciampa et al., 2019). In the same vein, another recent study linked ambivalent leadership to different mental health outcomes in employees, i.e., depression, anxiety, vital exhaustion, and fatigue, both at within-group and between-group levels (Herr et al., 2022). In summary, according to the literature reviewed here, there are reasons to expect that ambivalent identification would mediate the relationship between (in)justice and stress, representing a detrimental factor for employee health. Therefore, the following two predictions were advanced:

Overall, the present study can contribute to the literature by highlighting the role of ambivalent identification, a specific form of identification – related to the simultaneous coexistence of opposite orientations toward the organization – still overlooked in this area of research. Moreover, the focus on this negative dimension can be crucial in designing preventive programs aimed to develop individual and organizational resources to counteract organizational injustice and its consequences.

The present findings show that employees working in unfair organizational contexts can develop ambivalent identification toward their organizations, which, in turn, can lead to stress reactions in terms of work-related burnout, client-related burnout, physical symptoms, and interpersonal strain at work. These findings emphasize the significant role of ambivalent identification, demonstrating how organizational (in)justice can lead to substantial impairments of psychological well-being. In line with previous findings, these results highlight the link between ambivalent identification and negative outcomes (Ciampa et al., 2019, 2021), supporting the notion that ambivalence represents a detrimental form of identification (Pratt, 2000). Overall, these results contribute to the research literature in two ways. First, although organizational justice was previously linked to employee stress and health, only a few studies explored the psychological mechanisms to explain this relationship (e.g., Judge and Colquitt, 2004), and none of them adopted a comprehensive theoretical framework that considers organizational contexts as social environments, emphasizing the context-dependent nature of groups and their function of social comparison (Turner et al., 1994; Hogg and Terry, 2000). The fact that ambivalent identification fully mediates the relationship between organizational justice and stress further confirms the importance of considering the role of social identities and their potential effects on employee health. Second, this represents the first empirical study considering organizational justice as a predictor of ambivalent identification. Although Ashforth et al. (2014) suggested numerous possibilities for future research questions about organizational triggers of ambivalence, proposing a comprehensive conceptual framework for their relationships, this is the first empirical attempt in that direction.

Some limitations should also be taken into account. First, despite the novelty of adopting a social identity perspective along with the ambivalence model in examining the link between organizational justice and stress, the data were gathered from a single source via self-report measures; this is a general potential limitation regarding the reliability of the measurements and their relationships. However, considering the nature of identification processes, it is recommended the use of self-report questionnaires for capturing individuals’ self-definition in terms of their unique traits and features (Ciampa et al., 2019). Therefore, future studies could include other sources of information regarding at least stress and health outcomes. A second limitation of the study is related to the cross-sectional nature of the data collection since this research design does not provide evidence of causality. This limitation could be addressed by replicating the present study using, ideally, longitudinal and experimental designs. However, the social identity model of stress (Haslam, 2004) and the multilevel perspective of ambivalence by Ashforth et al. (2014) are both in line with the causal direction suggested in the present study, which is the first that considers organizational justice as a trigger of ambivalent identification. A third limitation of the study relates to the generalizability of the findings. Because a convenience sampling method was used to collect the data, it was not possible to obtain more detailed information on the response rate or to control for variables that may have affected the response rate. Accordingly, although the participants were selected from among healthcare professionals, these findings cannot be strictly generalized to healthcare contexts without first extending the present results. Moreover, it is surprising that more than half of the participants in this study were doctors (55%), as the literature generally shows lower participation of doctors in research studies (see, e.g., Hummers-Pradier et al., 2008), mostly compared to nurses. Furthermore, given the size of the sample, these results indicate a trend that should be confirmed in future studies in the healthcare sector in order to generalize these findings, and these hypotheses could also be extended to other types of organizations.

Despite these limitations, this study contributes to future research questions: further research would benefit from the consideration of using different outcomes of stress and well-being, but also additional outcomes concerning cognitions and behaviors. Moreover, a different research design, such as a multilevel perspective, could explore the associations between ambivalence and organizational or group-level consequences, as proposed by Ashforth et al. (2014) model. Finally, future research should investigate organizational factors that determine, maintain, or facilitate ambivalent identification processes, broadening Kreiner and Ashforth’s (2004) empirical research which primarily focused on individual predictors, like intrarole conflict and breach of psychological contract. A fruitful investigation could also explore whether different facets of organizational justice, such as distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice (see, e.g., Greenberg and Colquitt, 2013) are differently related to ambivalent identification. The present study also offers practical implications. First, it can inform about the importance of reducing potential feelings of ambivalence toward the organization by implementing actions to minimize employees’ perceptions of unfair treatments within the organization. Organizations can allocate resources to develop strong positive identifications, adopting the social identity approach suggested by Haslam (2004). For example, improving a better communication climate (Smidts et al., 2001) and promoting equitable job conditions, like reducing short-term contracts (Johnson and Ashforth, 2008), or adopting the 5R program (Haslam et al., 2017) to foster stronger organizational and team identities, can help leaders and practitioners to reduce ambivalence toward the organization and its negative effects.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the author, without undue reservation.

All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee (Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome) and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

VC: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.