Eric Lambert

• Wayne State University

Organizational justice refers to the view that the employing organization treats employees in a fair and just manner. There are different schools of thought regarding the number of dimensions that compose organizational justice, but the current study included four: informational, interactional, procedural, and distributive. Organizational trust ref...

Research on how different workplace variables relate to perceptions of organizational justice for police officers is almost absent from the literature. To fill this void, the current study examined the impact of input into decision-making, formalization, instrumental communication, and organizational support on the distributive and procedural justi...

The current study used the job demands–resources model and survey data from prison officers in India in order to examine how workplace variables are associated with three job burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced sense of work accomplishment. Job demands make the job more difficult and are generally linked to ne...

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) refer to going above and beyond what is expected at work; they are important for the improved functioning of many organizations, including institutional corrections. Trust in supervisors and trust in management may be related to institutional correctional staff engaging in OCBs. The current study examined...

Prison officers have a demanding job and are at risk of burnout. The literature indicates that workplace variables are related to burnout, but there are gaps in the literature that need to be addressed, including the need for additional research on the association of organizational justice with officer burnout. Organizational justice theory holds t...

This study surveyed 322 officers at two prisons in China to investigate the influence of job demands (i.e., role overload and routinization), job resources (i.e., training, job autonomy, instrumental communication, and supervision), and demographic characteristics on workplace fear of victimization. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis...

Research examining organizational justice’s effects on correctional staff shows that it has significant effects on various outcomes, such as job stress, job burnout, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and life satisfaction; however, little research examines how workplace variables influence perceptions of organizational justice. Procedura...

For prisons and jails to run effectively and efficiently, correctional officers need to follow institutional policies and rules. Failure to follow the rules could lead to deviant acts of officer-on-inmate brutality, inappropriate staff-inmate relationships, as well as a variety of other unprofessional behaviors that could undermine the prison regim...

Drawing from organizational justice theory, this study examined the mediating effects of organizational trust on the association between organizational justice (i.e. in the forms of distributive and procedural justice) and the job attitudes of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in a sample of 220 correctional staff employed full-time at...

Burnout is a phenomenon commonly found in the workplace. When burnout is job-related, it is considered job burnout. Historically, job burnout has been most common among those who work in human services fields and who deal with stressful situations on a regular basis. Job burnout consists of three components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization,...

This study examined the influence of job demands (role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload and dangerousness) and job resources (job variety, supervisor structure and training views) on employee perceptions of procedural justice, general perceptions of distributive justice, and specific perceptions of distributive justice. Using a sample of 160...

The concept of organizational justice refers to employee perceptions about whether the employing organization treats workers in a fair and just manner. Policing research has shown that officers’ organizational justice views are associated with various salient outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and misconduct). No research...

Purpose Police officers' attitudes toward their employing organizations are impacted by officers' perceptions of justice within the organization itself, and these perceptions can affect the bond that officers form with their organization. The current study explored how perceptions of three dimensions of organizational justice (i.e. interpersonal, p...

In this study, data were used from 322 employees at a large medium- and maximum-security prison in the Southern United States to examine the influence of job demands (dangerousness of the job, role overload, role ambiguity) and job resources (employee input into decision-making, instrumental communication, job variety) on employee job involvement....

The primary purpose of the current study was to assess the role of organizational justice in understanding prison staff job stress. Specifically, the authors surveyed 322 correctional employees across two prisons located in Guangzhou, China to explore the effects of distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice on work stress....

Most employees, including prison employees, want their employers to treat them fairly. Distributive justice (perceived fairness of outcomes) and procedural justice (perceived fairness of processes and procedures) are important dimensions of organisational justice. Limited research among correctional staff in the US suggests that views of distributi...

The job satisfaction of staff is vital for the effective functioning of any organization. Many studies have been conducted that examine the job satisfaction of correctional officers, though mostly in Western nations. To examine job satisfaction in a cross-cultural setting, this study uses survey data from a sample of 163 correctional officers in a...

Private prison staff are a valuable resource, and they can be affected by various workplace variables. The effects of organizational justice on counterproductive staff behaviors in a sample of correctional staff at a private prison were examined using organizational-justice theory. Specifically, the association of distributive and procedural justic...

Correctional officers are a valuable and expensive resource for prisons. Working as a correctional officer is a unique experience; it involves controlling incarcerated individuals, and this results in demands that can wear on officers, increasing chances of suffering depression. Social support has been postulated to help buffer the negative effects...

Many correctional officers who work in close proximity with inmates are at a heightened risk of experiencing feelings of psychological distress. We analyzed 501 surveys collected from correctional officers within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to identify characteristics of officers who are likely to exhibit signs of depression. Our findi...

The bulk of the limited research on prison staff life satisfaction has been conducted in Western nations, particularly in the U.S., and only two studies have explored the relationship between organizational justice and life satisfaction, both of which only examined two of the four dimensions of justice. The current study investigated how all four d...

Correctional institutions are manpower-intensive organizations, and organizational commitment is important for their successful functioning. This study uses the job demands model to examine effect of workplace variables on organizational commitment. Using a sample of 163 correctional officers from a prison in Haryana State, India, we find that job...

Public trust in the police is an important element of a healthy democracy. Concurrently, trust within the workplace is essential for a healthy organization, including the police. The main forms of organizational trust are management, supervisor, and coworker trust. However, there has been little research on how organizational trust affects police o...

Prison officers not only affect prison operations, but correctional workplace variables also have effects on officers. Most of the past empirical research on this topic has focused on officers working in Western prisons. This study used the job demands–resources model to examine the effects of workplace variables in terms of job demands (e.g., perc...

Using the job demands–resources model, the association of job demands (dangerousness, role underload, role overload, role ambiguity, and role conflict) and job resources (instrumental communication, formalization, input into decision-making, views on training, and job autonomy) with the burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization,...

Voluntary correctional officer turnover can have devastating effects. Turnover intent is usually the last stage before actual voluntary turnover. Building upon past research, the current study examined the effects of work-family conflict and job burnout on the turnover intent of officers, while testing to see if these effects were moderated by job...

The current study explored the effects of coworker, supervisor, and management trust on the job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment of Nigerian prison staff working in a prison in southeast Nigeria. In multivariate regression, only management trust was a significant positive predictor of job involvement. Supervisor and mana...

Trust is an essential component of effective organizations and may be especially important in corrections because of the unique challenges this work environment presents. In corrections, trust in both supervisors and the administration is critical to ensuring the safety and security of staff, inmates, and the community. Previous research has reveal...

Appropriate supervision strategies are the backbone of community corrections. The success of community supervision is dependent upon the attitudes of both officers and offenders. Despite this, research on offenders’ attitudes toward community corrections supervision is surprisingly very limited. The current study investigated attitudes of officers...

When Boko Haram insurgents attacked the United Nations Headquarters in Abuja on August 26, 2009, Nigerians’ reactions were similar to U.S. reactions to al-Qaida’s September 11, 2001 attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon. The aftermaths of these terrorist incidents caused the governments of both countries to devote enormous resources to their c...

Research examining the effect of organizational justice on the correctional environment is typically limited to its consequences on various outcomes. Absent from this body of literature is how perceptions of organizational justice are formed among correctional staff. Filling this void and using data from a Midwestern correctional facility, the curr...

Only one study among U.S. prison staff has explored the effects of work–family conflict and job burnout. To replicate the research to determine whether the results vary by nation, this study examined the effects of four types of work–family conflict (strain-based, time-based, behavior-based and family-based conflict) on three dimensions of job burn...

Organizational trust includes both supervisor trust and management trust. Additionally, the three main work attitudes are job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The objective of this study was to explore the effects of the two types of trust on the three work attitudes with data from a survey of 255 U.S. social workers. I...

Trust is a vital part of society and is critical for organizations. The main forms of organizational trust are management trust, supervisor trust, and coworker trust, each of which allows organizations to function and operate efficiently. This is particularly true for police agencies. Yet, few studies have examined how organizational trust affects...

Studies exploring how workplace factors contribute to job stress among police officers are not rare, but studies specifically examining how work–family conflict is associated with the job involvement and satisfaction of police officers are. In this study, data from 827 Indian police officers were used to examine the relationships of the four dimens...

Research examining correctional staff indicates that there are far-reaching negative consequences related to job burnout, including, but not limited to, diminished physical and mental health, increased risk of substance use, and decreased job performance. One area that may contribute to correctional staff job burnout is work–family conflict, which...

The bulk of correctional staff life satisfaction research has focused on staff in Western nations, particularly the United States. The current study examined how workplace variables are related to life satisfaction among Nigerian correctional staff, and it used the Job Demands-Resources Model as a theoretical framework. This model postulates that w...

Life satisfaction is a positive overall feeling towards one’s life and is an important factor for employees and their employers. There has been little research on life satisfaction of staff working at correctional institutions who play an important security role in the care, custody, and control of offenders. The current study explored how work env...

Views of organizational justice among correctional staff (i.e. whether they perceive that their employing organization treats them fairly) impact both staff and prisons. The two major dimensions of organizational justice are distributive justice (fairness of outcomes) and procedural justice (fairness of processes and procedures). Limited research a...

Life satisfaction is an important concept for both police and other law enforcement organizations. Past research on the spillover theory has found that higher life satisfaction results in better physical health, being more open-minded, improved effort, and longer life expectancy. The spillover theory holds what happens at work does not stay at work...

Prisons depend on their employees, and staffing a prison is expensive. Approximately 80% of a prison’s budget is for staff wages and benefits. Prisons are not generally viewed as desirable places to work, thus recruiting and retaining correctional officers can be difficult. Work-related stress can negatively affect staff members’ home lives, and ho...

Prison work is inherently demanding, stressful, and frustrating. The literature supports that work-family conflict (including time-, strain-, behaviour-, and family-based conflict) occurs among prison staff. The psychological strains emanating from these conflicts affect not only staff members’ work performance, but also their relationships with fa...

Private security staff play an important role in protecting society, including those who work in private prisons. Working in a private prison is a demanding job. Staff are responsible to ensure that the correctional facility is safe, secure, and humane. Past research has found that organizational trust, in terms of supervisor and management trust,...

Purpose Police organizations work better when officers feel satisfied with their jobs. High job satisfaction has been linked to positive outcomes for both officers and police organizations. Perceived fairness of transfers should be positively associated with job satisfaction. There has been little research in this area, and none of the limited past...

No corner of the world is completely safe from terrorist attacks. Both India and the United States have suffered horrific acts of terrorist-inspired violence. While views of terrorism vary for different reasons, culture certainly plays a role. A total of 918 undergraduate college students, composed of 434 Indian students and 484 U.S. students, were...

The current study explored how three key work environment variables – input into decision-making, instrumental communication, and perceived quality of supervision – affected views of distributive and procedural justice among correctional staff (n= 322) at an unusual Southern prison. Results supported the premise that work environment variables infl...

High job involvement has been shown to result in many favourable outcomes, including higher job satisfaction, increased work performance, and improved life satisfaction. Organisational justice, which includes the concepts of distributive and procedural justice, refers to the perception that the employing organisation treats employees in a fair and...

The current study sets out to examine the effects of job demands and job resources on the job involvement of Nigerian correctional services staff. Job demands make the job more difficult and reduce positive work outcomes such as job involvement. Job resources make the job more pleasant and aid employees in doing their work, leading to increases in...

Correctional staff are a necessary and valuable resource for correctional institutions, in both Western and Nonwestern nations; however, studies of correctional staff in Nonwestern nations, particularly those in Africa, are lacking. Improving the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of these staff are imperative, as both of these job atti...

Organizational justice is important for most employees. Distributive justice (fairness of outcomes) and procedural justice (fairness of processes to reach outcomes) are two major dimensions of organizational justice. Limited research has examined how perceptions of the distributive and the procedural types of justice are linked with job stress of c...

Staff are essential to running safe and humane correctional institutions. To this end, staff sometimes need to report coworker misconduct. Doing so requires a propensity to engage in whistleblowing, a topic that has received very little attention in the criminal justice literature. Using results from the Work Experiences Questionnaire (WEQ), an ins...

Staff are the most vital resource for any correctional facility. As corrections is a very expensive budget item in the U.S., finding and keeping dedicated employees is essential. Organizational commitment refers the bond between correctional staff and their institution. A strong bond is essential for the safety and security of both employees and in...

Understanding the factors that lead to correctional officer (CO) turnover intent is vital. Using a gendered career stage model, this study focused on male and female CO similarities and differences in workplace variable effects on turnover intent across career stages. The results indicated that organizational commitment was a consistent predictor o...

Police operate around the world. Police organizations are tasked with a wide variety of duties, and successful police organizations need committed officers. The three main forms of organizational commitment are affective, normative, and continuance commitment. This study examined the relationship of overall job satisfaction and facet job satisfacti...

Previous research indicates that job involvement among staff can result in positive outcomes for both the staff and the organization; however, there is little research on how workplace factors can shape and foster job involvement among correctional staff. The current study examines how organizational trust, specifically supervisor trust and adminis...

Considerable empirical research has shown that work–family conflict has a negative effect on the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of United States correctional staff. This study is the first to examine the effect of work–family conflict on job satisfaction and organizational commitment for staff at Chinese prisons. Findings from ordin...

Trust is crucial to the proper functioning of organizations. Trust has been examined at many levels, and researchers have recently expanded the study of trust to include areas ranging from the neuroscience of trust to the influence of institutional trust on product sales and marketing. While academic interest in trust has grown, research on trust a...

While the issue of trust is theoretically essential for the effective operation of correctional organizations, few researchers have examined how the different types of trust are related to salient outcomes for staff. In this study, we examined the effects of coworker, supervisor, and management trust on the job involvement, job satisfaction, and or...

Employees’ positive perceptions of organizational justice are crucial to the successful operation of correctional institutions. Employees who perceive their employer treats them justly and fairly report less job-related stress and happier home lives. Organizational justice has two primary components – procedural and distributive justice – that have...

In the United States, institutional corrections is a major undertaking that requires substantial financial resources. Correctional staff are the essential element to ensuring the safety and security of these institutions, which house approximately 2.2 million adults. Thus, it is invaluable to explore work environment variables that contribute to th...

Past research among U.S. correctional staff has found that work–family conflict has negative outcomes such as decreasing job satisfaction, decreasing organizational commitment, and increasing job stress. Little empirical research has addressed the association of the specific types of work–family conflict with job involvement. The present study cont...

In private correctional institutions, staff are an important resource, since they are tasked with a myriad of duties necessary to operate a humane, safe, and secure facility. As political demands for budgetary restraint increase, it is paramount that administrators find and retain good staff. Staff retention is influenced by workplace factors. This...

Organisational commitment is an important concept in the field of corrections. The current study examined how workplace variables affected commitment among Nigerian correctional staff and compared the results to the findings of past studies of U.S. correctional staff. Specifically, the effects of the workplace variables of input into decision-makin...

Research on victimization has progressed dramatically over the last four decades. This research has identified important individual and contextual predictors of both fear and perceived risk. Nevertheless, few studies have examined perceptions of safety among corrections employees. The current study used data from 322 correctional staff working at a...

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) have been the subject of considerable research attention within business organizations. Much less attention has been directed at OCBs within criminal justice agencies, and even less research has addressed OCBs within police organizations. The present study uses survey data collected from 829 police office...

Policing is a stressful occupation that may give rise to work–family conflict (WFC). WFC arises when the work domain encroaches into the family domain, or vice versa, causing officers to become less attached to their job and the police organization. Using survey data collected from a sample of police officers in India, we examined the relationship...

Job stress has many negative effects on correctional staff. We proposed and tested a path model of transactional, procedural, and distributive justice’s direct and indirect effects on the job stress of 322 surveyed correctional staff, including 219 correctional officers, at a maximum security Southern prison. Findings indicated that procedural, dis...

There is a growing body of research that has explored how workplace factors affect prison staff, although empirical research specifically aimed at how organizational justice affects correctional job involvement is lacking. This study examined how organizational justice’s two primary dimensions of distributive justice and procedural justice were ass...

Job stress is a problem in corrections. Although the very nature of correctional work is stressful, workplace variables also contribute to correctional staff job stress. The job demands-resource model holds that job demands increase negative outcomes (e.g., job stress) and decrease positive outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction), whereas job resources h...

Correctional staff are expensive, and they perform the most critical and central duty within the facility: the care and custody of inmates. Improving the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of staff is important, as they have been linked to many salient positive outcomes. We explored whether the job satisfaction and organizational commit...

While there are different approaches to dealing with offenders sentenced to community corrections, the three major ones are law enforcement (surveillance), therapeutic (rehabilitation), and crime opportunity prevention. Using the study of U.S. community corrections staff by Miller as a guide, the current study examined the supervision strategy used...

Working in prisons is a demanding career. While a growing number of studies have explored the predictors of job stress, job involvement, and job satisfaction, very few studies have examined how job stress, job involvement, and job satisfaction effect prison staff life satisfaction. Moreover, past studies on prison staff life satisfaction have all b...

Role strain has many negative outcomes. While the majority of role strain research has focused on its effects, this study explored possible antecedents of role strain among staff at a large, urban Southern jail in the United States. Based on regression analysis of survey data, instrumental communication, views that policy is followed, input into de...

Staff are critical for the proper functioning of a prison; empirical research into the forces that affect salient organizational attitudes of staff, such as organizational commitment, is equally important. A survey instrument measuring affective commitment and personal (i.e. gender, tenure, age, and educational level), job (i.e. perceived dangerous...

While both forms of organizational justice are important, the empirical literature indicates that procedural justice generally has wider and greater effects on job attitudes compared with distributive justice. Regression analysis of self-reported survey data from 322 staff at two Chinese prisons in Guangzhou suggests that, while both forms of organ...

Staff are an obvious and important resource for correctional organizations across the globe. One important area that concerns staff is job involvement (i.e., the psychosocial bonds between staff members and their jobs). The majority of the limited research on how work environment factors affect correctional personnel has examined U.S. staff. To fil...

Job satisfaction has been linked to many positive outcomes, such as greater work performance, increased organizational commitment, reduced job burnout, decreased absenteeism, and lower turnover intent/turnover. A substantial body of research has examined how work environment variables are linked to job satisfaction among U.S. correctional staff; fa...

China’s current Criminal Law has 46 death-eligible offenses, and China executes more people than any other country in the world. However, there is a lack of study of attitudes toward capital punishment for specific offenses, and no death penalty view comparison between college students and regular citizens in China was found. This study was taken t...

Life satisfaction is an important concept for both workers and employing organizations. Past research on the spillover theory has found that higher life satisfaction results in lower absenteeism and turnover/turnover intent, higher job performance, and better mental and physical health. The current study examined how job variables (i.e., job stress...

Working in law enforcement can be a trying experience that can result in work-family conflict. Work-family conflict occurs when the domains of work and home spill into one another, causing strain and conflict for a person. There are four major dimensions of work-family conflict: time-based, behaviour-based, strain-based and family-based. One conseq...

Correctional staff job satisfaction is critical for the staff’s well-being and low turnover. This study’s focus was identifying variables that predicted job satisfaction for Nigerian correctional staff and comparing the findings to past studies of US correctional staff job satisfaction. One hundred and twenty correctional staff from Nigeria were su...

Job stress is the psychological tension, distress, and anxiety caused by stressors at work, and job stress is linked to numerous negative outcomes. While the nature of working with inmates can cause stress, work environment variables also contribute to the job stress of prison staff. The current study used the job demands-resource model as a theore...

The job characteristics model was used to explain job satisfaction at a large southern prison. The effects of job variety, role clarity, views of supervision, views of training, perceived dangerousness of the job, and job autonomy on job satisfaction were studied. Using data from 322 staff members, the study found positive job characteristics (i.e....

Staff perform myriad tasks to help ensure a safe, secure, and humane correctional facility. Correctional staff face many challenges when working in institutional corrections. One of these challenges is job stress, which is defined as feeling psychologically distressed or strained due to work demands or stressors. The job demands-resources model pro...

There has been limited research on the correlates of organizational commitment among community correctional staff, regardless of the nation. Using data from 225 community correction officers from Hubei, China, this study examined community correctional staff commitment to their agencies and its predictors. The study found the majority of the respon...