Organizational justice, employees' ethical behavior, and job satisfaction in the casino industry

Downloads: The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 1967 times since 2010 DOI (Permanent URL): 10.1108/09596111011066644 Article citation: Shiang-Lih Chen McCain, Henry Tsai, Nicholas Bellino, (2010) "Organizational justice, employees' ethical behavior, and job satisfaction in the casino industry", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 22 Iss: 7, pp.992 - 1009

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The Authors
Shiang-Lih Chen McCain, School of Hospitality Management, Widener University, Chester, Pennsylvania, USA Henry Tsai, School of Hotel & Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong Nicholas Bellino, Hospitality Management Program, School of Family and Consumer Studies, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA

Abstract
Purpose The paper aims to examine the antecedents and consequence of casino employees' ethical behavior. In particular, it proposes that both distributive and procedural justice have positive influences on such behavior, which in turn positively affects workers' job satisfaction. The paper aims to help casino management pinpoint areas for enhancing and promoting employees' ethical behavior so as to benefit industry stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was designed based on a literature review and preliminary conversations with 37 casino employees. These were distributed to frontline casino employees working in the slot and table games departments. Exploratory factor analysis and path analysis were employed to test the proposed model. Findings The paper shows that casino employees' ethical behavior was positively influenced by both procedural and distributive justice, with the former a slightly stronger motivator. Of the three

proposed determinants of casino employees' job satisfaction, distributive justice had the most strongly positive effect. Practical implications This paper suggests that action could be taken by management to enhance employees' perception of both distributive and procedural justice to motivate ethical behavior. Furthermore, casino managers should be aware that distributive justice plays a more important role than procedural justice and ethical behavior in enhancing casino employees' job satisfaction. In making decisions, they should consider outcome fairness to demonstrate distributive justice. Originality/value Currently, to the best of the authours' knowledge, there is no study linking both distributive and procedural justice with employees' ethical behavior and job satisfaction within a single framework. In addition, there is no research evaluating how organizational justice influences employees' ethical behavior when interacting with customers. This paper fills this gap.

Article Type:
Research paper

Keyword(s):
Casinos; Ethics; Employee behaviour; Job satisfaction.

Journal:
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

Volume:
22

Number:
7

Year:
2010

pp:
992-1009

Copyright
Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:

0959-6119 Introduction Ethics has become one of the most significant issues facing today's corporate world because of the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International scandals (Selvarajan, 2006; McDevitt et al., 2007). The hospitality industry, including casinos, also has to deal with ethical issues due to the nature of its business and the need for daily operations to include extensive cash transactions (Stevens, 2001). Large sums of cash and its equivalents flow across casino floors on a daily basis, and cash transactions occur not only among casino employees themselves but also between workers and customers. For example, a blackjack table with a $25 minimum bet is estimated to contain around $1,00,000 on the chip rack while in a $5,000 minimum bet table, the rack could contain an average of $10,00,000. The value of the chips on any one game table could be substantial even without including other transactions associated with it such as fills, credits, transfers, and so on. As far as the parties involved with cash or cash equivalents are concerned, chip purchase and redemption and front money deposits both involve cash transactions between employees and the customers, while fills and credits between game tables and the cashier window are transactions between casino employees. Frontline casino employees could be particularly vulnerable to ethical dilemmas because a majority of their income comes from tipping and the working environment includes the service and consumption of alcoholic beverages (Kincaid et al., 2007). In a casino environment, slot attendants, table game dealers, and cocktail servers all receive tips for services rendered. In the case of the latter, the more frequently alcoholic drinks are served to the players, the more tips the server might pocket. However, this action might lead to gamblers becoming intoxicated while they are playing. As Loucks (1987) points out, whether or not a company behaves ethically depends on its employees' ethical behavior. In the contemporary business world, ethics reflect the aggregation of individual employees' characters (Wiley, 1995). In a casino, it is frontline employees who interact most frequently with customers and so their actions could potentially have a significant impact on a firm's efforts to promote ethical behavior. Some forms of unethical behavior from employees could hurt not only casinos but also their customers. For instance, a blackjack game dealer may continue to deal cards to a customer who is visibly intoxicated, which may result in a short-term revenue increase for the casino. However, the customer may blame the casino for allowing them to continue gambling while intoxicated. Another example would be if a patron wins a taxable jackpot and the slot attendant fails to follow proper procedures in checking if he or she has all forms of proper identification. This scenario would also constitute a violation of the gaming regulations which could subsequently result in a fine for the casino. In addition, the casino industry has been associated with other ethical issues. One of the most commonly discussed such issues is pathological or problem gambling. Addiction to gambling can bring about negative consequences such as alcohol/drug dependency, job loss, bankruptcy, and even criminal prosecution. Casinos are regularly condemned for causing such consequences (National Gambling Impact Study Commission, 1999). The increasing pressure on casinos to operate their businesses in a socially responsible way can no longer be ignored. Thus, governments and the casino industry have been promoting responsible gaming to alleviate these negative impacts (Thompson, 2008; Callahan, 2008; Lam, 2008; McQueen and Doocey, n.d.). Guidelines for ethical behavior for casino operations are readily available. The American Gaming Association (2008) publishes the Code of Conduct for Responsible Gamingwhich pledges its affiliates to provide employees with appropriate education and training to improve their understanding of responsible gaming; to promote awareness of, and provide resources for, responsible gaming; to prevent underage gambling and the presence of unattended minors in casinos; to serve alcoholic beverages responsibly; to advertise responsibly; and to continue funding research on problem gaming. Since it is frontline employees who have most contact with customers, they are an essential element of making responsible gaming possible; so it is of the utmost importance that casino firms understand the determinants of ethical behavior in their employees, particularly in relation to responsible gaming practices. The purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate the antecedents which motivate casino employees' ethical behavior about responsible gaming and to explore the consequence of such behavior. In our model (Figure 1), we propose that casino employees' ethical behavior will be influenced by both distributive and procedural

justice. In addition, we examine job satisfaction as a consequence of ethical behavior. The results of this paper will provide essential information to casino management and employees enabling them to promote ethical behavior more effectively, benefiting not only the stakeholders in the gaming industry but also society as a whole. Literature review Ethical behavior Ethical behavior can generally be defined as a behavior that is considered right or wrong, and therefore directs what people should and should not do (Beauchamp and Bowie, 2000). As such, it is guided by rules, standards, codes, or principles which provide guidelines for morally right behavior and truthfulness in specific situations (Lewis, 1985, p. 381). Behavior is considered ethical when it generates more good than bad (Hunt and Vitell, 1986). An ethical person behaves with reference to certain moral principles such as fairness, justice and trust (Wiley, 1995, p. 22). In the business environment, ethical behavior can be described as fair and honest actions that enable the company to obtain customer satisfaction and develop a long-term relationship with its customers (Roman and Munuera, 2005, p. 474). Employees' individual characteristics and factors relevant to the organizational situation are believed to contribute to ethical behavior (Low et al., 2000; McClaren, 2000). Personal characteristics refer to an individual's knowledge, values, attitudes, intentions, moral character, and ethical sensitivity (Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; Hunt and Vitell, 1986). Organizational situation factors refer to a company's ethical climate, which relates to employees' perception of a company's current practices, procedure, norms, and values within an ethical context that provides cues about acceptable behaviors (Jaramillo et al., 2006, p. 272). In the same vein, organizational justice refers to how employees perceive organizational fairness in terms of outcomes and also the procedures and policies used to arrive at those outcomes (Greenberg, 1990b; Konovsky and Cropanzano, 1991; Moorman, 1991; Gilliland, 1994; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001; Baker et al., 2006; Johnson, 2007). As indicated by Schminke et al. (1997), the fundamental concept underpinning both ethics and organizational justice is fairness, which influences people's judgment about right and wrong. Ethics and organizational justice share common roots and patterns of development (Schminke et al., 1997, p. 1192). Employees' ethical behavior is influenced by whether or not the company's policies, procedures, and decision making are fair and just (Baker et al., 2006). An employee's experience of the company's fairness will have an impact on his or her ethical decision making. In other words, an employee's moral intent is shaped by his or her perception of the company's fairness (Johnson, 2007). In addition, according to Trevino and Weaver (2001), research on both organizational justice and ethics focus on similar behavioral outcomes. Surprisingly, however, organizational fairness, or justice, has not been included as an independent contextual variable in these studies (Trevino and Weaver, 2001, p. 652), although justice and fairness underlie ethical principles (Johnson, 2007, p. 9). Thus, Trevino and Weaver (2001) empirically investigate the relationship between general organizational fairness, ethical program follow-up, and employees' helpful or harmful behaviors. Johnson (2007) examines how organizational justice, moral ideology, and moral evaluation influence employees' moral intent. Both these studies measure employees' ethical behavior in terms of their attitudes and behavior in relation to the company, such as misuse of time spent on the job, concealing errors, and reporting partial truths to supervisors. They do not, however, examine employees' ethical behavior in dealing with customers, even though the concept should also apply to such interactions. As Schwepker and Good (2007) indicate, when employees behave ethically, they conduct their business with integrity and avoid deceptive and dishonest practices, and thus develop a mutually beneficial relationship with customers by following the company's code of ethics and committing to high moral standards in the treatment of customers. Therefore, in this paper, we measure casino employees' ethical behavior in relation to customers, using their implementation of responsible gaming as a proxy for this. Organizational justice Generally speaking, there are three types of organizational justice: distributive, procedural, and interactional. We do not evaluate the last of these in this paper, but it refers to the fairness of

managers' treatment of employees regarding organizational justice practices (Greenberg, 1987; Niehoff and Moorman, 1993). Perceived interactional justice depends on employees' reaction to the manner in which their direct supervisors carry out formal procedures (Greenberg, 1987). During the process of structuring the survey questionnaire, one of the authors conducted preliminary interviews with some casino employees, identified via personal communications. They said they would have difficulty in answering questions related to their supervisors' interpersonal behavior. On the casino floor, it is common for table game dealers to have a different direct supervisor every day. For instance, dealers are assigned to different types of games at different pits every day, so if one goes to pit one the first day and pit two on another day, his or her direct supervisor will most likely be different. A table game dealer can go to a different pit every day. Without having the same direct supervisor on a daily basis, the extent of the interactions between the dealers and their supervisors are not enough to enable the former to answer interactional justice questions, which focus particularly on the latter's interpersonal behavior. Distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of organizational outcomes (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001, p. 280); it evaluates employees' perceptions of whether or not outcomes are equitably distributed or comparable with their inputs (Gilliland, 1994). Examples of particular outcomes can be related to pay levels, promotion and rewards decisions, and quality and quantity of workload (Niehoff and Moorman, 1993; Walster et al., 1978). In the casino industry, some table game dealers might consider working in the high-limit game areas causes them additional stress because the minimum bets there are higher than those in the regular gaming floor. Additionally, in Atlantic City, there is a smoking ban across 75 percent of the gaming floor area. Some table game dealers might feel a sense of unfairness in terms of the quality of their workload if they are assigned to work in the smoking areas more often than their coworkers. Procedural justice refers to the fairness of the formal procedures of organizational decision making and how these are processed, such as the explanation of the procedures and the associated interpersonal treatment (Greenberg, 1990b; Niehoff and Moorman, 1993;Gilliland, 1994; Johnson, 2007). It has been found that employees perceive that there has been procedural justice when supervisors provide adequate explanations for their decisions (Greenberg, 1994). Furthermore, Leventhal (1980) sets out six essential rules for a fair procedure such as consistency and the objectivity of decision makers. Sometimes, casino management might make certain decisions without due concern for employees. For example, in 2006, New Jersey banned smoking in all public areas, but exempted 25 percent of the casino gaming floor with the intention of arriving at a 100 percent ban in 2008. However, casinos lobbied for this to be postponed for a further year, due to the bad economy and fierce competition. On November 27, 2008, the City Council voted to postpone the 100 percent smoking ban (Clark, 2008). It is understandable that Atlantic City casinos wish to keep their smoking areas in order to stay competitive. According to Tom Swoik, executive director of the Illinois Casino Gaming Association, who cites statistics from the casino smoking bans in Canada and Delaware, casinos' revenues drop when smoking is prohibited (Britt, 2009). Nevertheless, employees working in other public areas in New Jersey do not work in a second-hand smoke environment. From a micro perspective, it is possible that casino managers will make decisions without considering employees' concerns or opinions when, for example, they are re-mapping or re-gridding the casino floor (that is, breaking it up into sections for the slot attendants to work at). From one of the authors' personal experience in one Atlantic City casino, slot managers generally do not consult slot attendants on how they should arrange the machines on the casino floor or on what may be added or taken out of those sections, even though the attendants may have a better knowledge of such tasks. Employees' perceptions of fairness in organizations significantly influences their ethical behavior (Trevino and Weaver, 2001, p. 651). How employees perceive the overall fairness and justice of the organization determines their decisions about their relationships with it. Referring to the equity theory (Adams, 1963; Austin and Walster, 1974), employees will modify the quality or quantity of their work to restore justice. When employees perceive justice in the organization, they are less likely to seek opportunities to balance things out by increasing their own benefits at the company's expense (Trevino and Weaver, 2001). Additionally, when employees are treated fairly, they are more willing to subordinate their own short-term individual interests to the interests of a group or organization (Lind and Tyler, 1988, p. 191). Furthermore, in return for organizational justice, employees tend to behave more ethically so as to conform to the company's expectations. They are also motivated to be good organizational citizens and display helpful behavior. They reciprocate fair treatment by sharing full and

complete information to facilitate managers' decision making and also by reporting ethical problems and issues so as to help organizations prevent any violation of regulations or industrial standards. There is less unethical behavior among employees when they perceive there is organizational justice (Trevino and Weaver, 2001). On the other hand, when employees perceive unfairness in the organization, they tend to have negative attitudes toward the company and will thus act against it or even hurt it (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001). In such circumstances, employees might retaliate against unfairness with counterproductive behavior and withdrawal to redress the perceived injustice. Employees tend to behave unethically when they perceive that the company is treating them unfairly (Trevino and Weaver, 2001; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001). Some examples of such harmful and unethical behaviors are withholding important information, stealing from the company, and concealing errors (Trevino and Weaver, 2001). Thus, we propose that there is a positive and direct relationship between distributive justice, procedural justice, and ethical behavior. This leads to the following hypotheses: H1. There is a positive relationship between distributive justice and ethical behavior. H2. There is a positive relationship between procedural justice and ethical behavior. Job satisfaction Job satisfaction is a psychological work construct used when measuring employee fulfillment on the job (Hackman and Oldham, 1976).Spector (1997, p. 2) defines it as a global feeling about the job or as a related constellation of attitudes about various aspects or facets of the job. A number of factors could affect job satisfaction and in this paper, we examine it from the perspectives of ethical behavior, distributive justice, and procedural justice. Employees obtain job satisfaction through performing ethical behavior (Koh and Boo, 2001). As confirmed by Howe et al. (1994), customer-oriented employees are less likely to participate in unethical activity. In Heskett et al.'s (1994) study, a primary factor contributing to insurance agents' job satisfaction is how well they perceived themselves as being able to meet customer needs. In other words, when employees are more customer oriented, they tend to behave more ethically and this leads to higher job satisfaction (Roman and Munuera, 2005; Beatty et al., 1996). Based on the authors' own work experience and conversations with casino workers, behaving ethically is rewarding for employees. For example, some say that they have a sense of accomplishment when they identify underage or problem gamblers and prevent them from taking part in a game. This phenomenon might be explained by the concept of intrinsic satisfaction, which refers to the nature of a job and how people feel about the work they do. It includes the concepts of advancement, responsibility, recognition, achievement, and moral values and social service (Spector, 1997; Weiss et al., 1966). Hugick and Leonard (1991) show that 83 percent of Americans like their jobs because they can help others and do work that is important to society. Being able to fulfill the job requirements mandated by the casino and, in the meantime, being able to make ethical judgments which help customers and society in general will give employees job satisfaction (Chen McCain et al., 2009). Furthermore, organizational justice is a basic requirement for job satisfaction (Greenberg, 1990b). According to Greenberg (1990b), whether or not employees are satisfied with the company's system is determined by their perception of procedural justice, and whether or not they are satisfied with the outcome decided on by the company is determined by distributive justice. Previous studies show a positive relationship between organizational justice and job satisfaction. A high level of perceived justice leads to job satisfaction; on the other hand, a low-level results in the reverse (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001; Moorman, 1991; Folger and Konovsky, 1989). According to Moorman (1991, p. 845), when employees perceive the organization as just, they generate positive attitudes about their work, their work outcomes, and their supervisors. Hence, we propose three additional hypotheses of this paper as follows: H3. There is a positive relationship between ethical behavior and job satisfaction.

H4. There is a positive relationship between distributive justice and job satisfaction. H5. There is a positive relationship between procedural justice and job satisfaction. The proposed model is shown in Figure 1. Methodology Data collection In order to test the proposed model, a questionnaire was developed based on a literature review and the authors' preliminary interviews with 37 casino employees. The final survey was then revised based on problems identified in a pretest and approved by a general manager at the east coast casino that hosted the study. This helped to ensure the questions truly reflected the constructs to be investigated. A total of 500 surveys were distributed to employees in the slot and table game departments during the buzz session before a shift. Some employees filled them out during the session and others returned their surveys to the authors later via a designated casino employee. Before the employees filled out the survey, they were given a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study. It assured respondents that the survey was not being conducted by the casino, but by university professors, to reassure them as to the confidentiality of the information. Measurement All the model constructs were measured by multiple items on a six-point Likert-type scale (from 1= strongly disagree to 6= strongly agree). The results of a previous study conducted by the authors using a seven-point Likert-type scale with 4 as a neutral point suggested that casino employees tended to provide a neutral answer. According to Malhotra (2007), when researchers do not want neutral or indifferent responses, they should use an even number of categories to force a response. In this paper, distributive and procedural justices were each measured by nine items adopted from previous studies (Baker et al., 2006;Niehoff and Moorman, 1993). Sample questions covering distributive justice were: I consider my work load is fair; I consider my job responsibility is fair. Sample questions for procedural justice were: My supervisors make sure that all employees' concerns are heard before job decisions are made; My supervisor clarifies decisions and provides additional information when requested by employees. Ethical behavior was measured by the implementation of responsible gaming practices. Five questions generated from the participating casino's Responsible Gaming Guidebook were used to measure this construct. Sample questions were: I ask for proper identification from customers if they appear to be underage; I notify a supervisor if a guest has exceeded their credit limit. Job satisfaction was measured by four questions adapted from Spector (1985) and Roman and Munuera (2005). Sample questions were: I am satisfied with my job; I am satisfied with the kind of job activities I perform. Data analysis Since the measurements in this paper had been adapted from instruments previously designed for study in other fields, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to generate the uncorrelated combination which most closely resembled each construct. Principal component analysis with varimax rotations was used to extract the factors. A value of 0.40 was used as the cut-off for inclusion of the items in the construct. The reliability of the measurement was assessed using Cronbach's alpha. Convergent and discriminant validities were assessed using heterotitrait-monomethod matrices, in which within-item and between-item correlations were calculated for comparison. The within-item correlation is an average of the correlations of all items used in the same construct, whereas the between-item correlation is an average of the correlations among each item used in different constructs. When the former exceeds the latter, the measurement is deemed to possess satisfactory convergent and discriminant validities (Campbell and Fiske, 1959). Path analysis was used to examine the proposed relationships as it allows simultaneous evaluation of the variables in the structural model. Two features may be noted from a path analysis. First, the

exogenous variables in our paper, including distributive and procedural justice, are those not influenced by others in the model. Endogenous variables, on the other hand, are those influenced by exogenous and/or other endogenous variables. In our paper, ethical behavior is both exogenous and endogenous and job satisfaction is the ultimate endogenous variable. Second, the correlations between variables are decomposed into direct (simple) and indirect (compound) effects. Direct effects in recursive path models are estimated by partial regression coefficients and the indirect effect of each variable is the sum of the products of the direct path coefficients from an exogenous variable, through intervening variables, to an endogenous variable. The total effect of a variable is therefore the sum of the direct effects measured by the simple path and the indirect effects measured by the compound path (Wolfle and Ethington, 1985; Duncan, 1985; Davis, 1985; Asher, 1983). In our paper, the path analysis was employed on the full model. Each endogenous variable was regressed by the preceding variables in the model and the direct and indirect effects of one variable on the others were estimated. Results and discussion Demographic profile A total of 250 valid surveys were obtained. The respondents were mostly frontline employees, including table game dealers (49.6 percent) and slot attendants (28 percent), followed by slot supervisors (11.6 percent) and table game supervisors (10.8 percent). In terms of casino work experience, the sample was reasonably balanced, with 30 percent having five years or less, 36.4 percent of them more than five but less than 11 years, and the remainder more than 11 years. More than half (52.6 percent) of the respondents were male and 47.4 percent were female. Fewer than 9 percent of the respondents were in the age group 21-30, followed by 44.8 percent in the age group 3140, 38.4 percent aged 41-50, and the last 8 percent older than 51. Principal component analysis Table I shows the results of the factor analysis. It extracted two factors with an eigenvalue of greater than 1 and in total explained 69.83 percent of the variance. The two factors are theoretically reasonable. The standardized component scores were computed and saved for each respondent to be utilized in multiple regression analysis. Reliability and validity Table II summarizes the statistics related to the reliability and validity of the constructs in the proposed model. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.783 to 0.853, all being higher than 0.7, indicating that the factors extracted possessed an acceptable level of reliability (Malhotra, 2007). In addition, all of the correlations between items within the same construct were higher than the correlations between items belonging to different constructs. Overall, this paper demonstrated acceptable convergent and discriminant validity. Testing the model Before applying the path analysis, the assumptions of multiple regressions were evaluated. According to Dielman (1996), the four major assumptions for linear regressions are: the relationship is linear, the disturbances have constant variances, the disturbances are independent, and the disturbances are normally distributed. P-P plots were constructed to evaluate the linearity and disturbance assumptions and a Durbin-Watson test was used to examine the existence of a serious autocorrelation problem (Dielman, 1996). The multicollinearity assumption was examined by the variance inflation factor. No serious violation of assumptions was present. Table III shows the results of the path analysis. All five hypotheses were supported. The distributive (=0.401, <0.01) and procedural justice (=0.411, <0.01) constructs were found to have direct and positive effects on ethical behavior, which in turn was determined to positively influence job

satisfaction (=0.084, <0.1). Furthermore, the distributive (=0.539, <0.01) and procedural justice (=0.512,<0.01) constructs themselves also had direct and positive effects on job satisfaction. The direct effect of procedural justice (=0.411) on ethical behavior was slightly greater than that of distributive justice ( =0.401). Compared with both distributive (=0.539) and procedural justice (=0.512), employees' ethical behavior had the least direct effect (0.084) on job satisfaction at the 0.1 significance level. The results reveal that procedural justice is more important than distributive in determining casino employees' ethical behavior, while distributive justice is a more significant determinant of job satisfaction than procedural, both in terms of the direct and total effect. The tested model is shown in Figure 2. Discussion Previous studies show that organizational justice has a positive impact on employees' ethical behavior in relation to their companies (Trevino and Weaver, 2001; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001). The results of this paper indicate that casino employees perceive both distributive and procedural justice as important factors motivating them to act in an ethical manner when interacting with customers. While casino management should take action to enhance employees' perceptions of both types of justice in order to promote ethical behavior, more emphasis should probably be given to procedural justice given its slightly higher direct effect. Compared to distributive justice, the procedural form is considered to be a better predictor of employees' evaluation of the character of the organization (Sweeney and McFarlin, 1993, p. 37). When employees perceive procedural injustice to be present, they will generate negative emotions about the organization, which leads to less motivation to work in its favor and possibly to counterproductive work behavior and withdrawal (Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001). Cohen-Charash and Spector's (2001) study shows that procedural justice has the strongest predictive power for both job performance and counterproductive behavior. The higher the perceived sense of procedural justice, the more likely casino employees will behave ethically. Employees need to feel that the organization treats them fairly so that they will display ethical behavior following the cultural norms of the workplace. If employees feel that their managers and supervisors treat them fairly and ethically, they will reciprocate by their job performance. They will treat guests, supervisors and one another in a positive and ethical manner. As pointed out by Greenberg (1990b), Niehoff and Moorman (1993) and Johnson (2007), procedural justice focuses on the fairness of formal procedures in organizational decision making and how these are processed. In the casino industry, decisions made in daily operations vary, from issues as small as opening additional game tables during peak hours to large staffing issues concerning early-outs and overtime; important decisions could involve policies about performance appraisals and rewards. It is very important for casino managers to provide clear explanations of their decisions. For instance, in some casinos in Atlantic City, dealers and slot attendants receive a bonus if their performance evaluation is favorable. Therefore, it is critical for managers to explain to all the employees how the bonus will be allocated and what criteria will be used in the qualifying performance evaluation. Similarly, the criteria for obtaining a pay raise should be made transparent to all employees. As mentioned, due to the daily rotation of working areas for table game dealers and floor persons, table game dealers can have a different direct supervisor every day; therefore, interactions between dealers and supervisors are not very intensive. Without a regular supervisor, it is difficult for dealers to come to a good understanding of a casino's decisions. It is also not an easy task for them to find a channel to express their feelings and concerns. Casino managers should consider the possibility of setting up a stable direct supervisor for dealers to facilitate communication and interaction. From a macro perspective, when the Atlantic City casinos lobbied to postpone the smoking ban on the gaming floor, casino managers explicitly pursued a policy which did not consider employees' concerns about second-hand smoke. Casino managers should address this issue with employees by explaining the rationale behind the company's decision and providing evidence of the negative economic consequences of bans from casinos in states where a full smoking ban has been introduced. Another example is the situation where many employees were either laid off or transferred from full- to parttime posts after the 9/11 tragedy in 2001, while senior executives continued to receive huge bonuses (Smith, 2002). It is clear that there are sometimes inherent conflicts between a company's objectives and employees' concerns. Casino managers should communicate with employees more effectively by providing detailed explanations of relevant matters so as to alleviate the negative emotions generated

by procedural unfairness. As Greenberg (1988)indicates, employees are more likely to perceive supervisors as fair and just when they communicate and interact with employees in a fair manner. Greenberg (1990a) also shows that employees' theft rate increases when there is a pay cut; however, the threat of stealing can be minimized if supervisors provide comprehensive and empathetic explanations. It is therefore important for casino managers not only to involve employees in the decision-making process, but also to make sure that their voices are heard and taken into due consideration by the management before a final decision is made. Even if that decision conflicts with employees' desires, managers should at least provide explanations of the rationale and try to offer their staff some alternatives. Distributive justice has the greatest impact on employees' job satisfaction. It predicts a person's evaluation of outcomes on a personal level (Sweeney and McFarlin, 1993; Folger and Konovsky, 1989; Austin and Walster, 1974). In the casino context, distributive justice can be realized and perceived by employees in a number of ways, such as a fair work schedule and workload, a fair level of pay that reflects job duties, and fair distribution of rewards. It is critical for casino management to make sure that employees across the board receive fair treatment. For example, on the gaming floor at one Atlantic City casino, most table dealers get their work schedule two weeks in advance. Basically, employees have the same number of days off and the same shifts every working day, or they can choose to rotate days off. However, the start time of a shift is not necessarily the same every day and can vary by 4 hours within a given week. Furthermore, frontline employees might consider that working in an area which allows smoking, has a high-limit game, and is high traffic gives them an extra-heavy load and increased responsibility. Casino managers might consider restructuring employees' schedule to maximize the consistency of the start time of employees' shifts each day. In addition, casino managers could institute a system to rotate employees fairly around smoking and non-smoking areas, high-limit game areas and regular gaming floors, and high and slow traffic areas. Moreover, most of the employees' income is generated from tips. For instance, most dealers make a minimum hourly wage plus a toke rate, which is a tip average for every dealer. Therefore, it is very important for schedulers to have sufficient dealers to handle the customers, but not so many as to dilute the tip amount per dealer. Maximizing the consistency and equity of workload, responsibility, pay, and reward may enhance employees' perceptions of distributive justice. Furthermore, this paper also confirms Koh and Boo's (2001) finding that employees obtain job satisfaction through behaving ethically. Practicing responsible gaming and treating customers in a fair and honest manner enhances employees' job satisfaction. When making decisions on, for example, company policy, marketing and promotions, and player development so as to enhance the casino's bottom-line profit, casino management should keep in mind that these decisions should not contradict employees' ethical beliefs. Knowingly instructing a casino marketing representative, or a casino host, to continue inviting or even luring identified problem gamblers back to the casino and issuing them with markers not only directs employees to commit unethical behavior, hence reducing job satisfaction, but may also lead to serious consequences for the casino such as a lawsuit (Casino Update, 2008). Conclusion The majority of existing research in this area has examined the relationship between organizational justice and particular outcomes including organizational commitment, trust, job satisfaction, work performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors (Baker et al., 2006; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001; Tang and Sarsfield-Baldwin, 1996; Sweeney and McFarlin, 1993; Moorman, 1991). However, there is a lack of research evaluating the relationship between organizational justice and ethical behavior (Trevino and Weaver, 2001;Johnson, 2007). In particular, no research has been done to evaluate how organizational justice influences employees' ethical behavior in relation to customers. In this paper, we have empirically examined a framework which includes organizational justice as an independent variable influencing employees' ethical behavior in relation to customers. It therefore contributes to the existing organizational justice research which examines ethical behavior solely in terms of employees' attitudes toward companies rather than customers. We have shown that casino employees' ethical behavior is motivated by both distributive and procedural justice, with the latter having a slightly stronger effect. These results confirm that perceived organizational justice does indeed predict employees' ethical behavior. In addition, as indicated by Baker et al. (2006), many

studies have identified the determinants of ethical behavior rather than its consequences. Our study has shown that ethical behavior is a predictor of job satisfaction for casino employees. From a practical standpoint, the results of this paper indicate a positive relationship between organizational justice and ethical behavior. Casino managers should pay extra attention to this since unethical behavior by frontline employees might result in violations of gaming regulations or possible lawsuits from problem gamblers. In addition, society currently pressures the casino industry to behave in a socially responsible manner. In order to respond to these expectations, casino managers should promote ethical behavior by treating their employees fairly and justly. The paper has several limitations and therefore we also give some suggestions for future research. First, this paper, in common with some previous studies of ethical behavior and organizational justice, did not control for social desirability and asked respondents to report their own ethical behavior (Roman and Munuera, 2005; Baker et al., 2006). On the other hand, some researchers consider ethical behavior to be sensitive self-reported information, and thus have asked respondents to put themselves in the position of the third person when answering questions or alternatively to report how often they have observed unethical behavior in their workplace instead of reporting their own actions (Trevino and Weaver, 2001; Johnson, 2007). Our study did not control for social desirability and thus the results should be interpreted with caution. Future research should take this into account, for example, by applying the social desirability scale and asking respondents to be observers of ethical behavior. Second, the data in this research were collected from only one casino and the examples and information used came from the authors' own personal experience or communication with casino workers. Owing to the nature of convenience sampling, this paper represents only some incidents in some casinos and cannot be generalized to the entire casino industry. Future research should collect data from multiple casinos to obtain a broader perspective. Third, because the casino industry is highly regulated with strict gaming regulations and controls, employees' unethical behavior might result in violations of the codes. Future research should develop measurements which can more precisely reflect the nature of ethical behavior in casino settings by taking into account the impact of government regulations. Fourth, the data analyzed in this paper were collected from only frontline employees (that is, table game dealers). However, the behavior of backoffice employees (such as those in the marketing and credit departments) also impacts on daily operations and customer relationships. Future research should collect data from all gaming employees. Fifth, interactional justice, an important dimension in organizational justice, was not evaluated in this paper due to the fact that the majority of respondents did not have the same direct supervisor every day. Further research might explore whether there is any alternative method to examine the role of interactional justice in influencing employees' ethical behavior on the casino floor. Lastly, since casino employees' ethical behavior could possibly influence stakeholders in the casino industry, future research should evaluate various stakeholders' perception of casino employees' ethical behavior and the possible consequences. The results could assist casino management's efforts in promoting ethical behavior and also benefit stakeholders.

Figure 1Proposed model

Figure 2Antecedents and consequence of ethical behavior

Table IResults of principal component analysis

Table IISummary statistics of the reliability and validity of the constructs

Table IIIResults of path analysis for the proposed model

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Further Reading
Ferrell, O.C., Skinner, S.J. (1988), "Ethical behavior and bureaucratic structure in marketing research organizations", Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 25 No.1, pp.103-9. [Manual request] [Infotrieve]

Corresponding author
Henry Tsai can be contacted at: hmhtsai@polyu.edu.h