Effect of Organizational Justice on Counterproductive Work Behaviour in Nigerian Deposit Money Banks

This study investigates the effect of organizational justice perceptions on counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) in Nigerian deposit money banks, drawing data from staff in selected banks across Kaduna and Kano States, North West Nigeria. Counterproductive work behaviours, including fraud, sabotage, insubordination, and deliberate underperformance, pose severe operational and reputational risks to banking institutions, yet their organizational justice antecedents remain inadequately examined in the Nigerian banking literature. A professional research design was employed, with data obtained from 85 bank employees and HR officers through the Organizational Justice Scale and the CWB Checklist. Colquitt's Four-Dimensional Organizational Justice Framework and Spector and Fox's CWB Model provide the theoretical grounding. Findings reveal that perceptions of distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice are each independently and negatively correlated with CWB engagement, with interpersonal justice showing the strongest effect. Employees who perceive their supervisors as disrespectful and uninformative are significantly more likely to engage in interpersonally directed CWB such as gossiping, withholding information, and deliberate task delays. The study further finds that junior employees and those who have been passed over for promotion report the highest CWB incidence rates. Recommendations include mandatory supervisory training in interpersonal justice practices, transparent promotion criteria, structured complaint review procedures, and inclusion of CWB indicators in HR risk management dashboards. This study contributes to organizational behaviour literature in Nigeria's financial services sector. Keywords: organizational justice, counterproductive work behaviour, deposit money banks, CWB, Nigeria