The Effect of Organisational Justice on Employee Deviant Behaviour in the Nigerian Retail Sector: A Study of Shoprite Nigeria

This study investigates the effect of organisational justice perceptions on employee deviant behaviour at Shoprite Nigeria, one of the country's largest retail chains, with stores spread across major cities including Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt. Workplace deviance, encompassing behaviours such as theft, sabotage, and interpersonal aggression, poses significant operational and reputational risks to retail organisations. The study employs a survey design, with 165 Shoprite employees drawn from stores in Lagos and Abuja selected through convenience sampling. A validated Organisational Justice Scale and the Workplace Deviance Scale are the primary instruments. The study is anchored on Greenberg's Organisational Justice Theory, which differentiates distributive, procedural, and interactional justice dimensions. Findings confirm a significant negative relationship between perceived organisational justice and deviant behaviour, indicating that employees who feel treated unfairly are more likely to engage in counterproductive workplace activities. Distributive injustice, particularly related to pay equity and workload distribution, emerges as the strongest predictor of deviance. The study also documents a moderating role of supervisory support, with deviance rates lower among employees who perceive their supervisors as fair and accessible. Recommendations include the introduction of transparent compensation benchmarking, supervisor training on interactional justice behaviours, and anonymous ethics reporting channels. This research generates retail sector-specific HRM evidence on the justice-deviance relationship in Nigeria. Keywords: Organisational Justice, Deviant Behaviour, Retail, Shoprite, Workplace Ethics.