The Mediating Role of Interactional Justice on Psychological Stress with Psychological Well-Being in the Jordanian Qualified Industrial Zones

IntroductionThe main reasons of establishing Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) in Jordan were the creation of jobs for the Jordanians and foreign exchange earnings for Jordan. The first Jordanian QIZ established in 1997 and the expansion of the zones spread all over the country. Majority of the enterprises in these zones are textile manufacturers. The textile industry is considered as the number one employer in the QIZ, with a total of 52,429 which is 97% of 54,000 employees in 2006 working in the textile and garment sector (Jordan Ministry of Labor, March 2007). However minimum wage, long working hours, poor working place, lack of stability, no motivation in the Jordanian textile industry have led to the reduction of Jordanian local employees from 55.8% in 2002 to 23.9% in 2010 (Jordanian Ministry of Labor, 2006). According to Jordan Ministry of Labor (2012) the total local employees in QIZ was 8,601.The poor working conditions in QIZ lead to employees staging a strike in 2007 (International Trade Union Confederation ITUC, 2008) and another strike in 2011. This led to the Better Work project implemented by the ILO in cooperation with International Finance Cooperation (IFC), the Ministry of Labor and the Trade Union of Workers in Textiles. According to ILO (2012), the level of compliance with OSH laws and regulations is very low and that thousands of workers in these QIZ areas are still subjected to various types of violations (The Jordanian Labor Watch / Phenix Center for Economic & Informatics Studies, 2011). The recent events suggest that the needs of employees and their expectations of the jobs and workplace are not met appropriately and the strikes are manifestation of interactional justice which affects the employees' attitudes about the system (e.g., organizational commitment, trust in authorities) (Ambrose et al., 2007). Poor working conditions in QIZ, low wages and long working hours create undue psychological stress on the Jordanian local employees' psychological well-being to handle the demands of the enterprises and stay on even with bad working conditions. This study attempts to investigate the relationship between psychological stress and psychological well-being and whether interactional justice mediates this relationship among the local workers in the Jordanian textile industry.Literature ReviewLazarus and Folkman (1984:25) define psychological stress as -external (environmental) and internal (personal) demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person". Lazarus (1993) believed that -psychological stress should be considered part of a large topic, the emotion. " For when there is stress, there are also emotions that can be attached to it -positive and negative emotions (Lazarus, 1999). The concern for reducing psychological stress and enhancing quality of work life and working conditions is the priority of organizations. Psychological stress is likely to result if ones job is high strain in nature, characterized by high work-related demands, few opportunities for control or autonomy, and /or insufficient social support (Karasek, 1979; Karasek and Theorell, 1990). Psychological well-being refers to the psychological state of individuals, as assessed through affective and cognitive components (Diener, Scollon, and Lucas, 2003). Robertson and Cooper (2011:54) define psychological well-being as the -affective and purposive psychological state that people experience while they are at work". Improving psychological well-being will enhance quality of work life which brings benefits for both the organization and the individuals. Wright and Cropanzano (2004) define psychological well-being with three characteristics:First, it is a subjective experience, which means people experience well-being to the extent that they believe themselves to be happy. Secondly, psychological well-being is considered to be a combination of positive and negative emotions where higher level of positive emotions over negative emotions represents better psychological well-being. …