The organizational justice model can evaluate job stressor from decision-making process, attitude of managerial or senior staff toward their junior workers, and unfair resource distribution. Stress from organizational injustice could be harmful to workers' mental health. The purpose of this study is to explore the association between organizational justice and depressive symptoms in a securities company.

To estimate organizational justice, a translated Moorman's organizational justice evaluation questionnaire (Korean) was employed. Cronbach's α coefficient was estimated to assess the internal consistency of the translated questionnaire. To assess depressive symptoms, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale was used. The link between the sub-concepts of the organizational justice model and depressive symptoms was assessed utilizing multiple logistic regression models.

The risk of depressive symptoms was significantly higher among workers with higher levels of all subcategory of organizational injustice. In the full adjusted model odds ratio (OR) of higher level of procedural injustice 2.79 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.58–4.90), OR of the higher level of relational injustice 4.25 (95% CI, 2.66–6.78), OR of higher level of distributional injustice 4.53 (95% CI, 2.63–7.83) respectively. Cronbach's α coefficient of the Korean version was 0.93 for procedural justice, 0.93 for relational justice, and 0.95 for distributive justice.

A higher level of organizational injustice was linked to higher prevalence of depressive symptoms among workers in a company of financial industry.

Many studies show that organizational justice (OJ) is related to psychological determinants of employee health. To prevent health problems related to OJ in Korean workplaces and to accurately measure OJ, we developed the Korean version of the Organizational Justice Questionnaire (K-OJQ) and assessed its validity and reliability.

A questionnaire draft of the K-OJQ was developed using back-translation methods, which was preliminary tested by 32 employees in Korea. Feedback was received and the K-OJQ was finalized. This study used data from 303 workers (172 males, 131 females) in Korea using the K-OJQ, job stress, and lifestyle questionnaires.

Cronbach’s α coefficients of the internal consistency reliability was 0.92 for procedural justice and 0.94 for interactional justice. Factor analyses using SPSS 24 and Amos 23 extracted two expected factors, named procedural justice (7 items; range, 1.0–5.0) and interactional justice (6 items; range, 1.0–5.0) and showed a reliable fit (χ² = 182; p = .000; GFI = .912; AGFI = .877; CFI = .965; RMSEA = .077). Furthermore, higher procedural justice and interactional justice levels were correlated with lower job demand (− 0.33; − 0.36), insufficient job control (− 0.36; − 0.41), interpersonal conflict (− 0.45; − 0.51), job insecurity (− 0.33; − 0.34), organizational system (− 0.64; − 0.64), and lack of reward (− 0.55; − 0.63).

The K-OJQ was objectively validated through statistical methods.

The online version of this article (10.1186/s40557-018-0238-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.