Predictive model of organizational justice, job satisfaction, and commitment: The context of the state media sector in the Ethiopian federation

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship among interactive justice, overall job satisfaction, and organizational commitment in the Ethiopian federal state media sector. Data were gathered from samples of journalists working for Ethiopian Television, Addis Ababa Media Network, Ethiopian Press Agency and Ethiopian News Agency using self-administered scales. Findings of multiple regression analyses indicated that job satisfaction and interactive justice together explained more than a third of the variance in organizational commitment. Partial least squares methods further showed paths: (a) between interactive justice and commitment, (b) interactive justice and job satisfaction, (c) job satisfaction and commitment were significant. A mediation effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between interactive justice and commitment was also observed. Further analyses showed that, except for educational level, all other biographical and institutional antecedents played no significant role in the prediction of commitment. Implications are discussed in relation to the human resource management of media institutions.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Media organizations are some of the most poweful institutions affecting society, politics, economy, culture and virtually every aspect of national life. The journalists they employ have job experiences that are unique in many ways although they do share similarities with employees in other sectors. While media organizations deserve scientific investigations, they have not received attention that is due. This study addresses the gap by enquiring in to the factors that affect state media journalists more particularly issues of job satisfaction, workplace perceptions of justice and how these affect job satisfaction. Results from the study show that journalists consider justice in organizations as an important factor that affects how they feel about their jobs including how committed they can be to the media organization that has employed them. It is consequently important for media managers to constantly strive to understand the feelings of their employees.

Introduction
Media organizations are important structures with a special mission and a social role that make them public often in complex and controversial ways. Their complexity may draw psychological, social psychological, sociological and political investigation in addition to management-based scrutiny. However, scholarship has generally focussed on the product of media organizations such as news while the labor and organizational behavior aspect has received scant attention. It is perplexing that despite their extraordinary characteristics media institutions as employers continue to receive much less scholarly attention than the diverse corporate and other structures that they often scrutinize. However, the human resource management of journalists should be an important area of scholarship in consideration of the characteristics of media workers who may be believed to have peculiar features as people interested in the intrinsic job characteristics of the news business including the excitement, the thrill and the fulfillment (Scott, 2014) although extrinsic factors are also important (Ekdale et al., 2010).
On the other hand, there is the constant state of uncertainty and chaos in the context of power and media in developing countries where the state clings to the media as an instrument of political power while often calling the persuasive institutions "public media" even when political pluralism is not entertained. The ambiguous character of media organizations, which often experience political struggles and partisan politics (Newman et al., 2019), is apt to affect the journalistic workers they employ. As Zaleznik (1999) has observed, an organization is a political structure, but it is also true that some organizations such as media institutions can be far more political especially in the context of countries experiencing conflicts and upheavals that bring forth a new administration. Regime changes may mean that the media have new masters with a different world view that signals departure from the old ways.
Despite the psychological cost of inconsistency, journalists may often have to sequentially serve divergent regimes concealing their own political values or making value reorientation. They may even have to join political parties seeking protection and more opportunities that come from party membership motivated by success stories of those around them and beyond while it may be possible that some are drawn by ideological concurrence or policy-related commitment to a political party. Patronage systems incentivize membership, helping parties at organizational selfmaintenance, but also sending a clear signal to those seeking upward mobility (Warner, 1997).
Thus, following a period of organizational socialization, journalists may come to realize that in organizations with a political orientation such as the state media, issues of justice can be illusive (Ferris & Kacmar, 1992).Organizational stories and direct experience may provide them with real lessons that political strategies may serve to divert the normal course of organizational justice (Preffer, 1992). Thus, important concerns such as promotion and pay rise may be maneuvered and the norms and rules may come to matter less (Greenberg, 1986). Scarce resource can lead to tactics such as backstabbing and ganging as normative elements of organizational politics (Ferris, Russ and Fandt, 1989). The reading of such an environment may lead to perceptions of an unjust climate and a re-assessment of commitment (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter & Ng, 2001). Further, politics in the workplace has been shown to be associated with decreased job satisfaction (Nye and Witt, 1993). Excessive internal politics can harm many news workers for whom the journalism field may be about self-transcendence (Wong, 2013) and not just an issue of the typical homo-economicus. News workers can discern the editorial politics, the media ideologies, and their social role, the geopolitical situation of the media and their ideas of what is good journalism. It has been argued that it is through the lens of employees that an organization is given meaning (Smircich, 1987). The meanings often relate to the idea of justice, meaningfulness of work and the propriety of commitment. These perceptions may be evident in organizational discourses but there is little research addressing the important concerns.
In a broader sense, media organizations are apt to be affected by a wide variety of issues including organizational justice, job satisfaction, which can affect the commitment of the journalist and whether they will seek exit sooner or later. It is necessary that these are studied and their complex relationships plotted to contribute to organizational studies. Below the literature on the constructs of interest is further reviewed.

Organizational justice
Organizational justice is a perceptual framework for the evaluation of the allocation of rewards and the processes governing the allocative processes and procedures (Sweeney & McFarlin, 1993). As such workplace fairness has been an important area of research since the 1990s although its genesis is traceable to far longer periods (Colquitt et al., 2005) . Indeed justice in organizations has considerable appeal as indeed does justice in society as a whole, given the importance of organizations and what goes on in the workplace affecting the life and wellbeing of the workforce and the individual worker. The perception of justice is important as it can affect the relation of the employee to the workplace as well as in particular to the management (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996) by affecting performance (Lind & Tyler, 1988) and engendering counterproductive behavior and workplace conflict (Cohen-Charash, 2001).
Organizational justice is a multidimensional construct although the dimensionality may be open to rival conceptualizations. An important subconstruct is distributive justice which relates to the fairness of the manner in which outcomes such as promotion and pay rise are distributed based on a transparent upholding of established criteria. It relates to the morality of the distribution of "burdens and benefits". On the other hand, procedural justice is present when normative principles are consistently upheld in the process of distribution of outcomes and are perceived accordingly (Kassing & McDowell, 2008).
While justice does have procedural and distributive facets, there is a growing interest in another important dimension-interactional justice. It relates specifically to how fairly management distributes communication opportunities and how the quality of supervisor employee communication is perceived by employees. More to the point it addresses the issue of how respectfully managers communicate with subordinates and how fairly they distribute communication opportunities among subordinates (Usmani & Jamal, 2013).
While Greenberg (1993a) advances the view that interactional justice has informational and interpersonal dimensions, a more recent conceptualization is that justice may be viewed as a four facet entity comprising distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice (Colquitt et al., 2002). According to Dalal (2005), employees retaliate against unjust work outcomes by engaging in behaviour that harms the organization and/or other employees. Empirical support for acts of sabotage can be found in some studies (Ambrose et al., 2002;Aquino et al., 1999;Greenberg, 1990b;Skarlicki et al, 1999).
Indeed, aggrieved employees with perceptions of injustice can display retaliatory behavior in terms of reduced commitment and decreased productivity (Dalal, 2005;Greenberg, 1990b). Job assessments can suffer in contexts where party membership and loyalty lead to patronage appointments and inducements (Ennser-Jedenastik, 2014c) such as career progression and a reward system of exclusionary and protective networks. In transitional societies characterized by a spoils system, job satisfaction can suffer as an important outcome of organizational justice processes (Dailey & Kirk, 1992).

Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction may be a mundane old subject but is perennially intriguing as modern society is beset with insecurities, anxieties and the search for meaning. Balzer et al. (1997, p. 10) define job satisfaction as "the feelings a worker has about his or her job experiences in relation to previous experiences, current expectations, or available alternatives." Studies of job satisfaction among journalists have produced mixed results reflecting in part the complexities and instabilities that attend the craft especially in fragile states but even in more stable nations journalism is a profession at risk. The temporal dynamics also seem to suggest job satisfaction may rise or fall in relation to political or economic climates. A study by Reinardy (2014) suggested that American journalists are satisfied with broadcasting in particular. However, earlier work indicated much unhappy newsrooms.
For instance, Ryan (2009), looking at the American longitudinal media experience, seems to show that the newsroom as a source of job satisfaction is under threat. But other studies in other contexts seem to suggest that the generality of journalists are satisfied with their jobs (Serini et al., 1997). Stone (2000) found that 75% of media workers were either "satisfied" or "very satisfied". Weaver and Wilhoit (1996) reported similarly that three-fourths of their media subjects who covered TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and newspapers were satisfied with their work. Literature on journalists' job satisfaction in Africa is not only limited but affected by circulatory problems. Of the limited studies, a Kenya research reports the nation's journalists are satisfied despite the pay conditions (Ireri, 2016). On the other hand, a Nigerian survey (Ofili et al., 2014) showed over 50% of TV journalists were not satisfied with their work.
The generality of the international research indicates that journalists are satisfied for a variety of reasons that include work relationship (Price, 2008), pay (Ryan, 2009) and good supervision (Price & Wulff, 2005) and even irrespective of a less than perfect press environment (Liu et al., 2017). However, it is important to keep an open eye as there could be national and organizational contexts that can produce a different picture of journalistic job satisfaction An important dimension yet unexplored in media contexts is the association between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Non-media organizational studies have found relationships between the constructs (Harrison & Hubbard, 1998;Koh & Boo, 2001, 2004. According to A. Cohen (2007), organizational commitment relates to a worker's intensity of attachment to the employer (De Cuyper et al., 2009). Although conceptually related to job satisfaction, commitment is an independent construct in its own right that has to be studied in correlational terms in media contexts. In some studies, it has been reported as a predictor of job satisfaction (Dirani & Kuchinke, 2011) but it is not clear how this association can work out in media organizations.

Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment is considered to be the emotional, rational and moral commitment of an employee to the goals and ideals of the organization to which the employee belongs (Mercurio, 2015).
Organizational commitment suggests intensity of affect for as well as loyalty to an organization that an employee develops over the course of a period of employment that transcends financial gains. Whilst diverse conceptualizations exist, there appears to be a general agreement on a threedimensional view of the construct. This view is promoted by by Allen and Meyer (1990b) and Meyer and Allen (1997) who say organizational commitment is a construct with sub-constructs that include affective commitment (commitment arising from affect for or psychological affinity with the organization), continuance commitment (commitment stemming from strategic appraisal of exiting costs), and normative commitment (employees staying loyal owing to gratitude toward organization). These sub-constructs serve variously as antecedents and outcome variables in numerous studies.
Literature related to commitment as a construct may be categorized more broadly under three strands. The first track includes studies that report organizational commitment as an outcome of job satisfaction (MacKenzie et al., 1998) while the second line of studies reports a reverse relationship with commitment affecting job satisfaction (Tett & Meyer, 1993). The third view is that job satisfaction and organizational commitment independently affect turnover intentions (Tett & Meyer, 1993).
However, studies on the relationship among organizational justice, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment centering on media organizations are scarce. Further, the limited literature is replete with inconsistencies in regard to the association among the three constructs, indicating the need for more studies into relational dynamics among the constructs .
Understanding the dynamic multidimensional associations may help in the actual improvement of media work conditions. In more specific terms , knoweldge in this area may result in lower turnover intentions and actual attrition, longer terms of tenure, resulting in low turnover costs. Media operations may also improve as a result of a positive perception of working conditions that may lead to more journalistic commitment .

Research questions
The study sought to find answers to the following research questions:

Theoretical foundations
The study is anchored in social exchange theory as applied to organizational contexts. The theory is fundamentally centered on reciprocity norms that bind parties to an employment relationship. Thus employees are likely to appraise their inputs in relation to the rewards they receive in exchange (Saks, 2006). More explicitly employees are likely to conduct a calculus of a worth of an employment relationship in consideration of their contributions to the arrangement-in a cost-reward mechanism (Monge & Contractor, 2003).
The idea of violation of contractual norms may thus explain employee commitment as a factor causatively tied to perceptions of justice and appraisal of job experiences (Allen et al., 2003). Commitment enhancers include organizational inputs such pay rise and organizational justice that can reduce turnover rates (Shaw et al., 1998). Perception of organizational support to employees is also linked to job satisfaction and may be further related to retention (Eisenberger et al., 1997). Further, commitment is linked to social exchange conditions and attitudes toward an employee's cognitive and affective appraisal of their employment and their psychological relationship with the employer organization (Van Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006).

Methodology
The methodological explication is driven by a consideration of approaches, methods and strategies outlined in the research onion discourse (Saunders et al., 2007). First, the study is driven by a positivist orientation (ontology, epistemology and axiology) and as such deploys statistical methods as tools of discovery and understanding deductively. It is a monomethod crosssectional investigation, whose questions are framed in a manner that demonstrates quantitative methods self-sufficiently deliver answers. As in similar organizational studies examinning multivarate relationships , multiple regression analysis was used to test the relationship between the outcome variable of commitment and the predictor dimensional variables and biographical antecedents. Analysis of variance was suitably employed to test group-based differences. In line with methodological guidelines, the assumptions of independence, normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity were met (Shavelson, 1996). Further, collinearity was tested using the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) and found to be within acceptable limits (VIF=1.64, acceptable <5). Common method bias was precluded as VIF was below 5 (Chin et al., 2013). Based on guidelines for multiple linear regression and considering tested variables and assumptions (Alpha = 0.05 and Power = 0.8), a sample of 259 was deemed to be more than adequate (Bujang et al., 2017). Further, structural equation modeling and more specifically partial least squares method was used to undertake mediation analysis to better understand the relationships among the factors of interest (Thakkar, 2020).
In line with relevant psychometric protocol (Schreiber, 2021), before testing the hypothesized relationships between the factors related to commitment, it was particularly necessary to test the empirical distinctiveness of the sub-constructs of commitment. Thus, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the underlying factor structure of commitment and arrive at a decision whether to retain the original factor structure. Based on statistical and conceptual grounds (Osborne, 2008), the analysis revealed that a unidimensional understanding of commitment explains better the Ethiopian perception of commitment as a construct.

Ethical considerations
The study design complies with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.
Accordingly, 1. Informed consent was obtained from the respondents. 2. Their dignity and wellbeing was protected at all time. 3. The study data were anonymised and confidentially treated throughout the study.

Sampling
Sampling was random to ensure representativeness and included journalistic categories as indicated in professional titles. The sample size is consistent with precision levels that are deemed adequate (Singh & Masuku, 2014). More importantly, sample power was calculated at .80, which is impressive as power level required is generally between .50-.99 (Kock, 2015) based on gammaexponential methods (Kock & Hadaya, 2018). In addition to sufficient sample power, response rates exceeded expectations at 81 %, with 259 copies recovered out of 320 distributed, suggesting a very small nonresponse bias (Toepoel & Schonlau, 2017). The final set of respondents was thus a sample of 259 media employees from Ethiopian Television, Addis Television, Ethiopian Press Agency and Ethiopian News Agency. Arithmetic mean imputation was used as strategy to address missingness in continuous variables.

Perceived organizational justice scale
The scale had three dimensions. These include distributive (five items), procedural justice (six items) and interactional justice (nine items).
• Levels of Organizational Justice In the present investigation, the interest was in the interactional aspect of justice as an independent construct that has stipulated relationships with job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Charoensap et al., 2019;Wang et al., 2012), which may be uniquely important to journalists as intensive communication workers. Methodologically, limiting the number of constructs was also important to ward off potential multicollearity issues (Kalnins, 2018).

Job satisfaction scale
The job satisfaction construct was taken from the MOAQ. It contained three items rated on a 7 point scale.
The items were: All in all, I am satisfied with my job In general, I don't like my job (reverse coded) In general, I like working here

Organizational commitment scale
The Scale has a total of 18 items. These are clustered in three subscales with six items each.

Affective (six items) Normative (six items) Continuance (six items)
All scales were pilot-tested in accordance with psychometric validation protocols that require that instruments are appropriate for the context, purpose and subjects of the empirical environment. As earlier indicated, exploratory factor analysis suggested organizational commitment would be best conceptualized as a one factor solution rather than three as originally designed. Consideration of both structural and meaningfulness criteria led to a one factor solution as a more interpretable facet (Carrizosa et al., 2019) in the context of the Ethiopian respondents. The unidimensional facets of interactive justice and job satisfaction were retained as originally proposed.
Composite reliability was .74 for commitment, .95 for justice and .77 for job satisfaction-which are deemed more than satisfactory levels according to rules of thumb (Mansour, 2015;Plummer & Tanis Ozcelik, 2015).
A Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to examine relationships between commitment, job satisfaction and interactive justice. The results revealed a significant and positive association between commitment and interactive justice (r = .4, N = 255, p < .01), interactive justice and job satisfaction (r = .48, N = 255, p < .01) as well as commitment and job satisfaction.(r = 48, N = 238, p<,01. The correlations were moderate in strength. Higher levels of job satisfaction were associated with higher levels of commitment as were higher levels of interactive justice. Multiple regression analysis was further conducted (Tables 1 and 2) to examine whether commitment was predicted by job satisfaction, interactive justice, media type, gender, age, length of work experience, job level and level of education. As shown in Table 1, the overall model explained 30 percent of the variance in commitment as an outcome variable, which was statistically significant, F (8,250) = 13.91, p < .001). An inspection of individual predictors revealed that, in their order of importance, job satisfaction (Beta = .35, p < .001), interactive justice (Beta = .29, p < .001), and level of education (Beta = . 10, p < .05) are significant predictors of commitment (Table 3). The variance explained R2 = .30 is considered adequate based on rules of thumb. According to Cohen (1988), R2 values of 0.26 would be described as substantial, 0.13 moderate and 0.02 weak, respectively. The guidelines of Falk and Miller (1992) as well as Cohen (1992) and more recently Frost (2021) would validate the results obtained as having satisfactory explanatory power. Besides the adequacy of the model, higher levels of job satisfaction and interactive justice were associated with higher levels of commitment. Of the covariates, except for educational level, job experience, job title, age, gender and media organization failed to qualify as important predictors. Job satisfaction mediated the relationship between interactive justice and commitment at p < .01 level of significance (Figure 1).
A partial least squares technique was used to test the hypothesis that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between interactive justice and commitment. With average path coefficient (APC) = 0.420, P < 0.001, Average R-squared (ARS) = 0.339, P < 0.001 and Average adjusted R-squared (AARS) = 0.335, P < 0.001, results more specifically indicated that interactive justice was a significant predictor of job satisfaction, B = .33, SE = . 0.057, p < .01, and that job satisfaction was a significant predictor of commitment, B = .43, SE = . 0.059 p < .01. These tests support the mediational hypothesis.

Discussion
The study set out to establish relationships between the constructs of interactive justice as an important variable in organizational functioning and job satisfaction as an affective-cognitive facet, describing employee assessments of a job experience (Spector, 2003) and the outcome variable of employee commitment as a normative desideratum affecting media institutions. As the path coefficients indicated, all associations were significant. However, the paths between job satisfaction and commitment were more significant than the path between interactive justice and job satisfaction,  which previous studies have documented (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). This strong association comes as no surprise given that the more comprehensive facet of job satisfaction subsumes a dimension of perceptions of justice although the relevant scale did not address justice perceptions directly.
Indeed, the mediational role of job satisfaction reveals the important relational network among the organizational dimensions studied. In this regard, the Antecedent Mediation Model (AMM) points to the importance of satisfaction and interactive justice as important antecedents influencing commitment as an outcome variable, which extant studies have documented (Martin & Bennett, 1996;Von Rimscha 2015). Argueably, the direct relationship between interactive justice and commitment is conceptually defencible (Hair et al., 2009). Interactive justice, as an aspect of a broad relationship quality, which studies have shown to be far more important than extrinsic rewards (Wu, 2005;Zhang & Shen, 2012), may have more relevance to collectivist organizations. The relational quality may conceptually explain why media workers would be more committed to their organization-understood in essence as a system of social and professional communications (Bisel, 2010;Schoeneborn, 2011). In other words, communication opportunities that are both receptive and expressive would help journalists identify with their institution and further commit themselves to staying on. The interactive opportunities would help enhance the bonds in the workplace, build trust and motivate journalists to put on hold any thoughts of leaving or entertain fewer intentions to quit in search of media or other employer with more people-oriented qualities and fairer systems of interactive justice.
The findings in the present study are both conceptually and empirically in substantial agreement with the body of relevant literature which links justice perceptions to employee commitment (Greenberg, 1990) and better organizational functioning, which can mean a better media institution and more dedicated professional journalism. Of particular importance to journalism is identification with the industry in general and the employer in particular. Important outcomes further include a commitment to the values of journalism as public service with a special mission in a society that has to grapple with injustice, corruption, nepotism and mediocrity. As Luthans (2002) indicates, commitment to journalism would be pivotal in view of the pressures to leave the community of practice owing to diverse drivers including excessive job demands and pressures that compromise the ideals of journalism as a calling.
The findings further indicate that educational level as measured via credentials contributes to variance explained as the third most important factor. This should come as no surprise. Studies seem to show that there is a relationship between educational level and commitment, with workers having lower qualifications exhibiting more commitment as a result in part of their limited choices in the labour market (González et al., 2016). Similarly, Jafri (2011) concludes that there is a negative association between commitment and level of education with more qualified workers tending to be less committed given their desire for constant self-improvement. However, Khan et al. (2013) argue that with more qualifications, workers become more committed because the qualifications lead to contentment. In the present study, however, more qualified journalists did appear to be more committed. In fact, there was no significant association between education and commitment levels, an observation that requires further investigation. One possible explanation may be the absence of symmetry of figures in the qualification levels-an assumption that ANOVA designs generally seem to hold, although statistical opinion differs. Whilst ANOVA is considered robust to moderate sample size departures, considerably unequal sample sizes may distort power and outcomes, suggesting the need for more investigations with more balanced designs that may be able to detect effects more accurately (Skidmore & Thompson, 2013).
Whilst, as indicated, the present findings are consistent with studies reporting job satisfaction as an important predictor of organizational commitment (Rose, 1991;Valaei & Rezaei, 2016), the study makes contributions beyond lending support to earlier investigations on the subject.

What the present study contributes
The present article contributes to current understanding of the Ethiopian state media ecology from the prism of the journalistic workforce and its working conditions. It specifically and interactively interrogates key constructs that shed light on the community of practice including the pivotal question of organizational justice and the links with other workplace constructs. A holistic analysis of the organizational constructs was not done in previous scholarship, which has generally focused on a portrayal of individual aspects of media organizations. Previous studies have failed to address systemic patterns as they relate to organizational realities as perceived by journalists.
By striking a balance between tradition and innovation, the present study overcomes the myopic tendencies in earlier studies by deploying novel methods that are able to more accurately screen journalists' multifaceted perceptions of the work environment. The study meets two normative criteria for knowledge production i.e. the evolutionary approach,which advocates that the advancement of knowledge is driven by a common agenda of a research community, driven by continuity and consolidation of evidence (Boxenbaum & Rouleau, 2011). In this regard, the study reports job contentment evidence as it relates to an Ethiopian media workforce in line with previous studies that have enquired in to journalistic work perceptions-thus strengthening the wall of evidence but taking the trail of inquiry a bit further by taking a comparative perspective unlike earlier studies, the generality of which explored specific and homogenous constituencies.
The second claim relating to contribution in this study pertains to differentiation from a methodological and epistemological angle.
The research questions asked in this study required the use of methods not reported in much media scholarship and considered unorthodox, albeit their huge diagnostic potential. More to the point, the study used structural equation modeling and more specifically partial least squares methods, which involve iterative matrix algebra to estimate model parameters-which aids in minimizing errors and predicting with greater accuracy model fitness and contribute to theory falsification/validation (Gefen et al., 2000). The study therefore advances the frontiers of methodology in media scholarship as well as producing more evidence from more media organizations than previous Ethiopian studies.
Theoretically, the study contributes by providing a conceptual infrastructure, showing the interplay of interwoven constructs of media institutions. The study investigated the media environment of reporters, journalists, editors and managers and the important interplay of key constructs that remain largely unexplored in the relevant interdisciplinary terrain. No previous research has established the mediation reported in this study. The study further claims heuristic power because it makes it clear that the effects of interactive justice and job satisfaction in commitment management are significant in terms of enhancing work satisfaction. The study thus adds to our understanding of the complex relationships of the constructs involved using a method that is uncommon in the subfield.

Conclusions and implications
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship among interactive justice, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment within the federal state media sector in the city of Addis Ababa that included federal TV (EBC), Addis Television, Ethiopian Press Agency and Ethiopian News Agency staff. The study used multivariate statistical methods to establish and test relationships among justice perceptions; job satisfaction and organizational commitment based on the existing body of conceptual and empirical literature in the area of management studies and related them to media human resource management. It demonstrated that the facets are significantly interrelated but with varying degrees of strength. The paths included a meditational variable which was also validated as being important. By investigating the constructs of interest in the media sector the study breaks fresh ground in terms of exploring management constructs in diverse media institutions. In more detail the study has a number of contributions and implications.
The present study offers insights into job satisfaction, justice and commitment as critical ingredients in the management of journalistic human resource. The study investigated an overlooked area of human resource management specific to media institutions and points the need to continually identify lacuna in our understanding of the media industry in view of its tremendous power and significance and track changes in media ownership structures as they relate to human resources dimensions (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2009).

Study implications
The study furnishes much needed organizational data on an Ethiopian media workforce that remains relevantly under-explored. The data may enable media policymakers, media consultants, and managers to create a work environment characterized by trustworthy managerial behavior, concern for the journalists and open lines of communication.
A second implication of the present study stems from the need to address managers' knowledgeability and sensitivity with regard to their relational communication with subordinates focusing on interpersonal experiences. Managerial relational competence is a matter of core importance but often taken for granted while it requires strategic intervention in terms of skills development as much communication is demonstrably trainable. Communication competence and emotional intelligence are able to foster or hamper the manager's important task of leading an entity and determining the affective experiences of a large media workforce. Communication by media managers/editorsactually needs to be nurtured and supported to qualitatively improve emotional and relational environments. It becomes important for managers to reflect on the relationship building and communication skills based on the fact that much management is actually a set of communication activities. What is also important is to consider a communication audit that addresses not just holistically the communication experiences but more diagnostically examines the several constructs of interest for intervention to become a strategically targeted response toward a general improvement of media climate where the reporter, journalist, and editor are treated justly and feel valued and embraced.
In particular, the study indicates that commitment in media institutions is an important variable that is affected more by job-relevant experiences than biographical antecedents over which the organization has little control. Thus, media houses can enhance the organizational commitment of the media workforce through empirical inspection of job and justice experiences and through continuous human resources management procedures that address employee satisfaction.

Limitations and directions for future research
The present study may not reflect the full picture of the entire Ethiopian media industry as it is limited to one ownership category. All media institutions studied were from the public/state domain, which is an ownership category that has its own distinctive characteristics. Since ownership can have a systematic effect on media organizational behavior in relevant terms, it is important that future studies investigate the private media industry and further see if ownership type has a systematic effect on the investigated dimensions of interest.