The Moral Architecture of Public Service: Justice, Legitimacy, and Conflict in a Nigerian Teaching Service Commission

Abstract

Organizational justice has increasingly been recognized as a critical determinant of institutional legitimacy and effective conflict management within public sector organizations, yet empirical evidence from African public bureaucracies remains limited. This study examines the moral architecture of public service by investigating the interrelationships among organizational justice, institutional legitimacy, and organizational conflict within a Nigerian Teaching Service Commission. Anchored in Rawls' Theory of Justice and Social Contract Theory, the study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design integrating quantitative and qualitative evidence to provide both empirical and normative insights. Quantitative data were collected from 387 valid respondents selected through proportionate stratified random sampling, while qualitative evidence was generated through 20 semi-structured interviews with purposively selected Commission officials, teachers, and union representatives. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis, whereas qualitative data were analyzed thematically using Braun and Clarke's framework, with findings integrated through an explanation-building strategy. The results revealed generally low perceptions of organizational justice (M = 2.74) and institutional legitimacy (M = 2.64), with procedural justice recording the lowest mean score (M = 2.58). Promotion delays (80.6%) and unfair staff postings (73.9%) emerged as the principal sources of organizational conflict. Correlation analysis showed a strong positive relationship between organizational justice and institutional legitimacy (r = 0.741, p < .01) and a significant negative relationship between organizational justice and organizational conflict (r = –0.693, p < .01). Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that organizational justice explained 68.4% of the variance in institutional legitimacy (R² = 0.684, p < .001), with procedural justice constituting the strongest predictor (β = 0.386, p < .001). Qualitative findings corroborated these results by revealing widespread perceptions of promotion inequity, procedural opacity, declining institutional trust, and strong demands for merit-based governance. The study concludes that organizational conflict is fundamentally rooted in deficits of organizational justice rather than administrative inefficiency alone and argues that restoring institutional legitimacy requires embedding justice, transparency, and accountability as the normative foundations of public administration.