Fairness in Healthcare E-Rostering: An Empirical Analysis of Antecedents and Effects

Fairness in healthcare shift scheduling is crucial for well-being of workers but remains challenging toachieve due to numerous requirements. While electronic rostering (e-rostering) helps manage thecomplexity of shift scheduling, its impact on fairness remains unclear. First, we develop a stimulus-organism-response model guided by organizational justice theory to explain how contextual factors inhealthcare shift scheduling (schedule predictability, scheduling control, and relationship withsupervisors) shape workers’ scheduling fairness perceptions and, in turn, influence job satisfaction.Second, we examine how e-rostering, compared to human scheduling, alters the relationships in thismodel. Using data from 185 healthcare workers, our results show that contextual factors significantlyimpact fairness perceptions, and salience shifts from procedural to distributive fairness in determiningjob satisfaction under e-rostering. We contribute to future research by highlighting how technologiescan reshape the relationship between fairness and work attitudes, and to practice by offering designguidance for fair e-rostering.