THE DARK TRIAD AND PERCEPTIONS OF ORGANISATIONAL JUSTICE AMONG TEACHING STAFF IN PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION

The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between The Dark Triad components (Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy), and perceptions of the different organisational justice dimensions (distributive, procedural, and interactional) among teaching staff in private higher education. The sample included 277 participants (106 male, 171 female) aged 23 to 65. Self-report data were collected online using the Short Dark Triad, and The Organisational Justice Perceptions Questionnaire. Results have shown significant gender differences in the perception of organisational justice. Psychopathy was negatively related to the perception of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice only in men. Narcissism uniquely positively predicted distributive, procedural, and interactional justice in women. Machiavellianism showed no significant effects on perceptions of organisational justice dimensions in both men and women, which suggests that Machiavellianism operates similarly across gender regarding organisational justice. The positive effect of narcissism on the perception of procedural and interactional justice was more pronounced when associated with low Machiavellianism, which indicates that Machiavellianism indirectly negatively affects i Correspondence: email katarina.sokić@oxfordbusinesscollege.ac.uk, sarwar.khawaja@oxfordbusinesscollege.ac.uk , fayyaz.qureshi@oxfordbusinesscollege.ac.uk Katarina Sokić, Sarwar Khawaja, Fayyaz Hussain Qureshi THE DARK TRIAD AND PERCEPTIONS OF ORGANISATIONAL JUSTICE AMONG TEACHING STAFF IN PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION European Journal of Education Studies Volume 8 │ Issue 12 │ 2021 395 the perception of organisational justice. The results highlight the importance of including dark traits in explaining the perception of organisational justice.

These traits are in the subclinical range and called dark traits or Dark Triad, are Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Dark traits share some core characteristics: empathic deficit and callousness (Dinić et al., 2020;Jones & Figueredo, 2013;Furnham et al., 2013). The behaviour of individuals with pronounced dark traits is socially repulsive and undesirable but not necessarily outside the normal range of functioning.
The last two decades, increasing attention has been focused on the study of dark traits, especially in an organisational context related to counterproductive work behaviours, interpersonal conflict in the workplace, and "toxic" leadership (Baloch et al., 2017;DeShong et al., 2015;Jonason et al., 2012;O'Boyle et al., 2011;Sokić & Lukač, 2018). However, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of the Dark Triad on the perception of organisational justice has not been examined. Therefore, this paper will examine relationships between dark traits and dimensions of organisational justice among teaching staff in private higher education.

The Dark Triad in the organisational framework
Despite the common features mentioned above, each of the traits encompassed in the Dark Triad construct has some specific characteristics. For example, Machiavellianism involves interpersonal manipulativeness and exploitation, distrust, goal-focused behaviour, cynicism, and an abnormal view of morality (Monagham et al., 2018). Narcissism includes a grandiose sense of self-importance, entitlement, self-enhancement, lacking trust and care for others, dominance, and superiority (Spain et al., 2014;Wright et al., 2013). Psychopathy is characterised by extreme traits such as callousness, lack of remorse, egocentricity, manipulativeness, poor behavioural control, aggression, and an exploitativeness attitude toward others (Crego & Widiger, 2016;Stanley et al., 2013). Relationships between the Dark Triad and workplace outcomes have received less attention in comparison with normal personality traits. However, in recent times organisational psychologists and human resource departments have shown increased interest in the effect of the dark personality on work behaviour (especially counterproductive), job performance, job attitudes. The meta-analysis by O'Boyle et al. (2012) indicated that all three dark traits were associated with counterproductive workplace behaviour. This type of intentionally undesirable, deviant work behaviour includes physical violence, mobbing, sexual harassment, destruction of the organisation's property, abuse of information, neglect of security regulations, and avoidance of work obligations (Robinson, 2003;Vanden Bos, 2015). Meta-analysis (O'Boyle et al., 2012) also showed that Machiavellianism and psychopathy were associated with low quality of job performance.
Although the relationship between dark traits and job satisfaction is not well explored. However, some studies have shown that Machiavellianism and narcissism have a negative relationship with job satisfaction (see Bruk-Lee et al., 2009) studies have shown a positive relationship between narcissism and job satisfaction (Abbas & Kant, 2017). The relationship between psychopathy and job satisfaction is negative (Body, 2011;Foulkers et al., 2014). A recent study (Čopkova & Araňošová, 2020) examined the relationship of the Dark Triad and job satisfaction among helping professionals (pedagogical, healthcare, rescue, and social workers) and measured nine aspects of job satisfaction: pay, promotion, supervision, benefits, rewards, conditions, co-workers, nature of work, and communication. The result of this study indicated that dark traits were unrelated to job satisfaction elements associated with financial and non-financial remuneration (pay, benefits, and rewards) and that Machiavellianism and psychopathy were negatively related to overall job satisfaction. Machiavellianism had negative relationships with satisfaction with co-workers, nature of work, and communication. Psychopathy had negative relationships with satisfaction with supervision, co-workers, the nature of work, and communication. In contrast, narcissism had a positive relationship with satisfaction with promotion and a negative relationship with satisfaction with co-workers and communication. Balock et al. (2017) tested mediating role of perceptions of organisational politics in the relationship between the Dark Triad and counterproductive work behaviour and the moderating role of political skills in the relationship between the Dark Triad and the perceptions of organisational politics. Organisational politics was defined as "individual or group behaviour that is informal, ostensibly parochial, typically divisive, and above all in a technical sense, illegitimate-sanctioned neither by formal authority, accepted ideology, nor certified expertise" (Ferris et al., 2002).
Political skills were defined as the "ability to understand others at work effectively and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one's personal and/or organisational objectives" (Treadway et al., 2013). Accordingly, it is reasonable to expect that individuals with high political skills know how to use these skills to achieve their selfish goals (Ferris et al., 2005). It has been shown that perceptions of organisational politics partially mediate the link between Dark Triad and counterproductive work behaviour. Therefore, the presence of political skills among the Dark Triad may increase counterproductive work behaviour. Also, results showed that political skills positively moderate the effect on the relationship between Machiavellianism, narcissism, and perceptions of organisational politics, but the moderation effect was not found regarding the link between psychopathy and perceptions of organisational politics (Balock et al., 2017).
The above studies have shown that the components of the Dark Triad are differently related to organisational outcomes. Although the relationship between the Dark Triad and perception of organisational justice has not been examined, the theoretical background and hypotheses of the study are explained below.

Effects the Dark Triad on perception of organisational justice
The perception of organisational injustice and unequal treatment obstructs organisational goals. Employees who perceive a low level of organisational justice develop negative emotions such as angry, resistance, and disappointment (Folger, 1993). Organisational justice in all its dimensions (distributive, procedural and interactional) negatively correlated to perceived stress and negative emotions (anger, frustration, anxiety, depression)) (Pérez-Rodríguez, 2019). Furthermore, this study has shown the mediating role of negative emotions in the relationship between organisational justice perceptions and stress. Together with previous findings found in a study by Barski et al. (2011), these findings indicate that negative emotions significantly affect organisational fairness judgments in two ways: as predictors perception of organisational justice or perceived inequality.
A positive relationship between perceived organisational injustice and anger and deviant workplace behaviour was also found in a study by Khattak et al. (2018). This study has shown that perception of distributive and procedural injustice predicts deviant work behaviours towards organisations and that perception of interactional injustice predict deviant behaviours towards individuals. Moderation analysis indicated that neuroticism and agreeableness moderate the relationship between anger and deviant workplace behaviour; the relationship between anger and deviant behaviours was stronger and more positive on a high level of neuroticism and a low level of agreeableness (Khattak et al., 2018). A negative relationship on the bivariate level was found between the perception of organisational justice and psychopathy, while Machiavellianism and narcissism were unrelated to the perception of organisational justice (Cohen & Liu, 2021). Also, this study showed that Machiavellianism significantly positively predicted interpersonal and organisational counterproductive work behaviour, psychopathy positively predicted interpersonal counterproductive work behaviour. At the same time, narcissism was not a significant predictor of counterproductive work behaviour. Similar findings were found in a study conducted by Geraghty (2019), which showed that dark traits in a situation of perceived organisational injustice lead to counterproductive work behaviours.

Present study and hypothesis
The main purpose of this study is to contribute a better understanding of the relations between the Dark Triad components (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) and different dimensions of organisational justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional). Also, given the mixed results in the Dark Triad as well as perceptions of organisational justice across genders (Jepsen & Rodwell, 2010), we will examine whether the relationships between the Dark Triad and dimensions of organisational justice differ across gender. To better understand individual factors which affect perceptions of organisational justice including dark traits we need to know more about the role of dark personality in perceptions of organisational justice. The Dark Triad components are related to aversive, socially deviant, and malevolent behaviour including aggression, retaliation, exploitation, and destruction. Also, all three Dark Triad components are characterized by emotional deficiencies, low empathy, an external orientation to achieve one's goals, and a limited ability to communicate one's emotions towards others (Jonason et al., 2012). These characteristics can play a significant role in the perception of organisational justice and elicit negative reactions with harmful outcomes for individuals and organisations as a whole. Based on the above literature review, we proposed that Machiavellianism would be negatively related to the perception of organisational justice, narcissism would be positively related to the perception of organisational justice, and psychopathy would be negatively related to the perception of organisational justice. Given the antagonism inherent in Machiavellianism and psychopathy, we expect negatively affect these dark traits to the relationship between narcissism and the perception of organisational justice.
As we did not have any a priori hypotheses regarding the gender differences in the Dark Triad -perception of organisational justice relationship, analyses of gender differences were considered exploratory.

Sample and procedures
The study population consisted of the teaching staff in private higher education institutions in Croatia. All of the participants have a university degree, 57% of them have a doctoral degree, and 25% have a master's degree. Our sample consists of professors (34%), senior lecturers (27%), lecturers (26%), and assistants (13%). Questionnaire data for 28 participants were excluded from analyses due to missing data, and the final sample comprised 277 participants (106 male, 171 female), aged from 23 to 65 (Mage = 37, SDage = 10.06). Questionnaires were anonymous and participants give consent before taking part in the study. Data were collected online from the summer and autumn of 2021. All aspects of the study were approved by the Ethics Committee from the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Participants did not receive a fee to participate in the survey. The size of the study sample was above the minimum of 250 recommended for correlational studies (Schönbrodt & Perugini, 2013).

Instruments 3.2.1. Perceptions of organisational justice
The Organisational Justice Perceptions Questionnaire (OJPQ; Jakopec & Sušanj, 2014) was used as a measure of three dimensions of organisational justice: distributive, procedural, and interactional. This instrument contains 15 items scored on a five-point scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Each dimension of organisation justice contains five items. Examples of items are: "The organisation rewards me fairly for the effort I put into my job"(distributive justice), "The organisation very clearly explains its decisions and provides additional information when I request it" (procedural justice), and "My organisation makes it clear that I am hardworking". The lowest possible score on the scales is 5 and the highest possible score is 25. Higher scores indicate more positive perceptions of each of the dimensions of organisational justice. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for distributive, procedural, and interactional justice scales were .97, .95, and .96. In order to test dimensionality of the OJPQ a maximum-likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in AMOS Version 26 was conducted. The model is acceptable when Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > 0.90, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > 0.90, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) < 0.08, and Standardized Root Mean Squared Residual (SRMR) < 0.08 (Brown, 2006). In this study results of CFA showed good fit for the OJPQ model: χ² (68) =238.12; p <.001; CFI = 0.94; TLI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.06, and SRMR = 0.06, with three high correlated components of organisational justice.

The Dark Triad
The Short Dark Triad (SD3; Jones & Paulhus, 2014) was used to measure three dark traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The instrument consists of 27 items scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, with 9 items devoted to each of the three scales. Examples of items are: "Make sure your plans benefit yourself, not others" (Machiavellianism), "I insist on getting the respect I deserve." (narcissism), and "People who mess with me always regret it "(psychopathy). Cronbach's alpha coefficients for Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy scales were .81, .73, and .75. In order to test dimensionality of the SD3 maximum-likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in AMOS Version 26 was conducted. Results of CFA showed good fit for the SD3 model: χ²(46) =170.12; p <.001; CFI = 0.92; TLI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.06, and SRMR = 0.06.

Data analysis
In order to test the dimensionality of used scales, confirmatory factor analysis in AMOS Version 26 was conducted. Descriptive and correlational analyses of the variables of the study were performed. Descriptive and correlational analysis of all studies variables were performed in order to test reliabilities for study variables. To compare men and women in the mean level of dark traits and perceived organisational justice and examine possible gender differences, a one-way ANOVA was used. To quantify bivariate correlations between all using scales, zero-order correlations were calculated. In order to determine whether gender moderates the relationship between Dark Triad traits and organisational justice dimensions, three hierarchical linear regression models were performed with gender and age entered at Step 1, Dark Triad traits entered at Step 2, and the three Gender x Dark Triad traits entered at Step 3. There was no significant increase in R 2 (ΔR 2 ) on the third step of regression analyses, showing that gender x Dark Triad interactions were not found. To predict organisational justice dimensions based on Dark Triad, six hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed. The age was included as a control variable in the 1st step, and scores on three Dark Triad scales were entered in the 2nd step.

Descriptive statistic, gender differences and bivariate correlations
Reliabilities for study variables, descriptive statistics, and gender differences are reported in Table 1. All used scales demonstrated an adequate range and internal psychometric characteristics. Alpha reliabilities for the SD3 scales were .81, .73, and .75 for Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, and for the OJPQ alpha reliabilities were .97, .95, and .96 for distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice, respectively. Skewness and kurtosis for all scales were within the recommended values for normal distribution (between -2 to +2) (Gravetter & Wallnau, 2014). One-way ANOVA was used to assess gender differences for all measures. Independent samples tests showed that men scoring significantly higher on the SD3 total score (d = 0.73), Machiavellianism (d = 0.49), narcissism (d = 0.40), and on psychopathy (d = 0.74). There were no gender differences on organisational justice dimensions. Maximal range of response for all scale is 1-5. d = Cohen's d index. Effect sizes around 0.2 are considered small, 0.5 medium, and 0.8 large (Cohen, 1988). α = Cronbach's. α. Sk -skewness, Ku -kurtosis. * p < .01, **p < .001 (two-tailed tests).
Bivariate correlations between study variables are displayed in Table 2. Intercorrelations between the Dark Triad traits were small (r = .18) to moderate (r = .53). Machiavellianism was unrelated with narcissism in men (r = .18, p > .05), but in women relationship between these two dark traits was significantly positive (r = .27, p < .001). Correlations between Machiavellianism and psychopathy were moderate in both men and women, as well as the correlation between psychopathy and narcissism in men (r = .34, p <.001). Intercorrelations between dimensions of organisation justice were high (r > .80).
Results have shown that narcissism is significantly positively related to distributive, procedural, and interactional justice only in women. Psychopathy negatively related with distributive and procedural justice only in men, while Machiavellianism was unrelated to dimensions of organisational justice in both men and women. .95*** .82*** .88*** -Note: Correlations above the diagonal are for men, and below for women. OJPQ = The Organisational Justice Perceptions Questionnaire, SD3 = The Short Dark Triad. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests).

Predicting organisational justice from the Dark Triad domain scores
To examine the distinctive contributions of the Dark Triad components in predicting organisational justice dimensions, we performed three regression analyses for each gender with the Dark Triad components (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) included together as predictors in Step 2. Age was included as the control variable in all regressions in Step 1. Criteria variables were three dimensions of organisational justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional) ( Table 3). Results of multiple regression analysis have shown that the Dark Triad components together explained significant amounts of variance in distributive (10%), and interactional justice (7%) in men, and significant amounts of variance in all three dimensions of organisational justice in women (9% in distributive and interactional justice, and 5% in procedural justice). For both men and women, age negatively predicted perceptions of interactional justice (ß = -.22 and -.25, p <.01). In women sample age negatively predicted distributive and procedural justice (ß = -.23 and -.24, p <.01). The results showed that, in the second step, narcissism uniquely positively predicted distributive (ß = .30, p < .001), procedural (ß = .24, p < .01), and interactional justice (ß = .30, p < .001) only in women. Psychopathy uniquely negatively predicted distributive (ß = -.34, p < .001), procedural (ß = -.21, p < .05), and interactional justice (ß = -.23, p < .05) only in men. The scores on Machiavellianism were unrelated to organisational justice dimensions in both men and women. .11* .08 .12* .14** .11** .15** Note: DJ = Distributive justice, PJ = Procedural justice, IJ = Interactional justice. β = Standardized regression coefficients. R = multiple regression coefficients, R 2 = coefficient of determination, ΔR 2 = the change in R 2 relative to the previous step in the regression. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests).

Moderation analyses
Three hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to test the moderation effect of Machiavellianism on the relationship between the other two Dark Triad components (narcissism and Psychopathy) and organisational justice (distributive justice, procedural and interactional). Gender and age were included as control variables in the first step of all regression analyses. Results are presented in Table 4. The independent variables (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) were standardized. The three standardized variables were entered in the second step of the regression analysis and the products of the three independent variables were entered in the third step, with three dimensions of organisational justice as the dependent variables. Results showed that the effect of gender was significant for all dimensions of organisational justice, and that effect of age was insignificant except in interactional justice (β = -12, p < .05). The effect of Machiavellianism on the relationship between narcissism and procedural justice, as well as on the relationship between narcissism and interactional justice was significant. As we can see in Figure 1 and Figure 2, on the low level of Machiavellianism, narcissism showed a positive effect on the perception of both procedural and interactional justice. These results indicated that high Machiavellianism negatively affects the positive perception of procedural and interactional justice.

Discussion
This study examined the relationship between The Dark Triad components (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy), and perceptions of the different organisational justice dimensions (distributive, procedural, and interactional) among teaching staff in private higher education as well as the gender differences between these variables. In general, the results of the study suggested that the Dark Triad traits are an important predictor of the perception of organisational justice. Overall, the Dark Traits predicted from 5 to 10% of the variance in perceptions of a specific dimension of organisational justice in men, and from 5 to 9% of the variance of this criterion in women. Among the dark traits, psychopathy emerged as the best predictor of negative perceptions of organisational justice in men but not in women. The lack of positive emotions and morality, self-centeredness, and tendency to exploit others, are some of the core characteristics of psychopathy (Glenn et al., 2010;Blair et al., 2006), which may influence perceived organisational injustice among persons with psychopathy traits. The absence of the expected negative link between psychopathy and organisational justice in the sample of women may be explained by significantly lower scores on psychopathy in women sample in line with a previous study (Dinić & Wertag, 2018, Međedović et al., 2018. Narcissism has shown a positive association with all dimensions of organisational justice which is in line with the adaptive role of this dark trait and its connection with extraversion and openness (e.g., Paulhus & Williams, 2002).
Contrary to prediction, Machiavellianism was unrelated to perceptions of organisational justice but it has been shown that Machiavellianism indirectly negatively affected perceptions of organisational justice by reducing the positive relationship between narcissism and procedural and interactional justice. This finding is consistent with the assumption that manipulativeness, distrust, selfishness, and a strategiccalculating orientation are some of the key features of Machiavellianism traits (Jones & Figueredo, 2013;Monaghan et al., 2018).
On the other hand, moderation effects Machiavellianism on the relationship between narcissism and perception of organisational justice indicate that role of narcissism in an organisational context depends on the presence of the other two dark lines. We can assume that in relation to some other organisational outcomes such as loyalty to the organisation both psychopathy and Machiavellianism have a negative impact. Besides, our results showed that the Dark Triad explained similar amounts of variance in dimensions of organisational justice in both men and women may suggest that dark traits have an important role in both men in women in the perception of organisational justice. Overall, our results point to the central negative role of psychopathy in the relationship between dark traits and perceptions of organisational justice. The results also showed that gender has no moderated role in this relationship, although it should be noted that the relationship between dark traits and perception of organisational justice depends on gender. The adaptive role of narcissism in women and the maladaptive role of psychopathy in men in relation to the perception of organisational justice should be examined in other professions as well as in the future conduct new studies among teaching and non-teaching staff in private higher education. There are several limitations to this study that need to be acknowledged. First, the participants consisted of a homogenous sample of teaching staff rather than employees in other organisations. For these reasons, further research is needed to evaluate the generalizability of findings to other samples. Additionally, further studies may use other measures of perceptions of organisational justice, as well as other measures of dark traits.

Conclusion and practical implications
In this study, we demonstrated for the first time the link between The Dark Triad traits and perceptions of organisational justice among teaching staff in private higher education. The results were consistent with the proposed direct relationship of psychopathy in men and narcissism in women with all three dimensions of organisational justice. The proposed direct relationship between Machiavellianism with perceptions of organisational justice was not found. Results indicates that Machiavellianism indirectly affects the perception of organisational justice because reduces the positive relation between narcissism and this organisational outcome.