Communication and Justice in Crisis: An Empirical Study on Organizational Influences Shaping Emergency Decision-Making Competency of Grassroots Civil Servants in China

This study examines how internal communication and perceived fairness are associated with the emergency decision-making competency (EDMC) of grassroots civil servants, a core capability in public performance and crisis governance. Integrating crisis sensemaking, high-reliability organizing, social information processing, and fairness heuristic theory, the study develops an individual-level framework in which leader–member communication effectiveness (LMCE) is linked to EDMC directly and indirectly through organizational peer communication support (OPCS), while organizational justice (OJ) conditions the strength of this relationship. Drawing on survey data from 1,966 grassroots civil servants across 136 counties in 16 prefecture-level cities in Shandong, China, the study finds that LMCE is positively associated with EDMC. OPCS accounts for a substantial share of this association, indicating that effective leader communication is linked to stronger emergency decision-making partly through a more supportive peer communication environment. OJ further strengthens the positive LMCE–EDMC relationship, and the association is more pronounced among non-leaders. By integrating communication quality, peer support, and perceptions of fairness into a single empirical model, this study extends public administration research on frontline crisis capability. It identifies concrete organizational levers to strengthen grassroots emergency governance in practice.