Effect of Spirituality, Demographics, and Culture on Career Satisfaction, Organisational Fairness Climate, and Affective Commitment in Pakistani Organization: The Mediatory Role of Ethical Leadership

Abstract

The lens through which followers experience the ethical dimension of leadership itself it is argued is likely distorted by a followers’ level in the hierarchy. In this regard, ethical leadership may be better conceptualized as an intermediary through which follower status contributes to these desirable outcomes. This research expands the literature about the causes, consequences, and the unique role of ethical leadership in the workplace. In particular, we examine the mediated model of ethical leadership in the effect of individualism, spirituality, as well as demographics on organizational outcomes like:

1. organization’s fairness climate (CF),

2. affective commitment (AC), and

3. career satisfaction (CS).

Drawing on the work of Pucic (2015), we argue that demographics like Job, experience, Age, Education, Position, and Working Hour of employees affect their perception of ethical leadership (EL) in the organization, and this perception, in turn, affect the three above mentioned outcomes. In the same way, spirituality and individualistic (IND) cultures also influence these outcomes through EL. Spirituality was further sub-classified into Spiritual Believe (SB), Coping (SC), Experience (SE), and Practices (SP). Empirical validity was established by conducting a survey using a close-ended questionnaire. Data was collected from 500 employees and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation modeling. The results suggested that Ethical leadership, individualistic culture, and years of experience have a positive and significant effect on all three outcomes i.e. AC, CF, CS. Moreover, Education and Spiritual Believe seem to have a positive impact on AC. Similarly, Spiritual Experience also has a positive effect on CF. Surprisingly, position and Spiritual Practices seem to have a negative and significant impact on career satisfaction. Moreover, Education, individualism, and position also seem to be positively impacting ethical leadership. Hence, EL positively mediates the effect of education, individualism, and position on AC, CF, and CS respectively. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.