Ethical Leadership and OCB: The Mediating Role of Ethical Climate, Trust, and Justice

This study analyzed how Top Management Ethical Leadership influence Organization Citizenship Behaviour (OCB). We proposed that Ethical leadership affects OCB by promoting an ethical climate and Trust in organizations. Then these factors give rise to Procedural Justice Climate and Distributive Justice, which then results in OCB. This theoretical framework was empirically tested by gathering data of 210 employees working in various sectors operative in Pakistan by means of closed-ended Likert scale type questionnaires. Numerous statistical techniques, for instance, descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were utilized for analysis of the results. As proposed in our theory, the results indicated a positive impact of Top Management Ethical Leadership on Ethical Climate & Trust in Organization. Moreover, a significant positive impact of trust on both Procedural Justice Climate & Distributive Justice. Furthermore, both of these fully mediates the effects of top management ethical leadership on organizational citizenship behavior. From a different angle, the impact of the ethical climate on the Procedural Justice Climate is significantly positive. However, the relationship between ethical climate and Distributive Justice was found to be insignificant. Hence, this study provides a plausible theoretical account as well as empirical validation of a mechanism through which top management ethical leadership enhances OCB. Therefore, managers in an organization can rise Firm-level OCB by enhancing the overall environment of the corporation and participatory factors in an ethical manner.