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Linking Ethical Leadership to Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing the Multilevel Mediation Role of Organizational Concern

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Abstract

This study empirically examined the propositions that ethical leadership is related to employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) through two psychological mechanisms: (a) a social learning mechanism, where employees emulate their supervisor’s behavior such as caring about their organization; and (b) a social exchange mechanism that links ethical leadership to perceived procedural justice and employee’s organizational concern. Our theoretical model was tested using data collected from employees in a pharmaceutical retail chain company. Analyses of multisource time-lagged data from 93 team supervisors and 486 employees showed that supervisors’ and employees’ organizational concern sequentially mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and employee OCB. It was also found that the link between ethical leadership and employee OCB was sequentially mediated by perceived procedural justice and employee’s organizational concern. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by Grant No. 71302102 awarded to Shenjiang Mo and Grant No. 71425004 awarded to Junqi Shi from the Natural Social Science Foundation of China, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Grant No. NCET-13-0611 awarded to Junqi Shi from the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University.

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  1. Department of Management¸ Lingnan (University) College, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Shenjiang Mo & Junqi Shi

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  1. Shenjiang Mo
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  2. Junqi Shi
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Correspondence to Junqi Shi.

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Mo, S., Shi, J. Linking Ethical Leadership to Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing the Multilevel Mediation Role of Organizational Concern. J Bus Ethics 141, 151–162 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2734-x

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