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Linking Ethical Leadership to Employee Burnout, Workplace Deviance and Performance: Testing the Mediating Roles of Trust in Leader and Surface Acting

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Abstract

This study empirically investigated the impact of ethical leadership on employee burnout, deviant behavior and task performance through two psychological mechanisms: (1) developing higher levels of employee trust in leaders and (2) demonstrating lower levels of surface acting toward their leaders. Our theoretical model was tested using data collected from employees of a pharmaceutical retail chain company. Analyses of multisource time-lagged data from 45 team leaders and 247 employees showed that employees’ trust in leaders and surface acting significantly mediated the relationships between ethical leadership and employee burnout, deviant behavior and task performance. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for understanding how ethical leaders influence employees’ attitudes and behavior.

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  1. More information about the R program can be found at http://www.quantpsy.org.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by Grant No. 71425004 awarded to Junqi Shi and Grant No. 71302102 awarded to Shenjiang Mo 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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Correspondence to Junqi Shi.

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Mo, S., Shi, J. Linking Ethical Leadership to Employee Burnout, Workplace Deviance and Performance: Testing the Mediating Roles of Trust in Leader and Surface Acting. J Bus Ethics 144, 293–303 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2821-z

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