A lot of recent ethics scandals in business, government, non-profits, and even religious organization have made people be more concerned about ethical leadership. Many managers and researchers understand the importance of ethical leadership and they a...
A lot of recent ethics scandals in business, government, non-profits, and even religious organization have made people be more concerned about ethical leadership. Many managers and researchers understand the importance of ethical leadership and they are trying to use it as an instrument for developing their organization. Yet little empirical research focuses on an ethical dimension of leadership. For this reason, this study reviewed conceptual definitions of ethical leadership and examined the connections of ethical leadership with trust in leader and organizational effectiveness.
The following three questions are major purposes of this study. Firstly how much does ethical leadership affect trust in leader and organizational effectiveness? Secondly how much does trust in leader affect organizational effectiveness? Thirdly can trust in leader perform a mediating role in the relationship between ethical leadership and organizational effectiveness?
To perform this empirical study, the following model was established and the data for statistical analysis was collected from 219 employees of 10 public research organizations through a self-reporting questionnaire.
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Initially seven hypotheses were developed and In the result of examinations, all hypotheses were accepted. major findings of this study can be summarized as follows.
Firstly in the relationship among ethical leadership, trust in leader and organizational effectiveness, the more leaders have ethical leadership the more subordinates trust their leader and the organization has organizational effectiveness which is composed of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Secondly, the more subordinates trust their leader the more the organization has organizational effectiveness. Thirdly, trust in leader acts as a mediating role in the relationship between ethical leadership and organizational effectiveness, especially as a partial mediating role for job satisfaction and a full mediating role for organizational commitment.
The results of this study suggest that leaders should try to have ethical leadership for organizational effectiveness and they must make an effort to earn trust of subordinates through practicing ethical behavior. Empirical studies for ethical leadership have been insufficient so research for ethical leadership has been significant challenge. This study reviewed prior studies and showed outcomes of ethical leadership. These results will be able to help future studies on ethical leadership.