The effect of ethical leadership at senior management levels on in-role work behaviors

Abstract

Higher education institutions and most contemporary organizations face behavioral issues often related to the leaders’ skills and styles of leadership. Ethical leadership is one of those methods that helps to improve the workers’ behaviors within the workplace (Brown, Treviño, & Harrison, 2005; Kia, Halvorsen, & Bartram, 2019; Qian & Jian, 2020). This study aims to test ethical leadership’s (EL) impact on in-role work behaviors (IWBs) and to test the moderating role of organizational cynicism (OC) between them. The authors conducted this study using a stratified random sample consisting of 400 faculty members working in Egypt’s Sohag University. For this analysis, we used simple regression, hierarchical regression moderated analysis (HRMA) and simple slope analysis. Our paper findings reveal that EL had a positive effect on IWBs and that OC modified the positive correlation between them. This meant that the relationship was stronger for workers, who perceived a low level of cynicism, and was weaker for workers who perceived a high level of cynicism. These findings resulted in our conclusions about the respective relationships between EL, IWBs and OC concerning ethical leadership.