Are Leaders’ Perceptions of Organizational Politics Worsening Favorable Employee Outcomes? The Role of Ethical Leadership

Soojin Lee,Gukdo Byun,Jinhee Kim

doi:10.3390/su131910767

Abstract

Researchers have conducted many empirical studies on the positive effects of ethical leadership. However, they have paid little attention to the antecedents of ethical leadership. This study sought to fill this gap by examining the negative effects of leaders’ perceptions of organizational politics on ethical leadership and the job performance of employees. Accordingly, this study investigated the relationships among them using data collected from 220 dyads of leaders and followers in major companies in South Korea. The results showed that leaders’ perceptions of organizational politics negatively affected their ethical leadership, which, in turn, had an adverse impact on the task performance and organizational citizenship behavior of employees. This paper also provides the theoretical and applied implications of the findings as well as future research directions.

Highlights

Role of Ethical Leadership.Recently, the issue of ethical leadership has attracted increasing attention as ethical standards for organizations have been reinforced in modern society
This study examines the relationship between ethical leadership and the task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of organizational members
This study provides an important theoretical contribution in that it examined the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics (POP) and ethical leadership in

Summary

Introduction

Role of Ethical Leadership.Recently, the issue of ethical leadership has attracted increasing attention as ethical standards for organizations have been reinforced in modern society. Refers to a leader’s moral influence on members in an organization, which contributes to organizational effectiveness [1]. Studies have paid a great deal of attention to the positive influence of ethical leadership on organizational performance, including employees’ task performance and prosocial behavior [2,3]. Frisch and Huppenbauer [4] pointed out that more empirical research on the antecedents of ethical leadership needs to be conducted. Some researchers have emphasized a need for identifying the factors which hamper ethical leadership, which can be treated as challenging problems [1,5,6]. Since identifying the factors which hamper ethical leadership can help leaders to eliminate or mitigate this problem, this study analyzes the barriers to ethical leadership in organizations

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Conclusion