How ethical leadership cultivates healthy guanxi to enhance OCB in China

Abstract

Ethical leadership has been documented as a critical factor influencing employee behavior. This study aims to expand on previous research by investigating how ethical leadership cultivates healthy Chinese guanxi between employees and their supervisors and influences employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). We propose that two types of Chinese guanxi, favor‐seeking guanxi and rent‐seeking guanxi, may play a mediating role in the relationship between ethical leadership and OCB. Using survey data collected from Chinese employees (N = 502), regression and bootstrap analyses are used to test the proposed research model. The results suggest that ethical leadership not only directly promotes employee OCB performance, but also does so indirectly by facilitating favor‐seeking guanxi orientation and suppressing rent‐seeking guanxi orientation. The results provide a theoretical contribution to the study of ethical leadership and Chinese guanxi, and also extend our practical understanding of the role of ethical leadership in enhancing OCB effectively in the China context.