The Impact of Moral Leadership on Construction Employees' Psychological Behaviors

Abstract

In construction companies, employee burnout rates and negative socioemotional behaviors (NSEBs) are severe problems for the management. Work-related problems are then visible in the employee's psychological behaviors and consequent outcomes. The literature on organizational behavior argues that moral leadership can evade burnout and NSEB. Following the arguments, this article attempts to examine the impact of moral leadership on the employee's burnout and NSEB through the mediating variables of job embeddedness, and distributive justice in the construction industry. By using the social exchange theory, this article analyzes the data of 302 employees from construction companies in Hong Kong to assess these relationships. The results showed a negative relationship between moral leadership and the construction employees’ burnout. This article provides construction companies and their managers with useful insights on the way the moral leadership mediate through job embeddedness and distributive justice to curtail the employees' burnout. The results of this article also motivate scholars to investigate the multidimensional role of moral leadership in their future research.