Sustainable Influence of Ethical Leadership on Work Performance: Empirical Study of Multinational Enterprise in South Korea

Abstract

This study empirically examines the route by which managers’ sustainable ethical leadership influences employees’ work performance. The study examines the relationships of four variables: ethical leadership, perceived salience of an ethics code, work performance, and leader–follower distance, operationalized as the frequency of leader–follower interaction. Data were obtained from a large multinational enterprise in South Korea and the questionnaires responses of 196 leader–follower pairs (196 team leaders, 196 employees) were analyzed. The results found that the managers’ ethical leadership positively influenced the employees’ perceived salience of the ethics code of the organization, which, in turn, positively mediated the relationship of ethical leadership to work performance. Furthermore, a conditional indirect effect was found in which the frequency of leader–follower interaction positively moderated the indirect effect of ethical leadership on work performance via perceived salience of the ethics code; specifically, the strength of the indirect effect increased as the frequency of leader–follower interaction increased. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are offered and limitations with suggestions for future study are discussed.

Servant Leadership Style and High-Performance Work System Practices: Pathway to a Sustainable Jordanian Airline Industry

“…As predicted, servant leadership strengthens employees and increases their satisfaction [5,112]. In prior research, that has been linked to sustainability [12]. The results of this study found that the airline employees in Jordan will be more satisfied and more likely to stay if they see that their leader is interested in the success of the group members more than his/her own status.…”

“…Baykal at al. [33] and Peterson et al [34] also showed that servant leadership was of paramount importance to improving an organization and argued it was essential to organizational sustainability [12]. Moreover, studies have revealed the significant effects of servant leadership on individual performance levels.…”

“…Recently, Tarkang and Ozturen [11] investigated the influence of ethical leadership as a yard stick to produce sustainable employee outcomes in the hotel industry in Cameroon. Kang [12], added to the existing literature by investigating managers' sustainable ethical leadership and its influence on employees work performance in South Korea. Similarly, servant leadership, with its focus on enabling employee achievements, and playing a supportive role to leaders, leads to sustainable organizational performance and not just short-term achievements through opportunistic tactics.…”

The role of strategic leadership in increasing ethical practices among pharmaceutical organizations in Jordan

“…Brown and Mitchell (2010) stated that an ethical environment is the best way to increase ethics in an organization while Çelik et al (2015) argued that an environment that is based on ethics and sun by ethical leadership is mostly an environment that encourages ethical practices among its employees. The same goes for leadership styles which also appeared to be influential on ethical practices of employees referring to the fact that there is no specific style for ethical leadership but there is specific traits for a leadership to be seen as ethical including honesty, respect, integrity and truthfulness; this idea was agreed on by Kang (2019).…”

Performance Pressure as an Antecedent and Authentic Leadership as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Co-worker Undermining and Psychological Capital

“… Cobb (1976) argued that the perception of social support by providing socio-emotional resources can be a moderating variable in such stressful situations. The behavior of the leader can be interpreted to correspond to that of the organization ( Kang, 2019 ), leading employees to perceive that these direct supervisor actions are a form of social support in the organizational context ( Eisenberger et al, 2002 ; Stinglhamber and Vandenberghe, 2003 ). Moreover, authentic leadership provides confidence in achieving the organization’s goal by the leader demonstrating their best ability, and encourages expectations and hopes for the future through transparent and fair communication ( Bouckenooghe et al, 2014 ).…”