The role of ethical leadership in enhancing exploitative and explorative learning simultaneously: what does it matter if employees view work as central?

Abstract

PurposeThe present study aimed to test the hypothesis that ethical leadership positively contributes to exploitative learning and explorative learning simultaneously and then examine the moderating role of work centrality in the relationships of ethical leadership with exploitative learning and explorative learning.Design/methodology/approachTime-lagged survey data were collected from 257 middle managers and their 257 immediate supervisors in 76 firms in China. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and Hayes' PROCESS macro for SPSS.FindingsThe results revealed that ethical leadership positively contributed to exploitative learning and explorative learning simultaneously. Importantly, the authors found that work centrality strengthened the positive relationships of ethical leadership with both exploitative learning and explorative learning.Practical implicationsThe findings can help organizations enhance exploitative learning and explorative learning simultaneously and enable them to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.Originality/valueAlthough explorative learning and exploitative learning together constitute fundamental resources for organizations' long-term success, prior research has not looked into whether and when leader behaviors facilitate explorative learning and exploitative learning simultaneously. The study contributed to fill this gap by introducing ethical leadership, signifying its positive role in enhancing both explorative learning and exploitative learning, and establishing work centrality as a moderator to reinforce these two positive relationships.

Fueling the spirit of care to surmount hazing: foregrounding the role of spiritual leadership in inhibiting hazing in the hospitality context

“…Fourth, while we found support for the notion that spiritual leadership is beneficial in the context of workplace hazing, other types of leadership could prove fruitful. Ethical leadership (Abdullah et al , 2019; Ali et al , 2022b; Brown et al , 2005; Usman and Hameed, 2017), transformational leadership (Gui et al , 2020), authentic leadership (Ribeiro et al , 2020; Wang and Xie, 2020) and servant leadership (Liden et al , 2015) can help us develop insights into the role of leadership in reducing or deterring hazing behaviors in hospitality organizations. Studies should also examine whether different negative leadership styles, such as despotic leadership (Albashiti et al , 2021) and narcissistic leadership (Aboramadan et al , 2021), affect workplace hazing in the hospitality context.…”

Can resilience promote calling among Chinese nurses in intensive care units during the COVID-19 pandemic? The mediating role of thriving at work and moderating role of ethical leadership

“…At the individual level, numerous studies found that ethical leadership had positively related to reduced job stress and improved performance quality (Schwepker and Dimitriou, 2021 ), inhibited workplace bullying (Ahmad, 2018 ), increased professional caregivers' wellbeing and patients' perceptions of quality of care (Gillet et al, 2018 ), and promoted employee success through raising psychological empowerment and emotional exhaustion. In the organizational dimension, evidence proved that ethical leadership had a positive effective on the organizational outcomes (Khan et al, 2019 ) and played a critical role in promoting employee loyalty (Fan et al, 2021 ), rising corporate social responsibility, firm reputation, and firm performance (Nguyen et al, 2021 ), enhancing leader–member exchange quality and creative process engagement (Nasser et al, 2021 ), increasing organizational trust and organizational sustainable development (Ilyas et al, 2020 ), enabling innovation through technology (Lin et al, 2020 ), influencing employees' perception of the industrial relations climate (Jha and Singh, 2019 ), determining service employees' engagement in knowledge-hiding behaviors (Abdullah et al, 2019 ), enhancing exploitative and explorative learning simultaneously (Ali et al, 2022 ), deducing purchasers' unethical behavior (Ko et al, 2019 ), and so on.…”

Diagnosing of human resource performance management based on lack of ambidextrous learning themes: a case study of public Iranian banking system

“…When an organization strives for being exploitative, it tends to be more confident and faster, closer and more transparent in its activities. Exploitative suggests less effort for large-scale, above-mean and long-term innovations, which can lead to the deterioration of organizational knowledge (Ali et al , 2021). Exploitative is also related to knowledge for continuous improvement, modification, refinement and development of changes in current products, processes and services (O’Reilly and Tushman, 2008).…”