our attitude our choice

Linking Ethical Leadership to Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing the Multilevel Mediation Role of Organizational Concern

Shenjiang Mo1 • Junqi Shi1

Received: 4 September 2014 / Accepted: 16 June 2015 / Published online: 21 June 2015

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract This study empirically examined the proposi-

tions that ethical leadership is related to employees’

organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) through two

psychological mechanisms: (a) a social learning mecha-

nism, where employees emulate their supervisor’s behavior

such as caring about their organization; and (b) a social

exchange mechanism that links ethical leadership to per-

ceived procedural justice and employee’s organizational

concern. Our theoretical model was tested using data col-

lected from employees in a pharmaceutical retail chain

company. Analyses of multisource time-lagged data from

93 team supervisors and 486 employees showed that

supervisors’ and employees’ organizational concern

sequentially mediated the relationship between ethical

leadership and employee OCB. It was also found that the

link between ethical leadership and employee OCB was

sequentially mediated by perceived procedural justice and

employee’s organizational concern. Theoretical and prac-

tical implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords Ethical leadership � Organizational citizenship

behavior � Organizational concern � Procedural justice

Introduction

Ethical leadership has recently been considered as a key

predictor influencing employees’ moral attitude and behav-

ior toward organizations (Mo et al. 2012). It places great

emphasis on the role modeling effect of leader’s moral

behaviors in the workplace (Treviño et al. 2000, 2003;

Brown 2007). Drawing on social learning theory (Bandura

1977), previous research showed that employees working

with ethical leaders are more likely to go ‘‘above and

beyond’’ the official call of duty to help organizations

achieve long-term goals (Podsakoff et al. 1997, 2000; Pic-

colo et al. 2010; Kalshoven et al. 2011; Zoghbi-Manrique-

de-Lara and Suarez-Acosta, 2013; Boehm and Dwertmann

2015). However, little was known regarding the underlying

mechanisms through which ethical leadership enhances

employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)

(Brown and Treviño 2006; Kirkman et al. 2009).

Recent studies shared a common observation that ethical

leaders enhance employees’ proactive behaviors in the

cross-level leader-member interactive processes (Jordan

et al. 2013). For example, Mayer et al. (2009) demonstrated

a trickle-down model of ethical leadership. Results showed

that the relationship between top management ethical

leadership and employees’ OCB was significantly mediated

by employees’ perception of supervisory ethical leadership

(Mayer et al. 2009). Besides, Schaubroeck et al. (2012)

developed and tested another model describing how

higher-level ethical leadership relates to lower-level

employees’ ethical cognitions and behaviors (Schaubroeck

et al. 2012). Specifically, ethical leaders embed shared

understandings through their influence on team ethical

culture, which in turn influence followers’ ethical behavior.

These empirical studies tried to lay out specific modes of

transmission, such as emulating ethical leadership behav-

iors and developing ethical culture, through which ethical

leadership links to employee OCB. However, since

employee OCB is emphasized as proactive behaviors that

are primarily motivated by employees’ willingness to

voluntarily contribute to the organization (Lavelle 2010),

& Junqi Shi

[email protected]

1 Department of Management¸ Lingnan (University) College,

Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China

123

J Bus Ethics (2017) 141:151–162

DOI 10.1007/s10551-015-2734-x

we argue that it is important to answer questions, such as

what has been changed for individual employees and why

employees are motivated to contribute to the organizations

when they are under the supervision of ethical leaders.

Accordingly, organizational concern and perceived proce-

dural justice are included as mediators in the current study

because these two variables primarily capture employees’

perceptions of employee-organization relationships.

Accordingly, the contention at the center of this research

is to examine the extent to which supervisor’s (i.e.,

supervisor’s organizational concern) and employee’s (i.e.,

perceived procedural justice, employee’s organizational

concern) perceptions and motives mediate the relationship

between ethical leadership and employee OCB. In partic-

ular, we proposed and examined two potential mechanisms

to explicate how ethical leadership enhances employee

OCB. First, ethical leaders are a key source for employees

to understand the links between themselves and the focal

teams/organizations (Brown et al. 2005). From a social

learning perspective, employees emulate and imitate their

leader’s viewpoints and behaviors, such as motives attrib-

uted to OCB. Second, ethical leaders provide employees

fair treatment and a just work environment (Kalshoven

et al. 2011). Through the lens of social exchange,

employees may feel a sense of indebtedness to those

leaders and the teams/organizations those leaders represent

for (Mayer et al. 2009). Consequently, employees tend to

reciprocate such fair treatment by expressing proactive

motives attributed to OCBs. Altogether, this research pro-

vides an important integration between theories of ethical

leadership, proactive motives, and behaviors. This inte-

gration allows for better understanding of the underlying

mechanisms that link ethical leadership to employee OCB

from a multilevel perspective.

Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses

The Nature of Ethical Leadership

Brown et al. (2005) defined ethical leadership as the

demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through

personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the

promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way

communication, reinforcement, and decision-making (p.

120). Through 40 interviews with senior executives and

corporate ethics officers in various industries, Treviño et al.

(2000, 2003) summarized that a reputation for ethical lead-

ership eventually rests upon two pillars: moral person and

moral manager. First, ethical leaders have the responsibility

to be a moral person conforming to a complex code of

morals. They are expected to have certain traits and engage in

certain behaviors in their personal and professional lives

(Brown 2007; McCann and Holt 2009). These moral traits

and behaviors as ‘‘good compasses’’ not only provide leaders

themselves with a good sense of direction, but also point their

followers in the right way. Second, ethical leaders are rec-

ognized as moral managers creating moral codes and prin-

ciples for others. It is not enough for a leader to solely act as a

moral person with a strong sense of ethical awareness (Toor

and Ofori 2009), because in a leadership position, they are

expected to have managerial skills to direct employees’

attention on ethics and infuse the team/organization with

principles that guide ethical actions such as citizenship

behaviors (Treviño et al. 2000, 2003). Based on such argu-

ments, researchers suggested that the nature of ethical

leadership is essentially to formulate and advocate ethical

principles and concerns, and to develop moral and sustain-

able relationships between employees and the focal team/

organization (Brown et al. 2005).

Ethical Leadership and Employee OCB: The

Mediating Role of Supervisor’s and Employee’s

Organizational Concern

The concept of organizational concern primarily reflects a

desire by the individuals for the team/organization to do

well (Rioux and Penner 2001). It arises from the belief that

the welfare of the organization affects the welfare of the

individual (Halbesleben et al. 2010). Accordingly, it puts a

strong and direct emphasis on individuals’ proactive

motives toward the organization. Empirical results revealed

that employees with high organizational concern motives

are more likely to put the goals of the organization and

coworkers ahead of their own goals (Moon et al. 2008; Tan

and Tan 2008; Perrewe and Zellars 1999). Thus, people

who show concern for their teams/organizations have a

greater tendency to be involved in various citizenship

behaviors (Rioux and Penner 2001). As we will further

explain below, since employee OCB is emphasized as

proactive behaviors that are primarily motivated by

employees’ willingness to voluntarily contribute to the

organization (Lavelle 2010), organizational concern should

be one of the important mechanisms through which ethical

leadership manifests its effects on employee OCB.

Moreover, supervisor’s organizational concern was

conceptualized as an isomorphic construct to employee’s

organizational concern (c.f., Halbesleben et al. 2010).

Specifically, it essentially refers to the supervisor’s desire

to be helpful and cautious about future development of the

organization (Tan and Tan 2008; Halbesleben et al. 2010).

Supervisors with higher organizational concern motives are

more willing to take on extra work that is potentially

beneficial for the employees and the organization, regard-

less of individual benefits (Moon et al. 2008). As a

152 S. Mo, J. Shi

123

consequence, we argue that such leaders are influential in

directing employees’ proactive motives and behaviors.

Good Compass: Ethical Leadership Enhances Multilevel

Organizational Concern

Basically, leaders who are advanced ethical promoters

usually show greater organizational concern to the sus-

tainable development of the organization by morally bal-

ancing the benefits and values of various stakeholders

(Sama and Shoaf 2008; Groves and LaRocca 2011). They

always ask themselves what is the right thing to do for the

organization as well as for other stakeholders, such as the

employees when making decisions (Treviño et al. 2003;

Brown and Treviño 2006). In such processes, leaders

practicing ethical leadership may become more aware of

the moral compass—ethical values and motives in their

inner mind which tells them how they ought to behave for

the organization and employees.

An ethical leader as a moral person is important in

enhancing employees’ concerns toward the organization.

We believe this for a few reasons. First, social learning

theory suggests that individuals are influenced by observ-

ing role models and learn about appropriate behavior

vicariously through witnessing which actions attract

attention and which do not (Bandura 1977). Employees

observe and reproduce their supervisor’s ethical attitudes,

behaviors, and decisions in the day-to-day interactions

(McCann and Holt 2009; Neubert et al. 2009). Their

attention can be easily attracted by ethical leaders who put

a great emphasis on collective well being and the interests

of the organization (Brown et al. 2005). They learn about

what is acceptable or unacceptable by observing their

supervisors and regulate their own behaviors as a result.

Thus, through a social learning lens, employees’ attention

on collective goals may easily be focused by observing

supervisor’s attractive and credible moral actions (Sharif

and Scandura 2014). Second, employees tend to derive an

individual’s self-concept from perceived interpersonal

relationship, such as attitudes and behaviors that are

advocated in a relevant social group. In this perspective,

employees emulate supervisor’s ethical concern and

behaviors because they tend to obtain the common trait as a

member of the team/organization. Researchers demon-

strated that employees are more likely to put the organi-

zational and collective goals ahead if they have a

supervisor who makes ethics and collective success salient

in the team/organization (Mayer et al. 2012; Shin 2012).

Furthermore, according to OCB motives theory, Organ

and Ryan (1995) concluded that motives play an important

role in facilitating OCB because they affect individuals’

thoughts and feelings about a job and an organization.

Based on an empirical study with a sample of 250

American employees, Neubert and Roberts (2013) revealed

that ethical leadership positively leads to employees’ OCB

by influencing employees’ motivational orientation that

emphasizes achieving an organization’s desired end-states.

Therefore, we propose that supervisor’s organizational

concern and employee’s organizational concern positively

and sequentially mediate the impact of ethical leadership

on employee’s OCB. Following hypotheses are suggested

(as shown in Fig. 1):

H1 Supervisor’s organizational concern mediates the

positive relationship between ethical leadership and

employee’s organizational concern.

H2 There is a positive indirect effect of ethical leadership

on employee’s OCB via both supervisor’s and employee’s

organizational concern. Specifically, supervisor’s organi-

zational concern significantly mediates the positive rela-

tionship between ethical leadership and employee’s

organizational concern, while employee’s organizational

concern significantly mediates the positive relationship

between supervisor’s organizational concern and employ-

ee’s OCB.

Good Managerial Skills: Ethical Leadership Enhances

Procedural Justice

Brown and his colleagues (2005) argued that ethical lead-

ers define success not just by results but also by the way

that they are obtained. In the workplace, ethical leaders

usually show their concerns for creating and maintaining a

fair and just work environment. Meanwhile, employees

mainly develop their perceptions of organizational justice

through interactions with organizational agents, especially

the supervisors. Hence, at the individual level, an important

goal of supervisor’s ethical efforts is to enhance employ-

ees’ perceived procedural justice (Colquitt et al. 2001).

Thus, we propose that under the supervision of ethical

leaders, employees are more likely to treat team/organi-

zational decision procedures as fair and moral, and thereby

reciprocally contributing to the focal teams/organizations.

There are at least two reasons why ethical leadership

relates to employee’s citizenship behavior through per-

ceived procedural justice and concern for the organization.

First, the social exchange theory posits that interpersonal

exchange is guided by an expectation of reciprocal return

or behavior in kind (Blau 1964). When supervisors always

take care of employees’ rights, and make decisions in a fair

manner, employees may perceive high level organizational

support and procedural justice (Moorman et al. 1998). In

such situations, employees are more likely to reciprocate

the supervisor and the organization by putting collective

goals ahead. Accordingly, they tend to go beyond the call

Linking Ethical Leadership to Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing… 153

123

of duty (Bolino and Turnley 2003). Particularly for lower-

level employees, their emotional attachment and concerns

with the organization are mainly created through reciprocal

processes with their direct supervisor acting as an organi-

zational agent (Walumbwa et al. 2011). If the supervisor

adheres to ethical and fair values, people would want to

work for that company and would want to do well (Treviño

et al. 2000). Recent studies provided empirical evidence

that employees’ perceptions of procedural justice were

significantly influenced by the practice of ethical leader-

ship, which in turn led to employees’ extra-role actions

(Loi et al. 2012).

Second, ethical leaders define success not just by results

but also by the way that they are obtained (Brown et al.

2005). According to the counterfactual perspective,

employees under the supervision of an ethical leader are

more likely to shift attention from fairness ends to fairness

means (Folger and Kass 2000). Accordingly, employees

tend to get involved in team/organizational activities when

they believe their supervisor always adheres to fair pro-

cedural criteria and welcome organization-concern voice

during a decision-making process (Colquitt et al. 2001).

With a sample of 190 supervisor-employee dyads, Resick

et al. (2013) study indicated that employees tend to judge

the managerial processes as morally fair when they are

under the supervision of an ethical leader.

Therefore, the organizational concern view proposes

that employees engage in OCB because organizations have

looked after them by fair treatment, inspirational work, and

so on (Organ, 1990; Organ and Ryan 1995). Employees are

more likely to put the organizational and collective goals

ahead if they work in a fair and supportive work place

(Robinson and Morrison 1995; Walumbwa et al. 2010).

For these reasons, we expect that procedural justice and

employee’s organizational concern positively and sequen-

tially mediate the impact of ethical leadership on

employee’s OCB. We propose the hypotheses as follows

(as shown in Fig. 1):

H3 Procedural justice mediates the positive relationship

between ethical leadership and employee’s organizational

concern.

H4 There is a positive indirect effect of ethical leadership

on employee’s OCB via both procedural justice and

employee’s organizational concern. Specifically, procedu-

ral justice significantly mediates the positive relationship

between ethical leadership and employee’s organizational

concern, while employee’s organizational concern signifi-

cantly mediates the positive relationship between proce-

dural justice and employee’s OCB.

Methods

Sample and Procedures

Data in the present study were collected from employees in

a pharmacy retail chain company located in South China.

Questionnaires were distributed to 580 employees who

work in the chain stores of this pharmacy company. There

was one supervisor for each store (team). In the stores,

employees interacted with each other in everyday tasks. At

the very beginning, employees were informed that all their

individual responses would be used only for academic

purpose, and they were requested to complete the ques-

tionnaires during work time.

The final sample size comprises 93 teams (93 supervi-

sors and 486 individual employees), where the response

rate is 84.0 %. Average team size was 5.23 members. The

average age of the employees was 31.17 years

(SD = 7.14). Among them, 341 were female (70.2 %).

Average tenure was 9.23 years (SD = 8.21). Respectively,

the average age of the supervisors was 39.72 years

(SD = 7.10). Sixty-five of them were female (69.9 %).

And the average tenure of the supervisors was 17.86 years

(SD = 8.40).

Ethical leadership

Organizational concern

(Supervisor)

Procedural justice

Organizational concern

(Employee)

Organizational citizenship

behavior (OCB)

Team level

Individual level

H1/H2

H2H3/H4

H4

H1/H2

H3/H4

Fig. 1 Theoretical model

154 S. Mo, J. Shi

123

Data were collected at two time points with 2 months in

between to warrant sufficient time lag to separate the

measurement of predictors and mediators from the out-

come variables. Specifically, at Time 1, employees were

required to report their demographic information, such as

age, gender, and work tenure, as well as their perception of

procedural justice, while supervisors completed a ques-

tionnaire regarding their demographic information and

self-evaluation of ethical leadership. At Time 2, employees

reported their levels of organizational concern and OCB,

while supervisors were asked to rate their own concern for

the organization. All surveys were translated from English

to Chinese, using Brislin’s (1980) recommended transla-

tion-back translation procedure.

Measures

Well-established scales were employed to measure the

constructs of this study, which are summarized as follows.

Ethical Leadership

We assessed ethical leadership using Brown et al.’s (2005)

unidimensional 10-item ethical leadership scale (ELS).

Respondents were asked to evaluate their own ethical

leadership by answering statements such as ‘‘I make fair and

balanced decisions’’ and ‘‘I set an example of how to do

things the right way in terms of ethics.’’ A five-point Likert

response format (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly

agree) was used. The Cronbach’s alpha was .86.

Supervisor’s and Employee’s Organizational Concern

Supervisor’s and employee’s organizational concerns were

both measured by the 10-item scale developed by Rioux

and Penner (2001). Respondents rated their concerns for

the organization using a six-point Likert response format

(1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree). Typical items

in the scale were ‘‘I care what happens to the company.’’

and ‘‘I want to be fully involved in the company.’’ The

Cronbach’s alpha was .86 for the employee’s organiza-

tional concern, and .95 for the supervisor’s organizational

concern.

Procedural Justice

The scale of perceived procedural justice in

Colquitt et al.’s (2001) organizational justice scale was

used in this study. Seven items were included in the scale,

such as ‘‘I was able to express my views and feelings

during those procedures’’ and ‘‘I was able to appeal the

outcomes arrived at by those procedures.’’ A five-point

Likert response format (1 = strongly disagree;

5 = strongly agree) was used. The Cronbach’s alpha was

.94 for the perceived procedural justice.

OCB

We measured employee’s OCB using a 30-item scale

developed in Podsakoff et al. (1990). Sampling items are ‘‘I

have willingly helped others who have work-related

problems’’ and ‘‘I have helped orient new people even

though it is not required.’’ In the current study, we mainly

focused on employee’s overall OCB. Thus, in line with

prior practice, such as Chen et al. (2007) measure of

empowerment, we evaluated the overall OCB score. We

also applied a five-point Likert response format

(1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). The Cron-

bach’s alpha for OCB was .86.

Control Variables

Employee gender and age were included as control vari-

ables in our hypotheses testing because previous research

noted that these demographic variables are influential to the

dependent variable, employee OCB (Laczniak and Inder-

rieden 1987; Pearce and Herbik 2004). Employee tenure

was not included as a control variable because it was highly

correlated with age (r = .90, p\ .01). Besides, we also

controlled for team level variable team size in this research.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine

whether employees’ scores on their self-report measures

(i.e., procedural justice, organizational concern, and OCB)

captured distinctive constructs. Following previous

research (Chen et al. 2007), scores on the five dimensions

of OCB were used as indicators for the latent variables.

The hypothesized three-factor model was specified by

loading indicators on their respective latent variables, and

the correlations among latent variables were freely esti-

mated. Results showed that the three-factor model fits the

data, v2(206, N = 253) = 491.17, comparative fit index

(CFI) = .91, standardized root-mean-square residual

(SRMR) = .06, and root-mean-square error of approxi-

mation (RMSEA) = .07. Indicators all significantly loaded

on their respective latent factors. Considering that the item

contents in the measures of organizational concern and

OCB were similar, an alternative two-factor model was

specified by constraining the variances of and covariance

between organizational concern and OCB factors to be

equal (thereby their correlation equaled 1), and constrain-

ing the covariances between these two factors and proce-

dural justice to be equal. This two-factor model fits the data

Linking Ethical Leadership to Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing… 155

123

significantly worse than the three-factor model, Dv2(2,

N = 253) = 458.45, p\ .01. Therefore, measures repor-

ted by employees captured distinctive constructs.

Analytic Strategy

In the present study, all the hypotheses were proposed as

multilevel mediation effects. Accordingly, the present data

contained a hierarchical structure in which responses of

employee-level variables were nested within teams. As a

result, multilevel modeling was performed to simultane-

ously estimate the hypothesized multilevel relationships

using Mplus 5.2 software (Muthen and Muthen 2007).

Specifically, gender and age were level 1 variables, while

ethical leadership, supervisor’s organizational concern, and

team size were level 2 variables. All the mediators and

dependent variables (i.e., procedural justice, employee’s

organizational concern and employee OCB) had variances

at both level 1 and level 2. In addition, the Monte Carlo

method recommended by Preacher et al. (2010) was used to

estimate confidence intervals for the hypothesized multi-

level mediation effects to determine their significance.1

Results

Means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations

among studied variables are shown in Table 1. At the

individual level, perceived procedural justice was posi-

tively correlated with employee’s organizational concern

(r = .16, p\ .01) and employee OCB (r = .12, p\ .05).

Employee’s organizational concern was positively corre-

lated with employee OCB (r = .27, p\ .01). At the team

level, ethical leadership was positively correlated to

supervisor’s organizational concern (r = .27, p\ .05).

Model Estimation

To estimate the hypothesized model (Fig. 1), we specified

the relationship slopes at the individual level to be random,

i.e., perceived procedural justice—employee’s organiza-

tional concern, perceived procedural justice—employee

OCB, and employee’s organizational concern—employee

OCB. We included gender and age as control variables

with fixed effects on employee’s organizational concern

and OCB. We also controlled the effect of team size on

supervisor’s organizational concern, employee’s organiza-

tional concern and OCB. At the team level, we specified

the relationship between ethical leadership and supervi-

sor’s organizational concern, and cross-level direct impacts

of ethical leadership on perceived procedural justice,

employee’s organizational concern and employee OCB, as

well as impacts of supervisor’s organizational concern on

employee’s organizational concern and employee OCB.

To facilitate the interpretation of the research model,

individual level gender and age were group mean centered,

and team size and ethical leadership were grand mean

centered. Results showed that all of the hypothesized

relationships were well supported, as shown in Fig. 2 and

Table 2.

We used Snijders and Bosker’s (1999) formulas to cal-

culate pseudo-R2(*R2), reflecting the proportional reduc-

tion of individual level and team level errors due to

including predictors in the model. Predictors accounted for

9 % of the total variance in employee OCB, suggesting that

team level variables such that ethical leadership, supervi-

sor’s organizational concern, and individual level variables

such that procedural justice and employee’s organizational

concern can explain sizable portions of the variations in the

outcome variable-employee OCB.

Hypotheses testing

Hypothesis 1

Supervisor’s organizational concern was hypothesized to

mediate the effect of ethical leadership on employee’s

organizational concern. Figure 2 shows that ethical lead-

ership was positively related to supervisor’s organizational

concern (r = .96, p\ .01), and supervisor’s organizational

concern was also positively related to employee’s organi-

zational concern (r = .32, p\ .01). We used a parametric

bootstrap procedure (c.f. Preacher et al. 2010) to estimate

the hypothesized cross-level indirect relationship. With

20,000 Monte Carlo replications, results showed that there

was a positive indirect relationship between ethical lead-

ership and employee’s organizational concern via super-

visor’s organizational concern (indirect effect = .31, 95 %

bias-corrected bootstrap CI [.070, .591]). Hence, Hypoth-

esis 1 was well supported.

Hypothesis 2

Supervisor’s organizational concern and employee’s orga-

nizational concern were hypothesized to sequentially

mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and

employee’s OCB. The significant relationships between

ethical leadership and supervisor’s organizational concern,

supervisor’s organizational concern and employee’s orga-

nizational concern have been examined above. Figure 2

also shows the positive relationship between employee’s

organizational concern and OCB (r = .08, p\ .01). Fur-

thermore, with 20,000 Monte Carlo replications, the

1 More information about the R program could be found at http://

www.quantpsy.org.

156 S. Mo, J. Shi

123

indirect effect for ethical leadership ! supervisor’s orga-

nizational concern ! employee’s organizational concern

! OCB was .02, with a 95 % CI of [.003, .060]. The point

estimate here seems small; however, as noted by Preacher

and Kelley (2011), the estimates of indirect effects are

bounded by the range of possible values of regression

weight of each link in the mediation. Thus, the indirect

effect is still meaningful and important for supporting

Hypothesis 2.

Hypothesis 3

Procedural justice was hypothesized to mediate the effect

of ethical leadership on employee’s organizational concern

in Hypothesis 3. Figure 2 shows that ethical leadership was

positively related to procedural justice (r = .23, p\ .01),

and procedural justice was also positively related to

employee’s organizational concern (r = .33, p\ .01).

With 20,000 Monte Carlo replications, we found a positive

indirect relationship between ethical leadership and

employee’s organizational concern via procedural justice

(indirect effect = .08, 95 % bias-corrected bootstrap CI

[.012, .162]). Therefore, Hypothesis 3 was supported.

Hypothesis 4

Procedural justice and employee’s organizational concern

were hypothesized to sequentially mediate the relationship

between ethical leadership and employee’s OCB. The

significant relationships between ethical leadership and

procedural justice, procedural justice, and employee’s

organizational concern have been mentioned above in

testing Hypothesis 3. Again from Fig. 2, we found the

positive relationship between employee’s organizational

concern and OCB (r = .08, p\ .01). With 20,000 Monte

Carlo replications, the indirect effect for ethical leadership

! procedural justice ! organizational concern ! OCB

was .01, with a 95 % CI of [.001, .016]. Thus, the indirect

effect (Hypothesis 4) was supported.

Discussion

There is increasing recognition of the importance of ethical

leadership in enhancing employee proactive behaviors, such

as organizational citizenship behavior (Neubert and Roberts

2013). However, people have limited understanding about

the psychological mechanisms by which ethical leadership

links to employees’ proactive behavior (Walumbwa et al.

2011; Mayer et al. 2012). In this study, we explicate a

multilevel model including two psychological mechanisms

through which ethical leadership enhances employee OCB.

We now illustrate the theoretical and practical implications

of this study.

Theoretical Contributions

Our study has several theoretical contributions for the

study of ethical leadership, ethical motives, and ethical

Ethical leadership

Organizational concern

(Supervisor)

Procedural justice

Organizational concern

(Employee)

Organizational citizenship

behavior (OCB)

Team level

Individual level.32**

.96**

.23**

.33** .08**

-.30

.04

.05

.08**

Fig. 2 Path coefficients from the selected model. Note For the reason

of brevity, we did not present the effects of gender and age on

employee’s organizational concern and OCB, and the effects of team

size on supervisor’s organizational concern and employee’s organi-

zational concern and OCB. **p\ .01

Linking Ethical Leadership to Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing… 157

123

behavior. First, focusing on the impact of individuals’

motives towards the organization, we demonstrated the

psychological mechanisms that link ethical leadership to

employee OCB. In line with Treviño et al. (2000) argument

that ethical leadership has two essential pillars—moral

person and moral manager, two underlying mechanisms

were suggested in the present study. First, the relationship

between ethical leadership and employee OCB was

sequentially mediated by supervisor’s organizational con-

cern and employee’s organizational concern. In a social

learning perspective, these results demonstrated that

employees would learn from their supervisor who is per-

ceived as a moral person. Secondly, supervisor’s ethical

leadership was also positively related to employee OCB via

the mediation of employee’s perceived procedural justice

and organizational concern. These results reflected a social

exchange mechanism that employees tend to reciprocate to

their supervisor (a moral manager) and the focal organi-

zation by voluntarily putting collective goals ahead and

then proactively engaging in citizenship activities. Alto-

gether, the present study not only offers a constructive

replication of prior findings (e.g., Mayer et al. 2009; Zhang

et al. 2013) but contributes to the ethical leadership and

OCB literature by demonstrating the important role of

individuals’ proactive motives toward the organization.

Second, the research of ethical leadership and OCB was

well integrated within a cross-level framework in the current

study. Answering prior calls for understanding the influence of

ethical leadership from a multilevel perspective (Kalshoven

et al. 2011; Schaubroeck et al. 2012), we demonstrated the key

psychological factors that can significantly mediate the posi-

tive effect of ethical leadership on employee OCB across

levels. As we know, previous research was mainly focusing on

either how ethical leadership influences team climate/culture

and collective performance at the team level or how

employees’ perception of ethical leadership leads to individ-

ual OCB at the individual level (Brown and Treviño 2006). In

this study, we demonstrated the cross-level effects of ethical

leadership on employee’s perceived procedural justice, and

supervisor’s organizational concern and employee’s organi-

zational concern. These findings help us to answer the key

research question that why employees proactively engage in

OCB under the supervision of ethical leaders.

Managerial Implications

This study also has a number of practical implications. The

first contribution is in substantiating the value of ethical

leadership in enhancing employee OCB. According to the

results of this study, we advocate that it is critical for

organizations to identify, select, and promote people who

always present ethical values and commitments to become

leaders in the organizations. An ethical leader can direct

employees to engage in proactive activities by answering

questions such as ‘‘what are the appropriate and preferred

values and actions for achieving the goals of the

organization.’’

Second, our research suggests that finding ways to

activate or enhance supervisors’ and employees’ concerns

for the organizations would be one way to enhance

employee OCB. Supervisors should pay more attention to

the role modeling effect in the leader-member interaction

processes. For the companies, it is recommended to invest

ethics training programs for existing leaders to develop

ethical leadership and moral connection with the organi-

zations. Meanwhile, for those leaders, it is also suggested

that they should make an effort to improve their followers’

understanding of organizational goals and values through

appropriate communication and modeling behaviors.

Third, we suggest that creating a fair and just work

environment is another important task for leaders who tend

to manage employees in an ethical way. Employees are

more willing to contribute to focal organizations when

leaders establish and nurture work relationships based on

fairness and justice (Neubert and Roberts 2013). Thus,

organizations should encourage leaders at different levels

to frequently reflect on the nature of decisions and man-

agerial processes, whether fair or not.

Strengths, Limitations, and Future Research

Directions

This research has a number of strengths. First, while past

research has generally focused on either individual level or

team level mechanism of ethical leadership, we examine

the relationship between ethical leadership and employee

OCB with a multilevel design. Second, data were collected

from multiple sources at different time points, which

reduce potential common method biases (Podsakoff et al.

2012). Third, the proposed research model was estimated

following a general path-analytic framework such that all

the hypothesized relationships were examined at the same

time (Preacher et al. 2010). As a result, the problems in

piecemeal and causal step approaches for testing mediation

(Bauer et al. 2006) were significantly alleviated in the

present research.

Despite these strengths, several limitations of this

research remain. One limitation is that although we pri-

marily draw on social learning and social exchange theory

to link ethical leadership to employees’ motives and

behaviors, we did not directly measure variables regarding

role modeling or leader-member exchange (LMX).

Although including such variables may have made our

theoretical model cumbersome, we see the value of taking

them into consideration to learn more about the potential

influence mechanism of ethical leadership. Furthermore, it

158 S. Mo, J. Shi

123

is also valuable to conduct future research to further

explore other underlying mechanisms, such as organiza-

tional commitment that link supervisor’s organizational

concern to employee OCB, in addition to the mediating

role of employee’s organizational concern.

Another weakness of this study is that the employee’s

organizational concern and the dependent variable OCB

were measured from the same source at the same time.

Although we are not allowed to measure these two variables

at different times due to the logistic constraints, we examined

the factor structure of the measures and confirmed the dis-

tinction between these two constructs. Nevertheless, it is

valuable for future research to verify our empirical results

with a more rigorous research design. For example,

employee’s OCB could be evaluated by the supervisor or

coworkers (Piccolo et al. 2010). Moreover, someone’s moral

compass may make it more likely for someone to practice

ethical leadership. Thus, we suggest that longitudinal

research design should be applied in future studies for a

better understanding of the casual relationships in our model.

A third limitation is that in our present research, ethical

leadership was still conceptualized and operationalized as a

unidimensional concept proposed by Brown et al. (2005).

Recent work suggested the usefulness of examining several

distinct dimensions of ethical leadership and their different

effects on individual and organizational outcomes (e.g., De

Hoogh and Den Hartog 2008; Kalshoven et al. 2011). For

example, integrity and fairness are more likely to induce

employees’ perception of trust and justice, while power

sharing and fairness may lead to individual and collective

OCB behaviors (Kalshoven et al. 2011). Additionally,

ethical leadership was only reported by supervisors them-

selves in this study. It will be valuable to also measure

these leadership behaviors from the viewpoints of

employees. Hence, we encourage future research to adopt a

multisource approach in investigating the extent to which

ethical leadership behaviors explain variance in employ-

ees’ OCBs.

Finally, all the research samples were collected in South

China, which may lead to a limitation that these results

were obtained in a less generalizable context. This is

because in China, the populations may have more of a

collectivist view and thus may be more inclined to do

OCBs (Mo et al. 2012). Besides, leaders may not be

challenged as much, so role modeling could occur more in

the Chinese context. Therefore, for future research, it will

be highly recommended to explore the cross-cultural

implications of the current study.

Conclusion

The current study sheds light on an important domain of

the psychological mechanisms that link ethical leadership

to employee OCB from a multilevel perspective. In line

with two essential pillars of ethical leadership—moral

person and moral manager, results showed that ethical

leadership may enhance employee OCB through two

mechanisms. First, from a social learning perspective,

employees emulate their supervisor’s ethical modeling to

care about their organizations, captured by supervisor’s and

employee’s organizational concern. Second, from a social

exchange perspective, ethical leadership enhances

employee’s citizenship behavior through improvement of

employee’s perceived procedural justice and organizational

concern.

Acknowledgments This research was supported in part by Grant

No. 71302102 awarded to Shenjiang Mo and Grant No. 71425004

awarded to Junqi Shi from the Natural Social Science Foundation of

China, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universi-

ties and Grant No. NCET-13-0611 awarded to Junqi Shi from the

Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University.

Appendix

See Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations among studied variables

Variables M Ind. SD Team SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Individual level

1 Gender .71 .46 –

2 Age 31.17 7.14 -.02 –

3 Tenure 9.23 8.21 .02 .90** –

4 Procedural justice 3.61 .65 -.01 .09* .08 (.94)

5 Org. concern (E) 3.79 1.22 -.03 -.01 .03 .16** (.86)

6 Employee OCB 4.26 .53 .07 .06 .08 .12* .27** (.86)

Team level

7 Team size 5.24 1.08 – .13 -.21

8 Ethical leadership 4.35 .39 (.86) .27*

Linking Ethical Leadership to Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing… 159

123

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