The Impact of Ethical Leadership & Civility on Organizational Commitment: The Mediating Role of Work Engagement

Abstract

Purpose – This paper holds the purpose to investigate the impact of ethical leadership and civility on organizational commitment and also to explore mediating role of work engagement in the relationship.

Design/methodology/approach – With questionnaire survey, the current paper uses a sample of 340 employees from manufacturing sector of Lahore Pakistan. To test the hypotheses, analysis was accomplished by using Statistical Package for Social Science Software, through confirmatory factor and regression analysis.

Findings – The results revealed that ethical leadership and civility have positive impact on organizational commitment. Strong empirical support also proved that work engagement mediates the relationship between ethical leadership, civility and organizational commitment.

Research limitations/implications – This study design is cross-sectional, consequently accuracy of assumption concerning causality is restrictive.

Practical implications – Results of this study discovered the importance of ethical leadership behaviors which play noteworthy role in developing employees and ethical organizational culture & support to ascertain an organizational ethical environment that leads to maximize work engagement and organizational commitment. Thus, ethical leadership behaviors & civility might be the key and most suitable practices to be implemented in manufacturing sector of Pakistan.

Originality/value – This paper adds to the existing ethical leadership and civility literature by identifying work engagement as an additional mediator in the relationship between ethical leadership, civility and organizational commitment

Keywords:  Ethical leadership, Civility, Work engagement, organizational commitment, JEL Classification