The relationship between ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior among academic staff of a public sector University of Pakistan

Abstract

In current scenario of competitiveness, it has become important to have a workforce with higher level of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), as it affects the quality of education and determines the direction of development of a nation. Likewise, previous research has suggested the need to focus on the role of ethical leadership in influencing OCB among academicians in higher educational institutions. However, ethical leadership for academicians in higher education has received relatively less attention and there is a need of further examining relationship of ethical leadership with employees’ behavioral outcomes such as OCB in research organizations. This study investigated the relationship of ethical leadership and employees’ organizational citizenship behavior among academic staff of a public-sector university in Pakistan. The current study employed a quantitative research design by distributing questionnaires to 204 academic staff using proportionate stratified random sampling, in which a total of 191 questionnaires were received for further analysis. The study employed Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21 to test the hypotheses of the study using Mean, Standard Deviation and Pearson’s correlation. The results of the study showed that ethical leadership is practiced in public-sector university at moderate level. Furthermore, based on the perception of academic staff, organizational citizenship behavior was found at moderate level. The study also found significant positive correlation between ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior, based on the norm of reciprocity, which is supportive of the principles of social exchange theory. In addition, people orientation, fairness, power sharing, concern for sustainability, ethical guidance, role clarification, and integrity had a significant positive correlation with organization citizenship behavior. The findings of the study contributed to the existing body of knowledge on ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, findings of this study also have practical implications for leaders of public sector universities as practicing ethical leadership can indulge employees in extra-role behaviors such as OCB, based on the norm of reciprocity. Moreover, suggestions for future studies have also been provided in this study.