Mediating Effect of Organizational Trust between Ethical Leadership and Work Engagement among Teachers of HEI
Keywords:
Keywords: Ethical Leadership, Work engagement, Organizational trust, Psychological empowerment, EtcAbstract
Abstract:
The work engagement is found critical for organizations’ development and
growth. The voluminous literature has identified the predictors of work
engagement from leadership, individual and organizational factors.
However, the integrated framework based on leadership, and individual
(psychological) element is undertheorized. This research fills the gap by
testing the moderated mediation of psychological empowerment and
organizational trust to explain the work engagement based on ethical
leadership. 300 self-administered questionnaires were distributed based on
proportionate random sampling approach to teachers from four universities
present in Quetta. To test hypotheses, the regression analysis, Hayes Model
for mediation and moderation through bootstrapping approach. Results
indicate that ethical leadership has positive significant impact on
organizational trust and work engagement. The mediation results show that
the work engagement is improved when organizational trust positively
interacts with ethical leadership. The results of moderating effect show that
when psychological empowerment is low and ethical leadership is high the
work engagement improves. Further the difference of work engagement
between low and high psychological empowerment vanishes when ethical
1MS Scholar, Institute of Management Sciences University of Balochistan Quetta
Pakistan
2Muhammad Danish, Lecturer, Institute of management Sciences University of
Balochistan Quetta Pakistan42
leadership improves. Thus both ethical leadership and psychological
empowerment found significant moderation mediation for work
engagement.
References
References:
Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic leadership development:
Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership
Quarterly, 16(3), 315-338.
Bakker, A. B. (2011). An evidence-based model of work engagement.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(4), 265-269.
Blau, P. (2017). Exchange and power in social life: Routledge.
Bobbio, A., Bellan, M., & Manganelli, A. M. (2012). Empowering
leadership, perceived organizational support, trust, and job burnout
for nurses: A study in an Italian general hospital. Health Care
Management Review, 37(1), 77-87.
Brower, H. H., Lester, S. W., Korsgaard, M. A., & Dineen, B. R. (2009). A
closer look at trust between managers and subordinates:
Understanding the effects of both trusting and being trusted on
subordinate outcomes. Journal of management, 35(2), 327-347.
Brown, M. E., & Mitchell, M. S. (2010). Ethical and unethical leadership:
Exploring new avenues for future research. Business Ethics
Quarterly, 20(4), 583-616.
Brown, M. E., & Treviño, L. K. (2006). Ethical leadership: A review and
future directions. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(6), 595-616.
Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership:
A social learning perspective for construct development and testing.
Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 97(2), 117-
Burke, R. J., & El-Kot, G. (2010). Work engagement among managers and
professionals in Egypt: Potential antecedents and consequences.
African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, 1(1), 42-60.
Claes Fornell and David F. Larcker. (1981). Evaluating structural equation
model with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal
of marketing research, 18(1), 39-50.59
Chughtai, A. A., & Buckley, F. (2008). Work engagement and its
relationship with state and trait trust: A conceptual analysis. Journal
of Behavioral and Applied Management, 10(1), 47.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The" what" and" why" of goal pursuits:
Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological
inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.
Dietz, G., & Den Hartog, D. N. (2006). Measuring trust inside
organisations. Personnel Review, 35(5), 557-588.
Digwamaje, O. B. (2015). The drivers of employee engagement. University
of Johannesburg.
Dirks, K. T. (2000). Trust in leadership and team performance: Evidence
from NCAA basketball. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(6),
Dolan, S. L., Tzafrir, S. S., & Baruch, Y. (2005). Testing the causal
relationships between procedural justice, trust and organizational
citizenship behavior. Revue de gestion des ressources humaines, 57,
-89.
Greco, P., Laschinger, H. K. S., & Wong, C. (2006). Leader empowering
behaviours, staff nurse empowerment and work
engagement/burnout. Nursing Leadership, 19(4), 41-56.
Holland, P., Cooper, B., & Sheehan, C. (2017). Employee voice, supervisor
support, and engagement: The mediating role of trust. Human
Resource Management, 56(6), 915-929.
Inoue, A., Kawakami, N., Ishizaki, M., Shimazu, A., Tsuchiya, M., Tabata,
M., . . . Kuroda, M. (2010). Organizational justice, psychological
distress, and work engagement in Japanese workers. International
archives of occupational and environmental health, 83(1), 29.
Jorg Henseler, Christian M. Ringle, Marko Sarstedt. (2015). A new criterion
for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural
equation modeling. Journal of the academy of marketing science,
(1), 115-135.
Kalshoven, K., Den Hartog, D. N., & De Hoogh, A. H. (2011). Ethical
leader behavior and big five factors of personality. Journal of
business ethics, 100(2), 349-366. 60
Laschinger, H. K. S., Finegan, J., Shamian, J., & Casier, S. (2000).
Organizational trust and empowerment in restructured healthcare
settings: effects on staff nurse commitment. Journal of Nursing
Administration, 30(9), 413-425.
Lester, S. W., & Brower, H. H. (2003). In the eyes of the beholder: The
relationship between subordinates' felt trustworthiness and their
work attitudes and behaviors. Journal of Leadership &
Organizational Studies, 10(2), 17-33.
Li, N., Yan, J., & Jin, M. (2007). How does organizational trust benefit work
performance? Frontiers of Business Research in China, 1(4), 622-
Mayer, D. M., Kuenzi, M., Greenbaum, R., Bardes, M., & Salvador, R. B.
(2009). How low does ethical leadership flow? Test of a trickledown model. Organizational behavior and human decision
processes, 108(1), 1-13.
Mayer, R. C., & Gavin, M. B. (2005). Trust in management and
performance: Who minds the shop while the employees watch the
boss? Academy of management journal, 48(5), 874-888.
Neubert, M. J., Wu, C., & Roberts, J. A. (2013). The influence of ethical
leadership and regulatory focus on employee outcomes. Business
Ethics Quarterly, 23(2), 269-296.
Ogunfowora, B. (2014). It’s all a matter of consensus: Leader role modeling
strength as a moderator of the links between ethical leadership and
employee outcomes. Human Relations, 67(12), 1467-1490.
Onyishi, E. (2006). The role of organizational support, psychological
empowerment and employment status on organizational citizenship
behaviour. Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria,
Nsukka, unpublished doctoral dissertation.
Organ,D. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & MacKenzie, S. B. (2006). Organizational
citizenship behavior: Its nature, antecedents, and consequences.
USA: Sage Publication, Inc.
Osborne, S., & Hammoud, M. S. (2017). Effective Employee Engagement
in the Workplace. International Journal of Applied Management
and Technology, 16(1), 4. 61
Parker, S. K., Williams, H. M., & Turner, N. (2006). Modeling the
antecedents of proactive behavior at work. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 91(3), 636.
Qi, Y., & Ming-Xia, L. (2014). Ethical leadership, organizational
identification and employee voice: Examining moderated mediation
process in the Chinese insurance industry. Asia Pacific Business
Review, 20(2), 231-248.
Robinson, D., Perryman, S., & Hayday, S. (2004). The drivers of employee
engagement. Report-Institute for Employment Studies.
Roux, S. (2010). The relationship between authentic leadership, optimism,
self-efficacy and work engagement: An exploratory study.
Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch.
Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee
engagement. Journal of managerial psychology, 21(7), 600-619.
Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A. B., & Salanova, M. (2006). The measurement
of work engagement with a short questionnaire: A cross-national
study. Educational and psychological measurement, 66(4), 701-
Tims, M., Bakker, A. B., & Xanthopoulou, D. (2011). Do transformational
leaders enhance their followers' daily work engagement? The
Leadership Quarterly, 22(1), 121-131.
Trevino, L. K., Hartman, L. P., & Brown, M. (2000). Moral person and
moral manager: How executives develop a reputation for ethical
leadership. California management review, 42(4), 128-142.
Ugwu, F. O., Onyishi, I. E., & Rodríguez-Sánchez, A. M. (2014). Linking
organizational trust with employee engagement: The role of
psychological empowerment. Personnel Review, 43(3), 377-400.
Walumbwa, F. O., Mayer, D. M., Wang, P., Wang, H., Workman, K., &
Christensen, A. L. (2011). Linking ethical leadership to employee
performance: The roles of leader–member exchange, self-efficacy,
and organizational identification. Organizational behavior and
human decision processes, 115(2), 204-213.
Wong, Y.-T., Wong, C.-S., & Ngo, H.-Y. (2012). The effects of trust in
organisation and perceived organisational support on organisational
citizenship behaviour: A test of three competing models. The 62
International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(2), 278-
Wu, L.-Z., Kwan, H. K., Yim, F. H.-k., Chiu, R. K., & He, X. (2015). CEO
ethical leadership and corporate social responsibility: A moderated
mediation model. Journal of business ethics, 130(4), 819-831.
Yılmaz, K. (2008). The relationship between organizational trust and
organizational commitment in Turkish primary schools. Journal of
Applied Sciences, 8(12), 2293-2299.
