Investigating the effect of ethical leadership on employees' altruistic voice: explaining the mediating role of cognitive trust and psychological well-being (Study case: employees of the General Department of Tax Affairs of Golestan province)

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of ethical leadership on altruistic voices of employees of Golestan Tax Administration, which was done by descriptive survey method with correlational design. The statistical population included 600 employees working in the General Department of Tax Affairs of Golestan Province who were serving in 1400 and the statistical sample was 234 people using stratified random sampling method through Krejcie-Morgan table. Measurement tools included the Moral Leadership Questionnaire by Brown and Trevino (2006) with 10 items, the altruistic voice by Zuhair and Erdogan (2011) with 5 items, the cognitive trust questionnaire by Yang and Maschelder (2010) with 5 items and the Oxford Psychological Well-being (OHI). With 29 items, their Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.935, 0.857, 0.860 and 0.966, respectively. To analyze the data, SPSS25 software was used at the descriptive level for frequency, mean and standard deviation and at the inferential level for correlation, regression and analysis of variance tests to test the research hypotheses. The results showed that ethical leadership has a positive and significant effect on altruistic, cognitive trust and psychological well-being of employees and also a positive and significant effect of cognitive trust and psychological well-being on employees' altruistic voice was confirmed. Cognitive trust and psychological well-being play a significant mediating role in the relationship between moral leadership and the altruistic voice of the staff of the General Department of Tax Affairs of Golestan Province.